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Winter, 2012

Hunkering down now into winter. Queen’s Birthday Weekend at present with a whole two days in which to write. Yesterday, after Robert left for Queenstown (about 9.30 a.m.) I didn’t even bother getting up out of bed, but spent the rest of the day hibernating (how I love to hibernate!) in the bedroom; heater on and writing, writing, writing … The cats didn’t know what was going on – Grommet in particular was quite put out, meowing and demanding why the rest of the house remained still and cold.

And apart from where I was in the bedroom (really cosy and warm in there, the other cat Aggie remaining curled up on the bed with me) the rest of the house, without heating, was very cold.

I kept very odd writer’s hours – sleeping when tired, writing when not and eating and drinking only when I needed to re-fuel. (Bacon and eggs, a bowl of pumpkin soup, a whole packet of potato crisps and a block of Black Forest chocolate!)

The only interruption was when Steve, Eriko and the kids Skyped from Kyoto. I think the kids found me very boring sitting there in my dressing gown and pj’s with no news.

No matter how humdrum and un-eventful it seems, it’s always astonishing to me to have that communication. It’s special to be in the same room with miles of ocean and sky between and watch the kids looking at a beetle in their garden. Aya wanted to show me how their small garden was faring, but she wasn’t too keen on the beetle maybe coming inside. Roi was just interested in seeing where it would go next – up the wall? Inside? Along the path? Into the garden and eat the vegetables? Let’s just see. Aya didn’t trust that it would do ‘the right thing’. Roi was content to let it ‘do its thing’.

By then it was late afternoon and I hadn’t had lunch yet, so in the freezing-cold kitchen I heated up some pumpkin soup, made a coffee, grabbed a block of chocolate and headed back to the warm bedroom.  I wrote a little bit more but started to wane. It was about 5.00 p.m. I decided I’d have a snooze. I awoke again about 2 hours later and began to write again.

At 1.00 a.m. I was starving, so I ate the rest of the bar of chocolate and kept writing – until 4.00 a.m. when exhaustion overtook. I woke again at 11.00 a.m. and decided my hibernation was officially over. It had to be, Robert was due home later today.

It was an interesting exercise, seeing what would happen (a little like Roi and the beetle) when left to my own devices; to wander in my own contained, writer-world (interrupted only by a Skype). Interesting to see how the writing process would go without any time restraints, deadlines and daily routines.

Now I know how I would go if I was free to write for a protracted length of time. I would become a hermit. There is no doubt about that. I would become eccentric, eating strangely and sleeping at extremely odd times.

Maybe it’s a good thing that my normal pattern, by necessity and by choice, is to write when I can – in the interstices of life, rather than the other way around; trying to fit life into the interstices of writing. That would never work for me. And I can live with that.

Over the winter, my aim is to keep working on the historical material I am writing and continue to write new poetry and send it out to magazines etc. and publish it on-line. As for the BTARW m.s. … I’ve put it in the Too-Hard Basket. For now. I’ll look at it again in the spring. Let’s just say it’s making like a hedgehog, and hibernating.

Autumn, 2012

While I wait for ‘Born To A Red-headed Woman’ to be published … (sigh – it’s turning out to be a looooong wait … in fact, my book has been so long in the pipeline, I’m convinced that when it does come out, it’ll come out round) …  I am turning my thoughts and imagination towards my ancestors (maybe a more apt description would be ‘… turning my thoughts and imagination back-wards …’). Who were they? What were their lives like? The majority of this I can only imagine. I am not an imaginary writer per se. Poetry (well, my poetry anyway – the only poetry that I am an expert on) tends to dwell in the real and perceived; the actual, observed and remembered.

Using my imagination to picture lives that have gone before me, feels strange and difficult. I am un-practiced in ‘imagining lives’. (I think the last time I wrote a truly imaginative story was when I was twelve years old).

Research is also needed and for a while (I am envisioning a couple or three years) this  will be what I’ll be doing with the bulk of my time as I attempt to express, collect and collate, imagine and tell, stories of and about my ancestors.

Unsure as well as to the form this writing will take – a novel? A series of vignettes? Another poetry book? (Although here is where I hesitate – if poetry books are unpopular, scary and off-putting for readers, wouldn’t it be better to write it as prose, thereby garnering more readers and thus having more chance of appealing to publishers?)

Here’s hoping the writing will evolve as it is meant to.

It’s scary but full of possibilities – a trip to where my ancestors came from (for example, Ireland) being just one of the many ideas.

Involving myself in this new writing project is taking my mind off BTARW’s stymied publication and serves to lessen any fretting about it.

Below is a poem that I have included (at this stage) in BTARW. However, it could just as easily be part of my next project. It is one of a dozen poems I have already written that seem prescient; as if sub-consciously I’ve been heading towards this new project for some years as my ancestors’ voices become louder and more insistent.

Reg Lee

In black and white photos I see you standing

always alongside others:

 in the Dairy Factory photo, your sleeves rolled up, 

beside the rugby players you coached,

with your brothers, Stan and Aubrey, 

with the Fours Champs, 

and I see yes, you really were short. 

But strong. A worker. On the Rabbit Board

 - a grafter, with the Ministry of Works

yielding a shovel on the shingle of Highway 99′s pot-holes.

You and your Plymouth that needed cranking to start

so that your family were always the last to leave the dances 

where as m.c. your roll-your-own voice

made everyone feel good. That fragrant, tobacco smell of you, 

your voice and crackling laugh, calling to your grandchildren.

Singing to us, ’Found a Peanut’. And with a push-mower’s

clack, making smooth, deep lawns we could sink into

to smell worm casts and hints of what could be underneath

firing inside the planet that turns and turns you away. Gone now

forty years. After you died so did our supply of muttonbirds.

You were Reg Lee, the part-Maori fella, the good sort,

who always wore a hat, cut the kindling, shovelled coal 

on to the fire. You were a baby delivered by your Aunt Bell,

one hundred and five years ago.
***

2009 – 2010 – 2011 – 2012

Born to a Red-headed Woman (… working title).

My third collection is ready to go. It is an autobiographical, fluid story-line to poems that seamlessly take the reader through a time-line from birth, childhood, adolescence and adulthood. The developing roles of daughter, sister, friend, wife, mother and grandmother (among others) are explored and given an honest treatment.

The place of landscape and ancestry in the life of the collection’s subject is also incorporated. This collection hints at the challenge of reaching hard-won rewards with patience and a measure of resilience.

The poems use the songs and music of popular culture as background and as a way to connect on another level with the reader.

‘don’t let the moon break your heart’

I was born

on a cold night in June

to a red-headed woman

shivering

on a hard sofa-bed

under one thin blanket,

left alone by the night nurse

(a girl she went to school with)

for most of the time,

in a hospital

by the Waiau river

making heavy work

of its final punch through

to the coast, the thrum of it

underscoring

our breathing, the beating

of my heart

the size of a walnut.

‘in the rain, in the dark, in the sun’

Carried home to a town by the sea

where the ocean begins

to plant its stake,

into a two-roomed house

with a monkey puzzle on the front lawn,

into a room nine feet by nine

with a coal-range,  its wooden fender

dimpled and blackened

by fallen embers,

where wrapped in wool I learn

to sleep through the night

in a kitchen with ticking walls.

***