Tuesday Poem - Jetsam

Jetsam

This is what the sea
           has remembered
A shell, coiled like a
          question mark
One finger bone of
          coral; a gannet’s
skull sucked clean.

This is the deep story of the ocean.

A line of narrative written
where the tide reaches.

Kathleen Jones

This is part of a work in progress - some small poems written around observations that I made in New Zealand last year, just exploring ideas.   I love the sea, and New Zealand has some of the wildest, most amazing coastal areas I've ever visited.  I'm trying to explore some of the stories that the sea hints at, washed up on the tide line.

For more Tuesday Poems, visit www.tuesdaypoem.blogspot.com

 

Happy New Year Everyone!

Fireworks over Pietrasanta

We celebrated in true Italian style with lots of socialising and millions of fireworks! The animals we are dog-sitting were left at home suitably tranquillised.

I know that New Year’s Day is only a date on the calendar and that logically there’s no difference between one day and the next. But psychologically there’s always a feeling that you’re going through a gateway - glancing over your shoulder at the landscape behind you and then looking forwards again into the fog of the future just over the doorstep.
2010 has been a strange year for me - lots of travelling, living like a nomad, more airports, hotels and train stations than I can count, and saying goodbye to people I didn’t want to part with. England, Italy, Belgium, France, Cuba, Singapore, New Zealand - my life reduced to a travelogue.
The most memorable things?
The birth of baby Isabella in February.

An earthquake in Christchurch while staying with my daughter and grandchildren.

My first Whale in Kaikoura

The publication of the book in New Zealand; seeing children in far-flung places; lots of new friends; a new job.  The coldest winter for more than 50 years.

And then the other side, all the things you don’t blog about; family anxieties, personal disappointments, periods of depression and feelings of isolation. No human life can be without them I think, and writers (probably all creative artists) are particularly vulnerable - there’s a pendulum of insecurity inside you that swings from self-belief to unbelief and back again. And every now and then we have to peer over what Gerard Manley Hopkins called ‘cliffs of fall, no-man fathomed’.

The year ahead is going to be hard. Neil and I want to be together, but I earn my living in England and he earns his in Italy - a life in borrowed holiday apartments lent by kind friends isn’t good for either of us. We tried to sell the mill and relocate, without success in this economic climate and now feel rather trapped. So the main task of 2011 is to solve the problem of living in one place at the same time.
Meanwhile, one last very memorable and wonderful end of year present - finding the UK edition of my book at the top of DoveGreyReader’s* Xmas reading list. Yes!!!!!

*(Queen of the Book Bloggers)

Seismic shift - Earthquake Album

This post is dedicated to the people of Christchurch and to all those who lost their homes and livelihoods.  It's two weeks since the quake and I gather from the geonet map that the aftershocks are still going on - 720 at the latest count.   It was a terrifying experience and I no longer trust the firm ground I'm standing on - because I know it can move.   To mark the two week anniversary I thought I'd post some of the photographs that really sum up the power of the quake.  Not all of them are mine - some came from an image sharing site set up by The Press in Canterbury.

The clock stopped.

The city centre

Al fresco dining

Street damage

The railway used to be straight

Fault through a field

Through the park

Through the road

Liquifaction

Landslides in the hills

A historic building lost

This may be restored

rubble

The city is now open for business again, though many areas are still cordoned off.  A brilliant effort by everyone involved.   Now residents of New Zealand are worrying about the cost  - which may run into billions - and what it will mean for their fragile economy.  I worry that a lot of the city's character will be lost - most of the damaged buildings were twenties and thirties brick-built and they'll be replaced by modern constructions built to earthquake specs but without the character of the originals.

Getting Ready to Leave

The beach at Sumner

This is the sad part. After six weeks in New Zealand I have to get on a plane (actually three planes) and travel back to England. I have very conflicting feelings. Guilt that after all the trauma of the earthquake, I can just walk away leaving everyone here to deal with the aftermath. Sadness that I’m leaving my daughter and two very dear little boys aged 3 and 18 months and don’t know when I will see them again. And a longing to be in my own home again with my own things around me and my own man to talk to (Neil and I are meeting up in Singapore). So this is a hard leave-taking. Especially as I’ve come to love this country so much.

Yesterday I went to see Margaret Scott to say goodbye. For those who don’t know, she is someone who has spent her life deciphering and transcribing the manuscripts of Katherine Mansfield. Shortly after the death of KM’s husband, John Middleton Murry, she spent time with all KM’s surviving friends and relatives and probably knows more about Mansfield than anyone else alive. In particular she spent a lot of time with KM’s companion Ida Baker, who talked freely to her and who gave her a number of gifts that had been left to Ida by Katherine Mansfield.

On my first visit to New Zealand I arranged to meet Margaret and was warned that she was quite formidable - I was extremely nervous. But the woman I met was shy, warm, utterly dedicated to Mansfield studies, with a rigorous mind and an excellent built-in bullshit detector. Neil and I stayed for a week in Margaret’s garage (converted to guest room!) And at the end of it she had decided, very firmly, that I was the person who was going to write the definitive Katherine Mansfield biography. On my last evening, she produced a beautiful mother of pearl brooch, shaped like a feather and told me that it had belonged to Katherine and that she wanted me to have it. I refused point blank, to accept such a valuable gift, particularly as I didn’t have a publishing contract at the time and didn’t know whether the biography would ever be written. But the following morning, as we left, I discovered that she had surreptitiously given it to Neil to give to me.

The little brooch put me under an obligation - every time I wavered and was on the point of giving up, it looked at me like a little mother of pearl eye and insisted that I carry on. So it is really due to Margaret and her gift that the book ever got written at all. Her own book Recollecting Mansfield, an account of her sometimes hilarious experiences on the trail of KM’s manuscripts, is an excellent read.  The brooch has been on load to the Katherine Mansfield Birthplace Trust for an exhibition, the Material Mansfield.

So today is my final stroll along the beach. And a last look at the earthquake damage. Nearer the epicentre, one road has been moved across by 12 feet. On either side of it, trees have been felled along the line of the fault and the ground torn apart. The forces of nature are unimaginably powerful.

Fault line through the hedge.

Telegraph road used to be dead straight. 

Christchurch Literature Festival Cancelled

One of the reasons I'm here (apart from seeing my family) is to take part in the Christchurch Literature Festival and promote the new KM biography.  The city's annual litfest is a lovely event that draws writers from all over the world (Barbara Trapido is one of this year's guests) and I was really looking forward to it.  I presumed that it would be cancelled after the earthquake, but got a message last night to say that they were going to go ahead, with a slightly adapted programme. Unfortunately events during the night changed all that.
We had a series of 'cluster' quakes from about 10.30pm until about 5.00am.  There were about eight major shocks.   The smallest was 4.1 and the three largest were 5.2, 5.4 and 5.4.  In between there were almost constant tremors - 15 altogether.  It was quite frightening.  You hear the rumble and then the shaking begins and you don't know whether it's going to stop and die away or whether it's going to get worse.  None of us slept - all in a constant state of alert.  Someone described it  like trying to sleep in a washing machine! 
This morning, buildings that were only slightly damaged have suffered and sink holes have appeared in roads and gardens where the sub-structure of the ground has shifted. Cracks are getting wider.  They are still warning us that we might get an aftershock up to about 6.1.  Meanwhile, everyone is being extremely resilient and positive and there's a really caring attitude.    No panic.  Everyone looking out for everyone else.  Whereever you go people ask if you're all right and then they tell you their own stories.  The Indian owner of the papershop down the road told me that this is god's punishment on the greedy and then told me that his brother-in-law had built a $600,000 house just south of Christchurch last year, one corner of which had sunk in the quake.  He told the story with such relish I got the impression that his brother-in-law was one of those he'd had in mind for righteous revenge!

The damage is quite surreal.  In the centre of town, the side wall of a restaurant has been completely demolished, but inside you can see tables still in place, and set with cutlery and glasses - all perfectly intact.
Sorry to the Tuesday poets group - I have just been too tired to seek out a poem today.  But hope to post for next week.

Earthquake in Christchurch

I woke up at four thirty this morning and the bed was rocking wildly underneath me. There was a loud rumbling noise under the floor and the walls and the ceiling were flexing backwards and forwards like something from a disaster movie. Cupboard doors flew open and objects fell from shelves. I knew I should try to roll off the bed onto the floor with my pillow for protection, but I couldn’t. My daughter Meredith and her husband were trying to reach the children in the next room, but the house was rocking so much they had difficulty walking - the house was swaying from side to side like a ship in a storm. The noise was incredible - the rumbling of the earthquake underneath the ground, the wood structure of the house creaking and groaning, the tin roof sheets screeching as they twisted.

All was in total darkness - the electricity cut out in the first seconds of the quake. Following emergency instructions, as soon as we could stand, we gathered up the children, an emergency bag of food, drinks and warm clothes, got into the car and headed out of Christchurch up into the hills in case the quake was followed by a tsunami - the city is very low lying and there is a very efficient tsunami watch system. On the hill there were landslides and the electricity wires were draped low over the road where the pylons had slid. The radio told us that the quake had measured 7.4 on the richter scale and that there was extensive damage to the city. Later we were told that the epicentre was only 20 miles from Christchurch, about ten miles deep, but because it was inland, there was no tsunami risk.

I walked into town - most of the roads were closed off and I was amazed that so much of the city was intact. Fortunately all modern structures have to be built to high earthquake tolerance levels. Most of the damage was to older buildings.

At the baptist church, which puts up new slogans regularly, I couldn’t resist taking a picture of the current one. As I clicked the shutter, a kiwi bloke behind me quipped, ‘Blimey - they got that one up quick!’

Back home, aftershocks rumbled on under our feet (some of them quite powerful) and pictures swayed and rattled, but everything is still intact. The power is out over most of the city. Water and sewage supplies have been disrupted by broken pipes, where the roads have been damaged. The prospect of having to use the back garden as a loo, and having no safe water to drink has driven us temporarily into the country to stay with very kind family friends in an unaffected area. Luckily my daughter lives in a small wooden house built on stacks above the ground. It behaved like a ship, or a wooden crate - it flexed and warped and stayed intact.

This afternoon they evacuated the centre of Christchurch, and now there's a curfew from 7pm. 

Waiting for reviews

Leaving Kaikoura

So now it's back to Christchurch - my short holiday is over and I have to go back to the real world.  I chose to go by bus this time and enjoyed it very much.  Public transport in New Zealand is efficient, and very pleasant.  Now I'm staying with my daughter and two little grandchildren - Freddie and Jack.  They are really cute, but I can't show photos for obvious reasons.  Isn't it sad? 
I've been promised reviews of the book in New Zealand this weekend, but the Listener seems to have held theirs over until next week, which is maddening.  However, there was one in the Herald on Sunday, by Sarah Sandley and it was very pleasing.  It's always nail biting, waiting for press reviews, but this was one of those you treasure, that make you feel better about writing.  There are so many knock-backs for an author, so many people out there just waiting to criticise, you need the good reviews to keep you going.   Sarah said:

'Jones has brought to the work a scholar's regard for fact, a novelist's regard for form, and a poet's regard for cadence.  The test of a good literary biography is whether it makes you want to reacquaint yourself with the author's writing.  This biography does just that.'  So she liked it!   Time to open a bottle of something - but I might just keep it until the Listener comes out next week! Then I can either celebrate or drown my sorrows with equal efficiency.

Kaikoura

The Kaikoura ranges from the motel

Up this morning to a fine, crisp day.  I get up and look out across the bay and the view is almost too good to be true.   Kaikoura is beautiful - not just the coastline and the mountains, but also some of the old buildings that remain.  Do the people who live here know how lucky they are?

Art deco cinema

All I know is that, although everyone here is  quiet and friendly and welcoming, there is  apparently another side to it.  At the peak of the tourist season the town is packed out by tourists and travellers and young people back-packing and - coming from a tourist area myself - I know how that tips the balance of a place.  So, perhaps I wouldn't like to be here in summer.   The day I arrived, the old courthouse - one of the few historic wooden buildings in Kaikoura - was a smouldering ruin, still being damped down by the fire brigade, having been set on fire during the previous night, probably by vandals.  Now, very little of it remains.   So even paradise has its problems.

All that's left of the District Courthouse

Still thinking about whales.  It wasn't a romantic experience yesterday, but sobering.  It made me think a lot about how we interact with our fellow mammals on the planet, and a lot of what I thought was uncomfortable.

Pub in Kaikoura

Whale Watching

Whale with Kaikoura mountains

Because of the deep ocean trenches just offshore, Kaikoura used to be a big whaling port. But (thankfully) an archway of whales’ jawbones along the seafront is all that’s left of the trade.

Now the emphasis is on conservation. Sperm whales feed here all year round, humpbacks visit regularly on their way from the antarctic to their tropical breeding grounds, and orcas also appear a few times a year. Very occasionally, maybe once in a lifetime, someone sees a blue whale. So the main tourist trade here is whale watching.
I rang up on my first morning to ask about going out on the boat and was told that I’d have to be quick because the weather was due to worsen and further trips were likely to be cancelled. So I swallowed my breakfast and went straight up to the centre. The fee wasn’t cheap, and I did think twice - how likely were we to see a whale at all, I asked myself? Knowing my luck I probably wouldn’t see any of the assorted wildlife on the postcards.
I was herded onto a big catamaran with about twenty other people of all ages and sizes. The weather was cool and bright, but a brisk wind was beginning to come in off the sea. We went a couple of miles out watching (on the echo sounder) the sea floor drop away into the canyon - going from 80 metres depth to about a 1,000, then up to 3,000 in the space of a few minutes. Then the boat stopped and the captain began to use a hydrophone to pick up the whales. The sound they make is eerie - first of all like someone turning over a reluctant engine, then a chattering and clicking, then silence. The boat took us to where they believed a whale was under the surface and we waited. Whales come up for breath every forty five minutes or so and it can be a long wait.

Whale no 1

The flick of the tail

Then suddenly there it was, my first whale. A long shape, rather like a floating log with a dorsal fin, occasionally blowing steam at one end. A male sperm-whale. Nothing much to see, but it was a REAL WHALE! Then, spectacularly, after about ten minutes, the body began to curve and up came the tail as the whale slid back into the depths.

 I managed to get photographs and was so intent on getting it focussed that I didn’t have time to really look. But I had actually seen a whale. Then, suddenly, the boat was racing for the horizon because someone had spotted another one out there. Unfortunately it dived before we arrived, but as we turned back another, rather bigger, whale surfaced. This time we got a longer, closer look and some more photographs.

whale no 2

It wasn’t the emotional experience I’d expected. I had thought that proximity to the largest mammal on earth would have a spiritual quality to it. But perhaps being with so many other people precludes this, and the urge to take photographs doesn’t allow you time to experience anything very deeply. But I’m glad that I went. All my life I’ve wanted to see a whale, close up, living and breathing in the water, and that’s what I got.

whale no 2 waving goodbye

A big bonus was the pod of very rare Hector’s dolphins playing round the boat on the way back.

Hector's Dolphins

Since I arrived here I’ve been reading Mary McCallum’s novel The Blue, (her first novel published by penguin in 2007) which is about a south island whaling community in 1938. I’ve found it fascinating. It begins a little uncertainly, but soon had me gripped by the lives of the characters. How glad I am that the whaling industry no longer exists here.
Some whale-populations will recover. Sperm whales apparently now number about half a million, but there are only around 400 of the northern right whale - too small a gene pool to survive and the humpback and the blue whale are also on the brink of extinction. Apparently, we were told, the major causes of whale death are hunting, abandoned deep water fishing nets, ship’s sonar devices which interfere with a whale’s own navigation, and pollution which affects breeding. All generated by human beings. It makes one feel ashamed, and I also felt sad to think that perhaps my grandchildren won’t get to see whales in the ocean at all. I’d love to go out again and this time just look and listen, but the weather has worsened and tomorrow’s trips are cancelled.

The Up-side

A writer’s life doesn’t get much better than this; a small chalet just across from the beach, and a full moon edging out of the sea. The snow-covered peaks, illuminated by the moon, are floating like a ghostly fringe in the sky around the bay.
I’m at Kaikoura, about a quarter of the way down the south island’s Pacific coast. The town is in a sheltered bay, but just offshore is a deep ocean trench used by whales as a fuelling station when travelling either north or south. It used to be a whaling port, dedicated to killing these cetaceans, now it makes a good living showing them off as a tourist attraction.
But it’s the off-season and the motels and back-packer hostels are almost empty - a lot of them closed for the winter. You can rent a unit here for as little as 50nz$ - about £25. I’ve got a kitchen, bathroom, bedroom and patio with tables and chairs and can sit out (you couldn’t do this on a winter’s night in England!) to eat your supper. I’ve got a glass of Marlborough Pino Noir in one hand and a plate of olives (also New Zealand), pitta bread and locally smoked salmon in front of me.
So, ok, I can’t afford to eat in the only restaurant that’s open, with crayfish at an undisclosed price and everything else starting from $34 a throw. But it doesn’t matter. The wine and the food are delicious, the waves are breaking over the black volcanic sand a few yards away and there’s a lovely silence in my head I’ve been pining for after weeks of travelling and socialising. If Neil was here with me, this would be bliss, but he’s in an airbus 380 somewhere in the stratosphere heading for Singapore. That’s the down side. Things aren’t quite so much fun on one’s own.
Tomorrow I’m going in search of whales, weather permitting. There’s a big north-easterly blowing in, apparently, and the boats may be cancelled.

The Tuesday Poem: No harm in hoping

I’m putting the Tuesday Poem up early because I’m going to be travelling for the next 24 hours. Neil has flown off to Singapore, (tempted to put a sad emoticon in here) en route for Cambodia and I’m heading south to Kaikoura on the ferry.

The poem I’ve chosen is by Vincent O’Sullivan, from his collection ‘Further Convictions Pending’ published in 2009.

No harm in hoping

At the end of the story I want you
to say, ‘I’ve forgotten the plot entirely.
It’s no use asking which character was which,
what name she used, what his job was.
Or where the bridge crossed the canal.’

At the end of the story I want you
to remember only the important things
that walk between the congregations of print
like a bride you’ve read of between the torches
of the story you thought you read.


I first met Vincent O’Sullivan when I began researching the Katherine Mansfield biography, because he’s one of the foremost Mansfield scholars and editor (with Margaret Scott) of all five volumes of Mansfield’s letters, author of many eminent academic papers, as well as the editor of numerous editions of New Zealand literature. It was only after that first meeting I realised that Vincent himself was a formidable poet and author of fiction. I began reading his work and it quickly became apparent that he was one of New Zealand’s most gifted authors. I felt quite embarrassed that I had regarded him initially as a scholar and not as a poet and author in his own right. This is one of the problems in New Zealand - authors here don’t always get the exposure they deserve on the other side of the world. Vincent’s work should be much, much better known.

I chose this poem because it seems to be about reading. To me it says ‘forget the detail, immerse yourself, live in it, to the point that it becomes your own story’. I’ve never agreed with the notion of ‘the death of the author’, but I believe absolutely that every reader reads a different version of a poem or story. The best stories for me are the ones where I go through a door into a virtual world that is utterly real until the last page.
I particularly love the image of ‘congregations of print’ and the reader walking like a bride down the torch-lit aisle between them.

For more Tuesday poems, click on the link.

Of Books and Mussels

Wellington from Thornden

It’s been a very busy couple of days. First there was an interview with Lynn Freeman for a Radio New Zealand arts programme 'Arts on Sunday'. I love radio - mainly because of the anonymity. No-one can see you, there's only the voice. And it was a delight to be interviewed by someone who really knew the subject and wasn’t just reading from a list of questions prepared by a researcher.

This weekend there was a second hand book fair in Wellington and it was book-browser’s heaven. If only I wasn’t travelling with a luggage allowance! There were books I’ve always wanted to read as well as a good selection of New Zealand literature we don’t get in England.  I've never seen so many books under one roof.

At 2 nz$ per book every one was a bargain and I bought quite a lot. I will try to read them all before leaving NZ and then release them into the wild! New books are so expensive here (a very sobering reality check for a writer) I’m sure I will have no shortage of takers when I leave.

After the book fair I met up with Mary McCallum for coffee. She runs the Tuesday Poets’ blog and is herself a very fine novelist and poet (see her novel The Blue, published by penguin). She is absolutely fizzing with energy and, like most people I’ve met here, incredibly welcoming and friendly.

Then to the Katherine Mansfield Birthplace, where KM was born and which is now a beautiful museum.

Katherine Mansfield Birthplace

On my first visit to New Zealand ten years ago I met its founder Oroya Day and over the intervening years have become friends with the curators, Laurel Harris and Mary Morris. Today, they had a film unit there making a documentary about Katherine Mansfield and toys, centred about the Dolls House - a treasured childhood toy that became one of her most famous short stories. So, unexpectedly, I found myself sitting in a chair in front of a camera (my least favourite position!) talking about KM for the tv.

Now, it’s off for dinner. The seafood here is miraculous - the green-lipped mussels are the size of mobile phones!