The Tuesday Poem: Kathleen Jamie

Garrison Keiller’s online ‘Writers’ Almanac’  recently featured one of Kathleen Jamie’s poems with the comment that she was one of the most underrated poets writing in English today. At least he didn’t make the mistake of referring to her as an English poet. Kathleen Jamie is Scottish and the Celtic idiom and the rhythms of its language flow through every poem. They are as beautifully patterned as music, and there is never a wrong note. Every phrase, every word, every metaphor is so absolutely right and the construction and editing are seamless.

I loved the elegiac ‘Crossing the Loch’, which you can read on this link here at the Poetry Archive

But my favourite is 'Mrs McKellar, her Martyrdom' which is a wonderful character study of an embittered couple locked in terrible proximity. It begins

‘Each night she fills, from the fabled
well of disappointment, a kettle
for her hottie. Lying
in his apportioned bed:
Mr McKellar - annulled
beside his trouser press.’

And it goes on to address the problems of communication for an estranged couple ‘when word is a kind of touch’ The McKellar's neither speak nor touch, so:

‘Who mentions, who defers to whom
on matters concerning
redecorating the living room,
milk delivery, the damp
stain spreading on the ceiling.'

On principle, Mrs McKellar, will ‘die, lips sealed’ rather than ‘display/toward an indifferent world/the means of her agony/a broken toilet seat’.

In contrast to the emotional desert inside the house, outside ‘exquisitely, the darkening hills,/a sky teased with mauve.’

I also loved the sequence of poems on the birth of her child - but there wasn’t a weak poem in the whole collection. ‘Waterlight’ is published in America and features poems from 4 of Kathleen’s collections. For anyone who hasn’t read her before, it’s a good introduction.

Then, on the internet, I discovered that she had written a collection of what are described as ‘essays’. The book is called ‘Findings’ and it’s a series of reflections on the landscape, the natural world and our place in it. The language is simple, the thinking behind it profound. This has become her trademark, simplicity in seeing, a willingness to look, the resulting poetry and prose, "as close as writing gets", said writer Richard Mabey in a Guardian review "to a conversation with the natural world".

I’ve been reading one every night before I go to sleep. Last night it was on the need for solitude. ‘If we work always in words, sometimes we need to recuperate in a place where language doesn’t join up, where we’re thrown back on a few elementary nouns. Sea. Bird. Sky.’ And I wished that I was back in Kaikoura listening to the quiet conversations of the ocean.

For more Tuesday Poems, please follow this link. 

Parallel Lives

Neil has been tapping away on his laptop every evening (and sometimes during the day) since we got back. The result is that I have a new website, here at http://www.kathleenjones.co.uk/, and I would love to have your feedback on the new look. I think he’s done a brilliant job of making me seem authentic!! That seems a strange thing to say, but I know there are other writers out there too, who feel somehow fraudulent, that they are ‘not a proper writer’ without some exterior evidence to back it up. The books, somehow, are just not enough.


Have you ever tried Googling your name? During the research for the website - Googling my name to retrieve reviews and articles - Neil discovered that I lead a large number of parallel lives. There are 2009 Kathleen (often Kathy) Jones’s living in America, and more than 200 in Britain. I’m used to my doppelganger, Professor Kathleen Jones who writes learned books on social policy and mental health. Our books end up jumbled together on book sites and in libraries. She is now very old and distinguished and an ardent opponent of Richard Dawkins - has even written a book refuting his arguments (Challenging Richard Dawkins). She and I couldn’t be further apart in matters of belief, yet I get many emails from her fans thinking that we are the same person.



Great fun to find that one of the ‘other’ Kathleen Jones’s is a porn star (pictures too rude to show), also known as Granny Jones specialising in gerontophilia - the perversion of fancying elderly ladies. If ever the book trade fails perhaps there’s an alternative career idea! Kathleen Jones is also an animal medium, putting bereaved owners in touch with their pets, also hosts the Kathleen Jones Show in Oregon, is a White Witch practising New Age magic with the Church of the Ancient Ways in Maryland, (see pic) 

and an African/American Baptist Pastor in Philadelphia. The ubiquitous KJ was a ballerina in 1968, but is now a Principal clarinettist with the orchestra of Puerto Rica.

One of my favourites is an American Kathleen Jones, born at the end of the 19th century, who was given a first class education, married three times, owned ranches and oil companies, and became President of an influential literary sorority at her old college Corpus Christi, and died in 1980 at the age of 93. All a bit privileged and up-market - but I really fancied the hat!

Tuesday Poem - The Pelican Child

I thought this week I'd put in a piece of animation - the images are by Alice Cohen, around a line from Joy Williams' 'Baba Iaga and the Pelican Child'.    There's quite an interest in Britain at the moment in animating words - for me it only works if the sum of the word and the image generates more than each one individually - it has to go beyond illustration.




For more Tuesday Poems, click here.

Cuban Connection

The internet is the most amazing tool for writers - not just for research, but also for e-publishing and publicity. I don’t think we’ve all grasped the way it’s going to revolutionise our lives yet. My visit to Cuba and the blog diary I kept while I was there continues to have repercussions.
While I was in New Zealand, I was contacted by a publicist working for one of America’s leading Independent Publishers - they don’t call it ‘self-publishing’ (with all its vanity press associations) over there. They asked me if I would be interested in reviewing a novel set in Cuba, written by an ex-secret service operative who had once spent two months in a Cuban jail as the guest of Fidel Castro. Intrigued, I said yes and waited for Havana Harvest to arrive in the mail box. I also said that I’d like to interview the author and sent off a series of questions.

But for the internet the publishers would never have found my blog, or known I had an interest in Cuba, and I would certainly never have found Robert Landori’s novel or been able to talk to him about it. Book blogging is suddenly becoming an important tool in the marketing strategy for authors.
Robert Landori was born in Hungary, is multi-lingual, has a background in international finance and is a prolific story-teller (I’ll be posting my review later in the week on my book blog). He currently lives in Canada. Havana Harvest is his second thriller - the first, called Fatal Greed, is set in the murky world of Cayman Island based finance and money laundering. Both books are independently published and I was very interested to find out about Robert’s experiences with the American system. He was very generous in his responses to my questions.

When did you start writing - did you write as a child?
Never wrote a damn thing until my sophomore year at McGill. Too busy learning languages.
I spoke Hungarian and German colloquially, correctly, fluently and without an accent (a trick of the inner ear) by the time I was ten, and a governess came to the house once a week to teach me English. In 1947 my parents enrolled me in an all-French boarding school in Switzerland.

At school Robert also ‘elected to learn Spanish because it was easy.’ He goes on to say that ‘I made most of my money through speaking that language.’ One result was that he was sent to Cuba.

‘After I became a Chartered Accountant a client sent me to Cuba in 1959 because he wanted to deal with Fidel’s Government and I spoke the language, but he did not. A number of assignments in Spanish-speaking countries followed, but none involved writing. When, one day in 1986, I remonstrated with my then-girlfriend about her reading only ‘trash’ she, deeply hurt, retorted: “If you’re so smart and superior, why don’t you write a book that’s better.” I bet her that I would produce a superior novel within a year. And I did – from scratch: a 381 page thriller, called Galindo’s Turn.

Were you an avid reader?

Yes, I was. I read in Hungarian, German, English, French and Spanish.


What kind of books do you like reading?

Literally almost everything: classics, thrillers, spy stories, literary fiction, etc... Astronomy, chess, history and mathematics fascinate me and – obviously – I devour anything and everything on language.

Who are your favourite authors?

Hemingway, LeCarre, Alan Paton, Ferenc Molnar, Solshenitzyn and the late Mordechai Richler (a friend).

Have you always enjoyed story telling?

Most emphatically ‘YES’! Always have, always will. I’m a born storyteller, and good at it.

Quite a number of ex CIA and British govt agents have gone into fiction writing - John le Carre, Graham Greene, Ian Fleming to name but a few. Is this because they are forbidden to talk about their experiences and so find an outlet in writing about it?

This is not only true about the world of spooks. Players in the murky world of Mergers &, Acquisitions (one of my professions) are also restrained by contract from revealing telling details.

How much of Robert Landori is there in your main character, CIA agent Robert Lonsdale? (I note the shared history - born in Hungary and the familiarity with banking and the world of the secret services.)
Obviously, there’s a lot of Landori in Lonsdale... as well as LeCarre, Deighton and Ted Allebury.

In both Fatal Greed and Havana Harvest you weave your story around actual events. How difficult is it to combine fact and fiction in this way?

If one is a good story-teller and one has a vivid imagination it is not difficult at all. BUT, THE DEVIL IS ALWAYS IN THE DETAILS, so one has to get the background right AND THIS IS AN ART THAT ALSO REQUIRES FIRST-HAND KNOWLEDGE. .

On your website you talk about someone called Dania and her part in the genesis of the novel. Could you elaborate on this for readers of this blog?

Dania was a sixteen year old idealistic student in Santiago de Cuba when she was recruited into the Revolutionary Movement in 1956. Her future husband, Roberto Cisneros, and also one of her uncles – Arturo Duque de Estrada – were already members of the underground opposition organised by the student leader Frank Pais in Oriente Province with the objective of ridding Cuba of the Dictator Batista, if necessary by force.
When Fidel sent his famous message to her uncle that Fidel, his brother Raul and El Che were on their way back to Cuba from Mexico on board the yacht Gramma, Dania decided to join the guerrillas in the Sierrea Maestra. She became Raul Castro’s ‘field clerk’ and fought alongside him.
In December 1958, while working at setting up a fifth column in Havana on Fidel’s orders, Dania and her husband were captured by Batista’s secret police. She was nine months pregnant and gave birth to a daughter in prison. In great pain, she escaped a few hours after giving birth with the help of the prison’s doctor. Had she not done so she would have been shot the next day, as would have been her husband.
Her husband was severely tortured to the point where he never recovered his sanity completely. Totally disillusioned by the way the Revolution became compromised and turned into a dictatorship he, like so many other idealistic members of the July 26th Movement, committed suicide by immolating himself in front of his children.

In 1968, Dania and I were arrested while we were having lunch at the Havana Libre (previously Hilton) Hotel. I was accused of spying and was kept in solitary for 66 days. She was charged with nothing and let go the next day, BUT she was fired from her job and could not find employment (except as maid, or dish washer or waitress) for about four years. Finally rehabilitated in 1972, she married again and worked as a senior official in the Ministry of Tourism until her retirement.
She left Cuba in 1990 after giving up her pension and her apartment, and went to live in the US with her parents and sisters.
In 1993 she gave me a book to read: Case Number 1 of the Year 1989 – the Trial and Execution of Arnaldo Tomas Ochoa Sanchez, also known as El Moro (because of his dark skin). I felt that Ochoa had been treated unfairly. It seemed to me that Fidel and Raul had known all the time about Cuba’s involvement in drug trafficking and arms dealing and that Ochoa had committed no crime that merited the death penalty.
By writing HAVANA HARVEST I tried to right – at least partially – a great injustice.
YOU SHOULD RESEARCH THE OCHOA CASE IF YOU HAVE TIME!
Having just been to Cuba to meet some Cuban writers I’m interested in your take on the country’s current political situation and the direction it is moving in. What do you see as the future for Cuba?

Fidel has recently announced (although he recanted later) that his economic model is not working. He’s right. An industrious, imaginative and independent-minded people, like the Cubans, are far too enterprising to live within a centrally controlled economy.
After the disappearance of the present geriatric leadership (within the next five years) Cuba will quickly morphe into a Social Democratic state similar to what the Province of Quebec is like today: strong entrepreneurship through small and medium-sized businesses active in the agricultural and hospitality industries, in other words, tobacco, sugarcane, rum distilling, market gardening and floral produce, cattle and horse breeding, at one end, and hotels, restaurants, etc... at the other.
Two new industries may become a factor: off-shore banking and health services.
It is likely that Cuba will make serious inroads into the revenues of islands such as Grand Cayman, the Bahamas, Barbados, Bermuda etc...
Partly due to the current publishing crisis, there is tremendous interest in independent publishing in Europe at the moment. This doesn’t just apply to first time authors, - quite a number of well established authors are bringing out their own work. What advice would you give authors thinking of doing this?

By all means self-publish, but make sure that you buy the best of the industry – a house that has strong, wide-ranging and EFFICIENT distribution facilities. This costs money, so don’t venture into the self-publishing field unless you have at least $50,000 to throw at the project.

How did you choose Greenleaf Publishing? Did you try any commercial publishers first and if so, what was their reaction?

Commercial publishers and their gate-keepers, the literary agents, are swamped by good material and unless one has a friend in the business, or one gets to be very lucky, one is bound to be rejected. (Even F. Scott Fitzgerald had to publish his own stuff).
I am proud to say that I had over 70 rejection letters from publishers and literary agents. Altogether I have written six books of which only two have been published
Everybody is writing books these days, so what you need to do is to find a publicist who can create a brand name out of your name, thereby separating you from the run-of-the-mill. I was fortunate to meet such a person: Sarah Wilson. She was the one who introduced me to the Greenleaf Group.

Publicity and getting books into the book retailers is always the hardest part. How do you go about this?

Like John Grisham, I packed a bunch of copies of my first published book into the trunk of my car and went from book store to book store across Canada and the North-Eastern Sates of the US. I met over 20,000 people who told me what they looked for in the type of books I was writing.
My latest book is promoted by Sarah Wilson through blogging, supported by a modest advertising budget. I also lecture frequently on Money Laundering and Terrorism and appear on radio and television whenever I can.
In other words, I beat my own drum constantly and furiously.

What’s the next project? (If you’re able to talk about it, that is!)

I’m in the process of writing a sequel to Fatal Greed, my first published book.
I’m also in the process of arranging for a digital (electronic) version of Havana Harvest.

Is there anything you would like to say that isn’t covered by the questions I’ve just asked - feel free to add any comments that you want to.

TO SUCCEED IN THIS BUSINESS YOU MUST HAVE
1. TALENT TO WRITE WELL,
2. IMAGINATION TO CREATE GOOD PLOTS,
3. PERSEVERANCE AND DETERMINATION,
4. DISCIPLINE AND DEDICATION TO WORKING HARD,
5. ENOUGH MONEY TO SUSTAIN YOU WHILE YOU ARE WRITING, PRODUCING AND PUBLICIZING YOUR BOOK,
6. PERSONALITY AND A STRONG EGO THAT ENABLE YOU TO SELL YOURSELF.

Havana Harvest is published by Greenleaf Publishing, part of the Emerald Book Company 

Tuesday Poem: Grete Tartler

During the Ceaucesceau regime in Rumania writers were so heavily censored that it was difficult to write at all.  But people kept on writing and finding ways to evade the censors.  Metaphor was one way to do it - write about one thing and maybe they won't notice you're actually talking about something else.   Women suffered greatly from the regime's oppression and a few years ago I was privileged to meet a group of Rumanian women poets who had managed to write and publish under Ceaucesceau and survive to talk about it. Grete Tartler was born in Bucharest in 1948.  She studied music and Arabic at university and has published a number of volumes of poetry as well as translations of Arabic classical literature.    This poem appears to be about an insensitive teacher, but it's really about the brainwashing of children through the education system, and the restrictions placed on free thought and individualism.  No matter what you think or feel, you have to give the answers the state requires you to give.   The poem is also a perfect example of poetry as political subversion.

Didactica Nova

How many fingers have you got on one hand?
Five, replied the child.
So, how many do five and five make?
Eleven comes the answer.
Can you blame me for getting cross with you?
Didn't I say count?
Why can't you understand
And answer like all the rest!
What if everyone answered like that?
What would happen if nobody understood?
How many fingers have you got on one hand?
Five, replied the child.
Well, how many on two hands?
Eleven comes the answer.
The blows fall.  On the hand with five fingers,
On the hand with six.

Copyright  Grete Tartler
Translated by Andrea Deletant & Brenda Walker

Sorry I couldn't find a link to any of Grete Tartler's poetry for sale.

For more Tuesday Poems click here.

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.

Home and 'let-jagged'

Rose hips in the garden

Predictive text has a very creative lexicon. Put in ‘jet-lagged’ and you get ‘let-jagged’. But it’s perfectly representative of the upside down nature of the condition! I’m coping with a twelve hour time shift and a complete reversal of seasons. The daffodils and baby lambs of a New Zealand spring have been swapped for the pale sunlight, migrating birds and yellowing leaves of early English autumn. Trying to re-programme your mind and body to accept the idea that night is now day and vice versa has a strange effect. I feel rather wobbly and unreal and have only a vague notion of where I am in time and space. I’m clumsy and knock things over. I wake at 3 am and wander round the house drinking mugs of tea and eating biscuits because I’m ravenously hungry.

It’s good to be back home though and in my own bed. Hopefully this year I’m not going to be travelling so much. Last year I spent only a few weeks at home, and the house and garden feel very neglected.

The big surprise is that the cat is back! Let no one ever tell you that cats have short memories. When I left for Cambodia last September and then for six months in Italy, followed by other long absences, my beloved Heathcliff went to neighbours who thought they were getting a permanent resident. I never imagined he would remember me at all and had resigned myself to losing him. But no. As soon as I arrived home he appeared in the garden, rubbed himself against my legs and followed me into the house as if he’d never been away.  He is much fatter than when I left and has obviously been well looked after.  Heathcliff is still Kathy's cat. I just hope his foster family don’t feel too insulted by this abandonment!