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Tag Archives: Lisa Neubauer
Waukesha judge announces bid for Neubauer's seat
May 1, 2019 11:15 am	Leave a comment
A Waukesha County circuit court judge has announced that he will be challenging Court of Appeals Judge Lisa Neubauer for her seat in 2020.
Tagged with: Lisa Neubauer Paul Bugenhagen
Final Hagedorn margin nearly same as unofficial tally
April 25, 2019 8:52 am	Leave a comment
The state Elections Commission is certifying Brian Hagedorn's victory over Lisa Neubauer in a Supreme Court race, with a final tally that differed from the unofficial count by just a handful of votes.
Tagged with: Brian Hagedorn Lisa Neubauer Shirley Abrahamson Wisconsin Supreme Court
Neubauer defeat dashes liberals' hope for Supreme Court majority
Lisa Neubauer conceded to Brian Hagedorn on Wednesday, a week after Democrats woke to a shocking result.
Tagged with: Brian Hagedorn Lisa Neubauer Wisconsin Supreme Court
Neubauer concedes Wisconsin Supreme Court race
April 10, 2019 1:22 pm	Leave a comment
The liberal candidate in Wisconsin's Supreme Court race conceded Wednesday, deciding against a recount eight days after the election showed her conservative opponent ahead by 6,000 votes in a race seen as an early measure of a key battleground in the 2020 presidential campaign.
VIEW FROM AROUND THE STATE: Recount of close Supreme Court race makes plenty of sense
April 8, 2019 1:34 pm	Leave a comment
The race for Wisconsin Supreme Court produced one of the closest results in recent state history. With an unofficial count of the more than 1.2 million votes cast in Tuesday's election for the open seat, Judge Brian Hagedorn, a favorite of conservatives, leads Judge Lisa Neubauer, the chief judge of the Wisconsin Court of Appeals who drew substantial backing from liberals, by roughly 6,000 votes.
Evers won't say whether Neubauer should concede court race
April 5, 2019 10:17 am	Leave a comment
Gov. Tony Evers says he's offering "no advice" to Supreme Court candidate Lisa Neubauer, who is considering calling for a recount after coming up about 6,000 votes short of Brian Hagedorn.
Tagged with: Brian Hagedorn Gov. Tony Evers Lisa Neubauer Wisconsin Supreme Court
Neubauer 'closely monitoring' Supreme Court vote canvass
Lisa Neubauer's campaign says it is "closely monitoring" counties as they canvass the vote from Tuesday's Wisconsin Supreme Court election.
Tagged with: Lisa Neubauer Wisconsin Supreme Court
GOP sees encouraging sign in Wisconsin Supreme Court race
By SCOTT BAUER Associated Press MADISON, Wis. (AP) — Brian Hagedorn's strong showing in Wisconsin's Supreme Court race cheered state Republicans on Wednesday, giving them their first encouraging result in a statewide election since 2016 and reasons for optimism next ...
Races heat up for Abrahamson's seat, 3 state court judgeships
Your state judicial election guide.
Tagged with: Brian Hagedorn election Lisa Neubauer voter ID
Wisconsin voters have another partisan choice for high court
The Wisconsin Supreme Court race being decided Tuesday won't result in an immediate change in the partisan leanings of the court, but the stakes were high for both sides because it could make it possible for liberals to win control next year.
What's at stake in Wisconsin Supreme Court election
April 1, 2019 1:41 am	Leave a comment
The Wisconsin Supreme Court race to be decided Tuesday won't have an immediate impact on majority control of the state's highest court, but it could put liberals in position to take control in 2020 by a court that has long been marked by partisan leanings.
Poll: Some Milwaukee lawyers prefer Neubauer, former Husch Blackwell attorney
The Wisconsin Supreme Court candidate Lisa Neubauer fared better than her opponent, Brian Hagedorn, in a survey of Milwaukee Bar Association members.
Ed Fallone announces run for Wisconsin Supreme Court in 2020
March 27, 2019 12:51 pm	Leave a comment
Ed Fallone, a Marquette University Law School professor who unsuccessfully ran for the Wisconsin Supreme Court in 2013, announced on Wednesday that he will try again in 2020, when the control of the court could be at stake.
Tagged with: Brian Hagedorn Dan Kelly Ed Fallone Lisa Neubauer Wisconsin Supreme Court
Hagedorn accuses Neubauer of lying in Supreme Court debate
March 27, 2019 9:27 am	Leave a comment
The Wisconsin Supreme Court candidate Brian Hagedorn accused his opponent Lisa Neubauer of lying, misleading voters and maligning him over his personal beliefs during a spirited final debate on Tuesday one week before the election on April 2. Neubauer said she was presenting facts.
GOP group makes ad buy for Hagedorn in Supreme Court race
A Republican group announced on Tuesday it is starting a seven-figure ad buy a week before the April 2 election to boost Wisconsin Supreme Court candidate Brian Hagedorn in his race against Lisa Neubauer.
Planned Parenthood spends $120K to help Neubauer
An arm of Planned Parenthood is spending $120,000 to help the campaign of Wisconsin Supreme Court candidate Lisa Neubauer.
Tagged with: Lisa Neubauer
Wisconsin Supreme Court candidates defend past actions
Wisconsin Supreme Court candidates Brian Hagedorn and Lisa Neubauer are defending their past actions that have become fodder for criticism during the campaign.
Tagged with: Brian Hagedorn Lisa Neubauer
MBA hosting Supreme Court candidate forum
Just four days after the candidates for the Wisconsin Supreme Court face off at the State Bar Center in Madison, they will debate each other again, this time in Milwaukee.
Neubauer, Hagedorn to face off at State Bar Center
The State Bar of Wisconsin, WisPolitics.com and WISC-TV will be hosting a debate between the candidates running for Justice Shirley Abrahamson's seat.
Outside groups spending $400K-plus on Supreme Court race
A new report shows outside groups plan to spend more than $400,000 on the state Supreme Court race between the appellate judges Lisa Neubauer and Brian Hagedorn.
Wisconsin Supreme Court hopeful defends views on gay rights
March 6, 2019 4:05 pm	Leave a comment
A conservative candidate for Wisconsin Supreme Court whose views on gay rights have come under scrutiny said Wednesday the criticism he's received is an unfair attack on his faith.
Holder spending $350,000 to help Neubauer for Supreme Court
A group founded by former Democratic U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder announced Monday that it is spending $350,000 to help the liberal-backed candidate Lisa Neubauer get elected to the Wisconsin Supreme Court.
Tagged with: Brian Hagedorn Eric Holder Lisa Neubauer
Neubauer emphasizes endorsements in first TV ad of race (VIDEO)
Wisconsin Supreme Court candidate Lisa Neubauer is emphasizing endorsements she's received from more than 330 current and former judges in her first television ad of the race.
Wisconsin Supreme Court candidate attended climate rally (UPDATE)
February 27, 2019 11:56 am	Leave a comment
Liberal-backed Wisconsin Supreme Court candidate Lisa Neubauer is drawing criticism from her opponent for attending a climate change march protesting the environmental agenda of President Donald Trump.
Tagged with: climate change Lisa Neubauer Wisconsin Supreme Court
Neubauer reveals role in 1970s lawsuit
February 21, 2019 10:13 am	1 Comment
Wisconsin Supreme Court candidate Lisa Neubauer is revealing that she was an unnamed plaintiff in a successful lawsuit brought in the 1970s against Chicago police after she was strip searched but not under arrest.
Cedarburg, Milwaukee attorneys advance to April election
A Cedarburg attorney and a Milwaukee attorney vying for a judgeship in Ozaukee County are advancing to the general election on April 2.
Liberals eye 2020 takeover of Wisconsin Supreme Court
February 11, 2019 1:55 pm	Leave a comment
Wisconsin liberals hope to take a step this spring toward breaking a long conservative stranglehold on the state's Supreme Court, in an election that could also serve as a barometer of the political mood in a key presidential swing state.
Hagedorn outraises Neubauer in January in Supreme Court race
February 7, 2019 10:36 am	Leave a comment
Wisconsin Supreme Court candidate Brian Hagedorn outraised his challenger, Lisa Neubauer, in January, but still trails her in the total amount of money raised and cash on hand.
Tagged with: Brian Hagedorn Lisa Neubauer Shirley Abrahamson
Wisconsin Supreme Court candidate defends blog posts
February 4, 2019 12:52 pm	Leave a comment
Conservative Wisconsin Supreme Court candidate Brian Hagedorn is defending blog posts he wrote more than a decade ago where he said a landmark gay rights court ruling could lead to legalized bestiality and labeled Planned Parenthood a "wicked organization."
Wisconsin Supreme Court hopefuls close in fundraising
January 10, 2019 12:00 pm	Leave a comment
Two judges vying for a spot on the state Supreme Court raised roughly the same amount of money during the second half of 2018.


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Geddy Lee to Release Book About History of the Bass Guitar
Dave Lifton Published: August 2, 2018
Rush bassist Geddy Lee is exploring the history of his instrument in an upcoming book.
Geddy Lee's Big Beautiful Book of Bass will be published on Dec. 4, and features the stories behind 250 famous and rare basses, as well as interviews with some of the instrument's most famous players.
"It's not surprising that sooner or later I'd dive down the proverbial rabbit hole into the world of vintage bass guitars," Lee said in a press release for the book.
Lee spent seven years working on Geddy Lee's Big Beautiful Book of Bass. He enlisted Richard Sibbald to photograph a wide assortment of basses, ranging from those that have weathered years of use on stages around the globe to one-of-a-kind instruments that have barely been played, complete with Lee's thoughts on them. His own bass collection, which includes instruments made in the '50s, is featured too, showing off those used on Rush's R40 tour and detailing his stage and studio setups from throughout his career.
Such notables as Led Zeppelin's John Paul Jones, Bill Wyman of the Rolling Stones, Robert Trujillo of Metallica, U2's Adam Clayton, Bob Daisley, Les Claypool of Primus and Wilco's Jeff Tweedy were interviewed for the book. Lee's Rush bandmate, Alex Lifeson, wrote one of the book's forewords; there's also commentary by other musicians.
That's not the only thing Rush fans have to look forward to. The band will also get its own Funko Pop! figures that feature the three members in their '70s stage costumes, with Lee dressed in a dragon-adorned kimono and drummer Neil Peart sporting a mustache.
Next: Rush Albums Ranked
Source: Geddy Lee to Release Book About History of the Bass Guitar
Filed Under: Geddy Lee
Watch Rush's Geddy Lee and Alex Lifeson Reunite at 'South Park' Show
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How Rush's Geddy Lee Learned to Re-Love 'Jacob's Ladder'
Rush Watched 'High Life' Pass Them By on First U.S. Tour
How Geddy Lee's Grandmother Saved Family From Nazi Gas Chambers
Geddy Lee on Why Rush's Rock Hall induction Was 'Serious Moment'
Geddy Lee Refuses to 'Live Off the Fumes' Of His Past: Exclusive Interview
Geddy Lee and Alex Lifeson Will Reunite at Rock Hall's Rush Fan Day
Geddy Lee Gives Update on Future Music Plans

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


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WWF All American Wrestling is a cable television program produced by the World Wrestling Federation (WWF). The show was a predecessor to Tuesday Night Titans and Saturday Night's Main Event, originally filling the 11:00 a.m. Eastern Time slot on Sundays vacated by the cancellation of Southwest Championship Wrestling. The show ran from September 4, 1983, to October 16, 1994, on the USA Network. After it was canceled in 1994, it was replaced by Action Zone. The longest running host of the show was Gene Okerlund, who hosted it for nine years of its run.

Overview
All American Wrestling went through three different formats during its run. The first incarnation of WWF All American Wrestling was a show that would focus on one specific wrestler in the WWF. After a few weeks, it turned into a program that featured mainly high-card wrestlers from various promotions across the United States. However, after a few months it featured WWF talent only. Although the USA Cable Network had carried WWF events from New York's Madison Square Garden and the Capital Centre in Landover, Maryland, this was the first weekly national telecast of the original flagship shows for the World Wrestling Federation.

The show mainly re-aired matches and segments from other WWF programs and featured one exclusive match, which early in the run typically came from one of the monthly house show tapings in Madison Square Garden, Philadelphia Spectrum, Boston Garden, or Maple Leaf Gardens. Vince McMahon was the original host of the program, and from then on would fill-in for other hosts as emergency replacements as late as 1994. Afterward, Lord Alfred Hayes became host. Subsequently, Gene Okerlund took over hosting duties and stayed there for most of its run. Okerlund hosted in the WWF Production studio, often interacting with staff members and asking for their thoughts and opinions on the various going ons in the WWF. Another of Okerlund's running bits was him pretending to be on the phone with someone, often a famous celebrity. Oftentimes a guest wrestler or personality would stop in and hang out with Okerlund, Bobby Heenan being one of the most common guests, along with former co-host Alfred Hayes. Starting in 1989, Okerlund was sometimes joined by Hillbilly Jim, with Jim becoming a full-time regular of the show later that year.

Okerlund and Hillbilly Jim were hosts until 1991 or so. After Jim left the show to work in the WWF's home video department, Okerlund would later have various guests hosts in 1992, including The Brooklyn Brawler in a rare appearance. The show featured a major overhaul in 1993 when Bobby Heenan took over as co-host along with Okerlund, with each episode taking place in a different part of the country, with Okerlund and Heenan visiting (often with the help of a green screen) various landmarks. One notable episode took place before WrestleMania 9, with Okerlund and Heenan infiltrating WWF headquarters to try to get a word in with Jack Tunney while giving viewers a tour of the building. This episode featured a rare, on-camera appearance by J. J. Dillon during his tenure with the WWF. Another episode featured Sensational Sherri in one of her final appearances before leaving the WWF.

After Okerlund left in 1993 due to a contract dispute, Joe Fowler took Okerlund's place, working alongside Heenan and continuing the trend of hosting at a landmark or on-location. Johnny Polo was added as co-host to replace Bobby Heenan, and then the on-location aspect of the show was dropped, with the show taking place inside a studio. Polo hosted alongside Gorilla Monsoon, though both would be replaced by The final hosts of All American Wrestling, Todd Pettengill and Ted DiBiase.

In 1993, the matches that were re-aired from other programming would feature new commentary from Sean Mooney, Lord Alfred Hayes, Gorilla Monsoon, Jim Ross, and The Wizard, a persona taken on by Bruce Prichard.

"The Bottom Line"
After Wrestlemania X, Roddy Piper was added to the show as a regular with a weekly segment titled The Bottom Line. In this segment Piper mainly commented on the various storylines going on in the WWF, along with comments on his then budding feud with Jerry Lawler. Piper hosted this segment regularly until the late summer.

Hosts
 Vince McMahon (1983–84; guest appearances after)
 Lord Alfred Hayes (1984–85; various guest appearances after)
 Gene Okerlund (1984–93; guest appearances before)
 Hillbilly Jim (1989–91)
 Randy Savage (1991)
 Mr. Perfect (1992)
 Bobby Heenan (1993; guest appearances before)
 Johnny Polo (1993–94)
 Joe Fowler (1993)
 Gorilla Monsoon (1994; guest appearances before)
 Todd Pettengill (1994)
 Ted Dibiase (1994)
 Roddy Piper (1994; "The Bottom Line" host)

References

External links

All American Wrestling
WWE Raw
Spike (TV network) original programming
USA Network original programming
1983 American television series debuts
1994 American television series endings
1996 American television series debuts
2001 American television series endings

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaWikipedia


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Q: Creating comma-separated string from list I have a list of ints and want to create a comma-separated string. The following:
x = [3, 1, 4, 1, 5]
y = ",".join(x)

Give the error:
TypeError: sequence item 0: expected string, int found

How do I create the string? I could manually convert every element from int to string, insert this into a new list, and then do the join on this new list, but I'm wondering if there is a cleaner solution.

A: If you are dealing with a csv file that is something other than the trivial example here, please do remember you are better off using the csv module to read and write csv, since CSV can be surprisingly complex.
Here is a write example:
import csv

x = [['Header\n1', 'H 2', 'H 3', 'H, 4'],[1,2,3,4],[5,6,7,8],[9,10,11,12]]

with open('/tmp/test.csv', 'w') as fout:
    writer=csv.writer(fout)
    for l in x:
        writer.writerow(l)

Note the embedded comma in 'H, 4' and the embedded new line in 'Header\n1' that may trip up efforts to decode if not properly encoded.
The file 'test.csv' that the csv module produces:
"Header
1",H 2,H 3,"H, 4"
1,2,3,4
5,6,7,8
9,10,11,12

Note the quoting around "Header\n1" and "H, 4"` in the file so that the csv is correctly decoded in the future.
Now check you can read that back:
with open('/tmp/test.csv') as f:
    csv_in=[[int(e) if e.isdigit() else e for e in row]
               for row in csv.reader(f)]

>>> csv_in==x
True

Just sayin' You are usually better off using the tools in the library for csv.

A: Just modify the argument to join so that each element is converted to a string:
x = [3, 1, 4, 1, 5]
y = ",".join(str(i) for i in x)

A: str.join only accepts an iterable of strings, not one of integers.  From the docs:

str.join(iterable)
Return a string which is the concatenation of the strings in the iterable iterable.

Thus, you need to convert the items in x into strings.  You can use either map or a list comprehension:
x = [3, 1, 4, 1, 5]
y = ",".join(map(str, x))

x = [3, 1, 4, 1, 5]
y = ",".join([str(item) for item in x])

See a demonstration below:
>>> x = [3, 1, 4, 1, 5]
>>>
>>> ",".join(map(str, x))
'3,1,4,1,5'
>>>
>>> ",".join([str(item) for item in x])
'3,1,4,1,5'
>>>

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaStackExchange


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Justia Dockets & Filings Ninth Circuit Washington Western District Pena et al v. Clark County Filing 41
Pena et al v. Clark County
MINUTE ORDER denying Parties' 40 Stipulated Motion to Allow Depositions Out of Time and Extension of Written Discovery Responses. Authorized by U.S. District Judge David G Estudillo.(MW)
Case 3:21-cv-05411-DGE Document 41 Filed 01/18/23 Page 1 of 2 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT WESTERN DISTRICT OF WASHINGTON AT TACOMA 8 9 10 11 12 13 ELIAS PENA, v. CASE NO. 3:21-cv-05411-DGE Plaintiffs, MINUTE ORDER ISAIAH HUTSON, 14 Defendant. 15 16 17 18 The following Minute Order is made by direction of the Court, United States District Judge David G. Estudillo: The parties stipulated motion and proposed order for an extension of discovery and the 19 dispositive deadline is DENIED. (Dkt. No. 40.) Strict adherence to deadlines is crucial for the 20 Court's case management. "In these days of heavy caseloads, trial courts [in the federal system] 21 routinely set schedules and establish deadlines to foster the efficient treatment and resolution of 22 cases. Those efforts will be successful only if the deadlines are taken seriously by the parties, 23 24 MINUTE ORDER - 1 Case 3:21-cv-05411-DGE Document 41 Filed 01/18/23 Page 2 of 2 1 and the best way to encourage that is to enforce the deadlines." Wong v. Regents of Univ. of 2 California, 410 F.3d 1052, 1060 (9th Cir. 2005). 3 The parties filed their motion on the last day of discovery. The stipulation does not 4 identify who the listed witnesses are, what information they might possess, and why their 5 depositions are necessary. The stipulation also fails to identify when the depositions were 6 requested and when the attorneys received responses regarding the witnesses' availability. Aside 7 from the general assertion that the parties could not complete depositions "because of pre- 8 existing work, travel commitments, and jury service," the stipulation does not explain why the 9 parties failed to meet the deadline previously extended by the Court at the parties' request. 10 There are six Plaintiffs' attorneys and two attorneys representing Defendant. It remains unclear 11 why these attorneys could not have covered in the case of one attorney's absence. Good cause to 12 modify the current case schedule and to extend previously agreed to deadlines has not been 13 shown. 14 Therefore, the Court DENIES the Stipulated Motion and Proposed Order (Dkt. No. 40). 15 Dated this 18th day of January 2023. 16 The foregoing Minute Order authorized by THE HONORABLE DAVID G. 17 ESTUDILLO, UNITED STATES DISTRICT JUDGE. 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 MINUTE ORDER - 2


2010-12-30T22:24:18-05:00https://images.c-span.org/Files/162/297044-m.jpgFlorida Republican Congressman-elect Allen West talked about the state of U.S. relations with Israel and Iran's nuclear program at a pro-Israel conference. Other speakers included the chief spokesman for the Israel Consulate of Florida and Puerto Rico as well as representatives from Jewish groups. Americans Against Hate was founded in 1998 to inform the public of the dangers of groups and people within U.S. involved in terrorism overseas.


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The McInnes Group only fit the best quality biomass boilers to ensure maximum customer satisfaction. By only installing the highest quality systems we ensure our customers have the most efficient and reliable systems available on the market – this is a crucial point to remember when comparing quotes.
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Spotify and Waze have announced that they would be partnering up to incorporate each of their app's main features in each other's apps.
For example, you could start navigating with Waze and then when you switch to Spotify, you'll see Waze's turn-by-turn navigation prompts, so then you're able to easily access your Spotify playlists and control playback.
It also works in vice-versa, where you'll see Spotify music controls and playlists while you have Waze open. Right now, the integration is only available on Android devices and is rolling out now. For you iOS users, Waze says to stay tuned, meaning that the integration will be coming at a later date.


Our Bier Keller offers live Oompah shows, long bench seating, world beers, german food and; staff serving steins wearing classic Bavarian clothing.
How many Stein Bier Keller's are there?
Following the popularity of the brand in both Newcastle & York, we recently opened our third Stein Bier Keller in Bradford Bradford making 3 in total.
This is just the start for Stein Bier Keller – so keep your eyes peeled for more information on openings in your area!


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Tamdhu distillery is a single malt Scotch Speyside whisky distillery, located in the town of Knockando in Banffshire, Scotland. Tamdhu comes from Gaelic for little dark hill.
The distillery was founded in 1896 by a group of assemblers, wishing to engage in the production of their own whisky. The first malt whisky was distilled and casked in 1897. It quickly passed on into the hands of Highland Distillers. The history of the distillery was fairly quiet, without changing owners, but still marked by a long dormancy between 1927 and 1947.
Its production capacity was tripled between 1972 and 1975. The distillery has now 3 wash stills and 3 spirit stills. Its annual production of pure alcohol is 4 million gallons.
Unlike its neighbors the Tamdhu distillery has no roof-shaped pagoda above its malt furnaces. This is one of the last distilleries to malt all of its barley on the spot by a mechanical saladin.
It was announced that as of April 2010, the Tamdhu Distillery, belonging to the Highland Distillers subsidiary of the Edrington Group, was being closed and the plant shuttered. It was then sold to Ian MacLeod Distillers in June 2011, who recommenced production of single malt in May 2013.
The Tamdhu whisky is almost completely used for the production of blended whiskies, such as The Famous Grouse, J & B and Cutty Sark. Under current owners, Ian MacLeod, Tamdhu's bottlings include a 10 year-old, 100% sherry-matured standard bottling and a non-age-statement (NAS) 100% sherry matured "Batch Strength". The "Batch Strength" is in its second edition as of early 2017. Ian MacLeod initially released a "Limited Edition" bottling of 1000 bottles to commemorate the rebirth of the distillery. These were aged in first-fill sherry casks. Previous owners, Highland Distillers, bottlings of Tamdhu included a 10-year-old, 18-year-old and a no-age-statement bottling. Other bottlings are sold by independent bottlers.
In 2017 Ian MacLeod released Tamdhu 50. It is a 50 year old bottling from a first-fill European oak sherry butt (cask 4678). It was distilled on 2 November 1963 and bottled March 2017. It had an out-turn of 100 bottles.
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He pointed out: "It was only a few hundred years ago that 'scientists' believed that the Earth was the centre of the universe." He added: "It was generally agreed until early this century that the atom could not be split."
Sightings of alleged UFOs could be explained by very strange-shaped clouds, ball lightning, or US "black" (secret project) aircraft, the unidentified official suggested.
"If the sightings are of devices not of the Earth, then their purpose needs to be established as a matter of priority. There had been no apparently hostile intent and other possibilities are one, military reconnaissance; two, scientific; three, tourism."
The clearly frustrated intelligence official observed that the MoD might have taken the prospect more seriously if UFOs had "a red star painted on them", a reference to the Soviet Union.
The selection of documents released to the National Archives is the ninth tranche of the UK's "X-files" to be made public since the government decided in 2008 that keeping them secret was no longer justified.
Some intelligence officials were excited about the prospect of harnessing rare atmospheric plasmas initially claimed to be UFOs, such as ball lightning, for novel weapons technology. One even suggested that if craft from outer space really did exist, the MoD could adopt their stealth technology.
Most officials in the MoD were deeply sceptical. Papers released today show that back in 1979, a UFO intelligence officer wondered why aliens would want to visit "an insignificant planet [the Earth] of an uninteresting star [the sun]".
But officials had to cover their backs because of persistent claims of UFO sightings and questions from the public. MPs also regularly returned to the subject, requiring answers from the prime minister. In 2009, before he was elected, David Cameron promised to publish Whitehall's remaining secret files on UFOs.
"I don't think any of us have any clue whether there's intelligent life out there, and it is certainly not something that any government should seek to hide from anyone," he said.
John Major told MPs in 1996: "The government has no plans to allocate resources to researching extraterrestrial phenomena."
The MoD did, however, decide to devote more resources on a study as officials warned Tony Blair he could expect even more questions following the passing of the Freedom of Information Act. A MoD official reported in 2000 that the study concluded: "Many of sightings can be explained as mis-reporting of man-made vehicles, [and] natural but unusual phenomena."
In a valedictory note in December 2008, the last unidentified "UFO desk officer" – described yesterday by David Clarke of Sheffield Hallam University, author of The UFO Files, as "one of the strangest jobs in Whitehall" – wrote to the RAF's operations headquarters in High Wycombe. "The MoD's position on UFOs, aliens and extra terrestrials is quite clear. We know of no evidence to confirm the existence of aliens, spaceships, extra terrestrials etc, or if they have visited the Earth."
Suggestions that there were secret teams of scientists "scurrying around the country in a real-life version of the X-files" was "total fiction".
But in a perhaps reassuring conclusion, the officer continued: "However, since the universe is a very large place and mankind has only explored a very small corner of it, we cannot rule out the existence of intelligent life on other planets. We therefore remain open minded on the topic. In the absence of proof either way, this position seems a perfectly sensible one. However, as you can probably guess, the above position does not make very interesting headlines nor, I suspect, would sell many books".
Ministers and the MoD have been inundated with claims of many hundreds of sightings of aliens. They include: two tall silver-suited "faceless humanoids" in Wales, three tall "men in black" in Spalding, Lincolnshire, and "golden orbs" across Britain – the result of a craze for releasing sky lanterns.
A mounted police officer reported a sighting of a "square/diamond shaped object moving across the sky and changing shape" while on duty at Chelsea football ground in 1999.
Files released on Thursday show the MoD recorded "UFO sightings" throughout the UK, from the Orkney Islands to Cornwall, and in Belgium, France, Germany, the Netherlands, Thailand, New Zealand and the US.


text:
Thomas Rolland Norris (born January 14, 1944) is a retired United States Navy SEAL and Distinguished Eagle Scout who received the Medal of Honor for his ground rescue with the assistance of Petty Officer Third Class Nguyen Van Kiet of two downed aircrew members in Quang Tri Province, Vietnam on April 10–13, 1972. At the time of the action, Lieutenant Norris was a SEAL Advisor with the Strategic Technical Directorate Assistance Team. Norris was one of three SEALs to receive the Medal of Honor for actions during the Vietnam War.

Early life
Thomas Norris was born on January 14, 1944, in Jacksonville, Florida. He grew up in Wisconsin and Washington, D.C. As a youth, he was a member of the Boy Scouts of America and attained the rank of Eagle Scout. Graduating from Montgomery Blair High School, he entered the University of Maryland in 1963, with the intent of pursuing a criminology career with the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). He earned a Bachelor of Science degree in Sociology with a specialty in Criminology in 1967. While at university, he was an Atlantic Coast Conference wrestling champion in 1965 and 1966.

United States Navy
Norris enlisted in the United States Navy when his student deferment from the draft was not extended. He hoped to join the navy and fly jets, but he had problems with his visual acuity and depth perception that disqualified him from becoming a pilot. He then became a Navy SEAL. Norris struggled during BUD/S training, and the instructors considered removing him from the course. However, the instructors decided to allow Norris to try to finish the training, and he graduated from BUD/S class 45 in July 1969 at Naval Amphibious Base Little Creek. Norris completed his first tour of duty in South Vietnam with Fifth platoon, SEAL Team TWO from February to August 1970 earning Bronze Star Medal with combat "V" device.

Ground rescue operation

In April 1972, Norris was one of few remaining SEALs in Vietnam serving with MACVSOG Danang Naval Advisory Detachment. When Lieutenant Colonel Iceal Hambleton was shot down behind enemy lines, aerial combat search and rescue operations failed, leading to the loss of five additional aircraft and the death of 11 or more airmen, two captured, and three more down and needing rescue. Norris was tasked with mounting a ground operation to recover Hambleton, Lieutenant Mark Clark, and Lieutenant Bruce Walker from behind enemy lines. Assisted by Vietnamese Sea Commando forces, he and Republic of Vietnam Navy Petty Officer Nguyen Van Kiet went more than  behind enemy lines and successfully rescued two of the downed American aviators. Walker was discovered and killed by the North Vietnamese Army. Though Norris at first rejected the honor, he was recognized with the Medal of Honor in 1975.

Intelligence gathering mission
Six months later, on October 31, 1972, Norris and fellow Navy SEAL Michael E. Thornton accompanied three South Vietnamese special forces soldiers on an intelligence gathering operation south of the demilitarized zone. They intended to reconnoiter the area around the Cửa Việt Base near the coast of Quảng Trị Province, just south of the Demilitarized Zone.

Approaching by sea, the group was transported by junk until sunset, then paddled a rubber boat to within a mile of shore and swam the remaining distance. Moving inland past numerous North Vietnamese encampments, the group reconnoitered through the night.

When morning dawned, the 5-man group realized that they had landed  to the north and were actually in North Vietnam. They soon encountered a two-man North Vietnamese patrol, which the South Vietnamese attempted to capture. Instead, enemy troops were alerted to their position. For the next four hours, the five men held off an enemy force estimated at about 200–300 strong. Norris called in naval firepower on the enemy's positions, helping to keep them alive.

The North Vietnamese regrouped and surrounded the troops. The SEALs and South Vietnamese decided to withdraw. Norris protected their rear while the others moved towards the water. He was shot in the head and severely wounded. One of the South Vietnamese who saw Norris' wound assumed he was dead. Thornton, upon hearing the news, ran through heavy fire to recover the body of his fallen comrade, only to discover that Norris was still just barely alive. He killed several North Vietnamese as they surmounted the dunes around his position and then carried the unconscious Norris into the water.

Thornton also carried one of the South Vietnamese soldiers who had been wounded and was unable to swim into the ocean. Thornton swam and supported the two injured men for more than two hours before they were picked up by the same junk that had dropped them off the night before. Norris' first surgery lasted 19 hours.

Thornton was recognized with the Medal of Honor for his actions by President Richard Nixon during a ceremony at the White House on October 15, 1973. He snuck Norris out of the hospital in the middle of the night so Norris could attend the ceremony. Norris was later awarded the Medal of Honor by President Gerald R. Ford in a White House ceremony on March 6, 1976. Thornton thus became the first Medal of Honor recipient recognized for saving the life of another Medal of Honor recipient. Norris lost an eye and part of his skull. He spent three years recovering from his injuries in the hospital and over a six-year period underwent many major surgeries. As a result of the head injury, he was medically retired from the navy in May 1975.

FBI
In 1979, Norris joined the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and requested a waiver for his disabilities. FBI director William Webster responded, "If you can pass the same test as anybody else applying for this organization, I will waive your disabilities." In September 1979, Norris passed the test and subsequently was an FBI Special Agent for 20 years. He was an original member of the FBI's Hostage Rescue Team as an assault team leader. He is a member of the Society of Former Special Agents of the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

Medal of Honor citation
Citation:

Honors and recognitions
The Naval Special Warfare Group Two in Little Creek, Virginia is located in the Lt. Thomas R. Norris Building.

Norris' Medal of Honor actions have been re-told in numerous books and in the feature film Bat*21, which was the call sign for an EB-66C from the 42nd Tactical Electronic Warfare Squadron (42 TEWS), 388th Tactical Fighter Wing, at Korat, Thailand. The aircraft was shot down while flying pathfinder escort for a cell of three B-52 bombing near the Demilitarized Zone.

Norris received the Distinguished Eagle Scout Award in 2011. He is one of eleven Eagle Scouts who received the Medal of Honor.

In 1976, he received the Golden Plate Award of the American Academy of Achievement.

Military awards
Norris' military decorations and awards include the following:

Bibliography
 Written with Mike Thornton and Dick Couch.

See also

 List of Medal of Honor recipients for the Vietnam War
 MACV-SOG
 List of Eagle Scouts

References

External links

 Lt. Thomas R. Norris, USN Biography and Interview on American Academy of Achievement

1944 births
Living people
Federal Bureau of Investigation agents
United States Navy Medal of Honor recipients
Recipients of the Silver Star
Recipients of the Gallantry Cross (Vietnam)
United States Navy SEALs personnel
United States Navy officers
United States Navy personnel of the Vietnam War
Vietnam War recipients of the Medal of Honor
University of Maryland, College Park alumni


Many CPA firms are developing niche practices performing SOC engagements, which represent an excellent practice development opportunity in response to marketplace demands. Service organizations must reassure their users about controls over financial reporting, the integrity of their systems and the safety of data processed by those systems.
To help firms navigate this emerging service area, establish a niche practice and help clients, prospects and service organizations understand the benefits of SOC engagements, the AICPA has created a number of free resources and marketing materials in this helpful toolkit.


now, it's one of the many things you look forward to when going home. I know, just as any college student does, that having your first apartment, suite, or house in college has its benefits – one of those being your very own kitchen! Be honest, you have been saving those Buzzfeed food videos and following different Facebook accounts. But at the end of a college school day, you don't have enough time to make that gourmet dish and need to substitute with a quicker option. Check out below to see some fast and easy recipes for any college student that you can do by yourself!
Tip: Garnish your French toast with fresh fruit or powdered sugar!
Tip: Dicing up ham or bacon and throwing it in is a great way to get some protein in and adds extra flavor.
Tip: Coconut and almonds make for a great topping, too!
Tip: Use guacamole or sour cream for dipping sauce.
Tip: Spice up your nachos by using different shaped chips (scoops, original, or flat).
Tip: Feeling adventurous? Check out this website on how to make your own pizza dough!
Tip: Chop up some bacon to add to your dish!
Tip: You can add sausage or change up the shape of the noodle – there are tons to choose from!
Full recipe: do you really need a recipe on how to make spaghetti? But just in case, Prego offers one that includes meatballs as well!
Recipe: Before rolling crescents, sprinkle cinnamon and sugar and place a few chocolate chips on top. Proceed by rolling crescents into shape and then dash some more cinnamon and sugar on top before throwing them in the oven!
Tip: Mash up Oreos in a plastic bag instead of placing them whole directly in the blender. You can also buy malt mix to make yours a Oreo malt!
Now that you"ve mastered the basics, watch some of these vids and try and step up your food game. May the odds be ever in your favor!


Based on a true story that's stranger than fiction, Mysterious Circumstances explores the life and death of Richard Lancelyn Green, the world's foremost scholar on Sherlock Holmes. When Green is found dead in his London apartment, it's officially ruled a suicide, but what unfolds is a case worthy of Holmes himself.
Inspired by a New Yorker article by David Grann (The Lost City of Z, Killers of the Flower Moon), written by Michael Mitnick (Drama Desk Award nominee for Fly by Night, The Siegel) and directed by Geffen Playhouse Artistic Director Matt Shakman, Mysterious Circumstances uses breathtaking theatricality, mystery and magic to bring to life this rumination on the fine line between love and obsession. What is fact and what is fiction? This world premiere insists that the mystery is yours to solve.


text:
Tag Archives: Joan Fleming
Poetry Shelf connections: 2 poems by Joan Fleming
Meditation on relative suffering
5 April, Madrid
Many terrible things in life happen quietly and without spectacle.
The times I am penned inside my own skin are a one that feels like a seven
and it makes me loud.
I pull down a book and find a strand of hair that cannot be mine.
I stroke it the wrong way to make it squeak
like an animal.
Now the windows are open and I smell a fire I want to be next to.
They say that after great pain, you find you can speak well,
but I have been speaking badly and feel about it all
as helpless as childhood.
Everything is flowering and the wild boars run in the street,
expecting someone.
In the day book, several nothings have made a space as slow as the city.
I toe the bottle to the table's far side, this stops me reaching for it.
Mornings are good, don't you find? And evenings sometimes terrible.
We ought to be flooded with green, turned out onto a slope
held down with roots and crowns, zesty with rot, the seasons
breaking into food, the air mad with bees and matter.
Instead, there are streaks on the glass
only where the left-side body was responsible.
We meet in bed, stroke each other's skin as if we possessed it.
Joan Fleming is the author of two collections of poetry, The Same as Yes and Failed Love Poems, both from Victoria University Press, and the chapbook Two Dreams in Which Things Are Taken (Duets). Her new collection Dirt is forthcoming with Cordite Books. She holds a PhD in ethnopoetics from Monash University, Melbourne, and is the New Zealand/Aotearoa Commissioning Editor for Cordite Poetry Review. She currently lives in Madrid, and in 2020 she will travel to Honduras for the Our Little Roses Poetry Teaching Fellowship.
This entry was posted in NZ author, NZ poems, NZ poetry, Uncategorized and tagged Joan Fleming on May 12, 2020 by Paula Green.
Poetry Shelf classic poem: Wen-Juenn Lee picks Joan Fleming's 'Husband and Wife Talk Without Talking At A Difficult Dinner Party'
Note from Wen-Juenn Lee:
I first read Joan Fleming's 'Husband and Wife Talk Without Talking At A Difficult Dinner Party' at university, when something about the simple domesticity yet the 'intolerable solitude' of love ('Translations VI', Failed Love Poems) struck me – at a time when I was just beginning to read tragic, suburban love stories by Raymond Carver. (I liked the line, 'He drinks more and she stops drinking. It is for the same reason' and I did not know why, until later I realised that it reminded me of the wife in 'The Student's Wife', who wakes up in the middle of the night and calls her husband's name, but he does not answer.)
Love is different in 'Husband and Wife Talk Without Talking At A Difficult Dinner Party', different because it is not marked by suffocating drabness, but sleepy attentiveness, knowing the patterns of someone else with the instinctiveness you know it's going to rain when storm clouds appear. (Simone Weil: 'Attentiveness is the rarest form of generosity.') It is with this attentiveness that the poem breathes: there is the hard brittleness of a wine glass, the clattering of forks, underpinned by the softness of silent communion. A couple sits, one drinks and one doesn't, and they suffer quietly, and maybe they'll leave and go to bed, alone with their griefs and little traumas. Maybe they will talk without saying anything important at all.
Here, we have the external actions of people, yang, and the inarticulate feelings they have, yin. This heartbeat of yin and yang underpins the very heartbeat of the poem. Yang, the boundaries in self between you and me, yang, the face I present to the wider world: of husband shredding his napkin, of wife touching her earlobes. In this, I am reminded of my parents who interact with the formality of Chinese tradition. My parents do not say, 'I love you', but ask 'have you eaten?' Yet. They know I talk loudly when I'm tired and they know when I'm irritated and trying to disguise it with forced cheer; they would just never tell me they know. To the outsider, someone walking past the window, a plus one at the party, anyone that isn't the husband or wife, maybe they would notice the shredded napkin, the unnecessary earlobe-touching, but they can only guess; they can observe but never decode. This is a poem of extended people-watching, in the sense that we too, are outsiders with the privilege of understanding a couple's private state, if only fleetingly.
When we are lucky enough to know people that know us intimately, that know us well, they will know the difference between your laugh and your forced laugh, and this is where the duality of yin and yang can occur. Husband and wife are having a conversation without using their words at all. She says, I have a headache. He says, I'm worried about my father. The dinner party is Difficult because maintaining your yang is Difficult in the face of your worries, because expressing your yin is near impossible. I found the last line in the poem so devastating, not because it ends with silence, but something of the frail and incomplete yin, 'a soft space where speech can grow'. This tender, fragile possibility of communion (in whatever form that takes) is part of the larger love letter I see in Joan Fleming's The Same As Yes. It struck me then, as it strikes me now, how ordinary intimacy and its limits can feel to me more concrete, more sorts of tragic, than anything else.
Wen-Juenn Lee works in Melbourne, and writes when she can. She writes about Wellington, her family, and her feelings. Her work has appeared in Landfall, Southerly, and other publications.
Victoria University Press author page
This entry was posted in NZ author, NZ poems, NZ poetry, Uncategorized and tagged Joan Fleming, Poetry shelf clssic poem, Wen-Juenn Lee on September 11, 2019 by Paula Green.
Poetry Shelf review: Landfall 237
Landfall 237 edited by Emma Neale
Landfall 237 offers rich pickings for the poetry fans: familiar names (Peter Bland, David Eggleton, Elizabeth Smither, Ria Masae, Lynley Edmeades and Cilla McQueen) to emerging poets (Rebecca Hawkes, Claudia Jardine, essa may ranapiri) and those I am reading for the first time (Robynanne Milford, Jeremy Roberts, Catherine Trundle to name a few). The reading experience is kaleidoscopic, pulling you in different directions, towards both lightness and darkness, risk and comfort. And that is exactly what a literary journal can do. I was tempted to say should, but literary journals can do anything.
Landfall has a history of showcasing quirky artwork – and this issue is no exception. Sharon Singer's sequence, "Everyday Calamities' with its potent colour, surreal juxtapositions, strange and estranging narratives, and thematic bridges, is an addictive puzzle for heart and mind. I am circling humanity, the power of connection, the individual both tenacious and frail, the state of the planet. Paintings whirling and tipping you into moments that soothe, bewilder and provoke. I adore these.
I turned from these to Rachel O'Neill's prose poem 'The Supernatural Frame' and get goosebumps:
You may look upon the painting through these special
foiled binoculars. We are at a safe distance. Afterwards you
may feel a chill or a fever linger for two days and a night,
accompanied by an infernal cough.
On the centennial of the birth of Ruth Dallas in Invercargill, I am also delighted to see John Geraets spotlight her poetry. Certain Dallas poems have always had a place in NZ literary anthologies (think 'Milking Before Dawn') but as readers we may less familiar with the wider expanse of her work. Like so many women poets of the twentieth century she is in the shadows. In his intro John suggests it is not clear how to include her 'within more recent nexus based on gender, ethnicity, ecology, avant-gardism, faith or political affiliation'. He responds by assembling her words – culled from Landfall editor-contributor responses and her autobiography Curved Horizon – on the left-hand pages and his words on the right. He first sees in her poetry – compared with contemporary writing choices – predictability, regularity, un-excitement, regionalism; and then, by paying attention and refreshing his routes, he opens up poems to different movements. He moves in close to the poem. I love that. Much I could say on how we approach the women from the past! Expect 568 pages soon.
I absolutely love the poetry in this issue; it is both fresh and vital! I see neither formula nor dominating style but shifting stories, musicality, feeling, political bite, muted shades, bright tones.
Joanna Preston's poem 'Allegrophobia' carries you from birth to tardiness to spring in a layered on punctuality – a perfect little package.
Jasmine Gallagher's 'Be Still' sent me to her bio because I want to read more by her. She is a doctoral student at the University of Otago and has previously been published in brief. Her poem is poetry as brocade – glinting for the eye and chiming for the ear.
Slattern: a
hoar frost:
a rime
Cold seed bed
Rot and slime
Another poet, Catherine Trundle, also sent me scavenging for more. She writes poetry, flash fiction and experimental ethnography. Her poem 'The Caravan behind the Plum Tree' is also an exquisite brocade.
This lush cusp of spring rides
pinkish, amoebic, wilding
the inside, every flesh 'n' cranny
while the sunlight lunges in
through winter tidelines
of curtain rot
Tam Vosper's 'Ailurophilia' was an equal hook for me. He is working on a PhD at Canterbury University that considers Allen Curnow and the poetics of place. Again this is brocade poetry: so rich in effect.
All Gallic pluck
and casual loft
you claim a suntrap,
slump sidewise down,
and unhinge your barbed yawn:
a shark to shoaling mice.
And I want to add Medb Charleton's 'I think I Saw You Dreaming', Rebecca Hawkes's 'If I could breed your cultivar / I'd have you in my garden' and Gail Ingram's 'The Kitchen' to my list of brocade poetry. Glorious.
In contrast you have the spare deliciousness of Ariha Latham's 'Waitangi'. Another poet whose work I want to track down.
When I read Ria Masae's "Jack Didn't Build Here' I can hear her performing its sharp mix of personal and politics – and it cuts into my skin. Six houses built. She carries us from the father's house full of stories to David Lange's Mangere home open to the locals: he 'understood the pressures of fa'alavelave,/ cos he brown on the inside like that'. She bears us from the house her mum built with its' celebration tables' to the house Key built with its 'security code gate'. She ends with a question (the house to be built?):
What house will Jacinda build?
Will it enable my daughters to build their own homes
of tangata whenua foundations and fa'a Samoa roofs
in this palagified City of Sales?
You can move from political bite to the glorious wit you often find in an Erik Kennedy poem. His 'All Holidays Are Made-Up Holidays' is no exception. Meet Cabinet Day – 'we went along/ from house to house hanging little doors / around each other's necks to hide our secrets'. Or the Feast of Holy Indifference. Genius!
Claire Orchard's poem, 'Breakages', swivels on a set of shelves, on the objects that they hold, and in that satisfying movement speaks of so much more; the poem resembles a shelf of family history with peaks and troughs.
I enjoyed the way it had begun to display time
in the style of tottering, elderly people
I heard Joan Fleming talk about new poetry she was writing at the Poetry & Essay conference at Victoria University in 2017. The poems came out of her experience of camp life in Nyrripi and surrounding areas in Australia's Central Desert. I was moved by her discussions of collaboration and consent, her attentiveness to the local. Two poems here – 'Alterations' and 'Papunya is Gorgeous Dirty and I Second-guess my Purposes' – come out of this experience. I can't wait to see this in book form.
Finally a treat from Cilla McQueen. She has written 'Poem for my Tokotoko'; it is personal, physical and abundant with the possibilities of poetry. Pure pleasure.
Sometimes I see you as an enchanter's staff,
scattering poems like leaves to the west wind;
at others you're practical, a trusty pole
by means of which, through quarrelling
undercurrents, I can ford turbulent water.
By means of which I put myself across.
This is such good issue – there are reviews and fiction I haven't read yet, and the announcement of the Charles Brasch Young Writers' Essay Competition 2019 – but on the poems only, it warrants a subscription. Yep – Landfall has its finger on the pulse of NZ poetry.
Landfall 237 page
This entry was posted in NZ author, NZ poems, NZ poetry journal, Uncategorized and tagged Ariha Latham, Catherine trundle, Cilla McQueen, Claire Orchard, Emma Neale, erik kennedy, jasmine gallagher, Joan Fleming, Joanna Preston, Landfall, medb charleton, Rachel O'Neill, Ria Masae, Ruth Dallas, Tam vosper on June 26, 2019 by Paula Green.
Poetry Shelf questions: 7 poets name 3 poetry books that have mattered
My bookshelves are like an autobiography because books, like albums, flag key points in my life.
To pick only three poetry books that have mattered at different points in your life is a tall order but these poets have sent me chasing collectons and composing my own list.
Featured poets: Fiona Kidman, Joan Fleming, Hannah Mettner, David Eggleton, Sam Duckor-Jones, Amy Leigh-Wicks and Murray Edmond.
Fiona Kidman
I was team teaching a creative writing group with my dear late friend, the poet Lauris Edmond, when she read Elizabeth Bishop's poem, "The Fish". I remember the electricity in the air, as the dazzling images tumbled out, wonderfully read by Lauris. And then there is the moment where the caught fish is released back into the wild. I trembled when I heard the poem, the first I knew of Bishop's work. This was in the late 1970s. Later, I bought Elizabeth Bishop The Complete Poems 1927 -1979, and discovered her inimitable Nova Scotian poems. I was working towards a novel partly set in Nova Scotia, and I carried the book with me – there, and on all my travels for years afterwards. I had a habit of pressing wildflowers collected along the way, and eventually, I realised that I was a danger to myself at the New Zealand border if I was to continue carrying them. I read the poems at home now.
Another book I have read and re-read many times, is Marguerite Duras's last book (I think) Practicalities (published in 1993). I had been influenced by her fiction as a young woman. But this was a tiny book of essays, fragments, interior monologues, about desire, housekeeping, her struggles with alcohol, domestic lists of important things to have in the house, reflections on death.
And one more. On the bedside table I keep Seamus Heaney's Opened Ground: Poems 1966-1996. I came late to Heaney's work, but late is good, because I'm still making discoveries, there are still pleasures in store from the great Irish Nobel Prize winning writer. It's like tracing my finger through language and feeling my own Irish blood singing its way through my veins. The collection contains, incidentally, a poem about Katherine Mansfield.
Anne Carson's Autobiography of Red was a gift from Amy Brown on my 23rd birthday. It blew my head off. It is the best and strangest failed love poem I have ever read. But more than that, it showed me how a book could perform an argument, and at the same time, exquisitely fracture the foundations of the kind of thought that makes argument possible.
Jordan Abel's book The Place of Scraps is an erasure poem and a series of prose reflections, which explode and complicate the work of ethnographer Marius Barbeau. I had been searching for poetry that could do this mode of critical work all through my PhD, and discovered The Place of Scraps very late in the journey, on the recommendation of the dear and brilliant Brian Blanchfield. The book is a stunning example of a new kind of ethnopoetics – or, perhaps, counter-ethnopoetics. I was needing and seeking it, and its sensibility has offered me a kind of permission for my own work.
I wonder if all writers read as opportunistically as this? Maybe we're all like exploration geologists, searching for those forms and sensibilities that we can mine for our own nefarious compositional purposes. The latest book of this ilk for me has been Rachel Zucker's Mothers. What gets me about this book is the collage essay form, the candid revelations, and the way Zucker's poetics walk the line between sentimentality and the rejection of sentimentality. I'm completely charged by the possibilities of this book's form. Watch this space, I guess.
Every birthday when I was a girl, my parents would get me an obligatory book. This wasn't a problem, as I liked reading, but the choices were a bit hit or miss, and I was often far more thrilled by other gifts. One year though, they got me The Door in the Air and other stories by Margaret Mahy, and it has become my enduring favourite book, certainly the book I've re-read most. My current favourite story (it changes all the time) is about a woman who bakes her grown-up son a birthday cake, ices it, and leaves it in a glass dome for the month leading up to his birthday (I presume it's a fruit cake, otherwise, ew). In a hilarious twist, the cake becomes the next big thing in art, when it's "discovered" by two gallery owners. I think it's the perfect take-down of the art scene, and I often wonder what had happened in Mahy's life that had inspired this gentle trashing of "taste-makers". It's also a really beautiful allegory for women's work, which is so often un-recognised and un-celebrated: by elevating a cake, made with love by the light of a new moon, Mahy draws our attention to how little we do recognise this work, in the usual course of things. In the end, much to the chagrin of the gallery owners, who are considering taking the cake on an international art tour, the cake is eaten when the son comes home for his birthday, as intended. And all the stories in the book are these complicated, magical-realism, gently humorous, domestic, relationship-centred stories that do so much in such a short space.
My current favourite book of poems is Morgan Parker's There are more Beautiful Things than Beyoncé, which I bought for its provocative title. It is the perfect mix of pop culture, politics and outrageously beautiful lines of poetry. It's the kind of book that you can't read all at once because each poem slays you. One of the poems, 'The Gospel According to Her' opens with this couplet:
What to a slave is the fourth of July
What to a woman is a vote
I mean! Wow! I'm so tired of the kind of 'flippant cool' and 'awkward funny' poetic voice that's been popular for a bit now, and this book feels like such an antidote to that. It's really important writing about the intersections of race, gender, class and pop culture in America, and it feels fiercely genuine.
And obviously one of my all-time favourite books of poems is Mags' (Sugar Magnolia Wilson's) new collectiom Because a Woman's Heart is like a Needle at the Bottom of the Ocean. I've been waiting for this book since I first met Mags in our MA course in 2012, and, though I'd seen (I think) all of the poems in it before it was published, having them gathered together in one place makes them all seem to glow a bit brighter. It possesses some of the magical realism that brings me back time and again to the Mahy, with a slightly darker, more grown-up edge. It feels like a book that has already lived a thousand lives, and lived them richly, and has picked up scraps and talismans along the way to adorn its stories, like the bower birds in the poem 'Glamour'. It does what the best poetry does, which is to offer you something beautiful and immediate on the surface, but with more and more layers of meaning to unpick as you make repeat visits. I think what it has to say on how we define ourselves in relation to other people is genuinely complex and profound.
The Walled Garden by Russell Haley, published in 1972 by The Mandrake Root, was one of the first poetry books I ever bought, and I bought it in order to read it over and over and internalise it. Its verses I found visionary, oneiric, hallucinatory. I had seen it displayed in Auckland's University Book Shop, which was then in the Student Quad on campus. I picked it up off the shelf, began idly flicking through and became immediately ensnared by its strange chanting lines:
Invest the real with moths of dream
white paper is a time machine
six inches of semantic dust cover the carpet
he drew with his fingers
new maps of home
Grafton Road and Carlton Gore …
As I was living in Grafton Road at the time, just along the bustling hippie encampments in the grand old villas near Carlton Gore Road, my brain began to hum. I bought the book and it immediately became my guide to a certain state of mind a celebration of another, more phantasmal, Auckland in the decade of the 1970s:
Gagarin is finding a new way to walk
both the rock and the lion are starting to talk …
Russell Haley was a British migrant who grew up in the north of England and then served in the R.A. F. in Iraq in the 1950s, at a time when the oil wells of Middle East were relatively untroubled by the meddling of the United States, and archeological expeditions to the Fertile Crescent were proceeding in an orderly fashion, and Persian poetry was being celebrated as the ne plus ultra of the Islamic Golden Age. In Haley's The Walled Garden, still to me a wondrous book, I was attracted to the private mythology, the prophetic quality, the dream-like imagery, the air of premonition, of the circularity of history he was invoking: a sense of time of time regained out of a kind of colourful rubble — the bric a brac of twentieth century international modernism — which seemed to me at the time seductively exotic. Moreover, he managed to make tenets of Sufi mysticism rhyme and chime with kite-flying in the small hours on Bethells Beach:
3.30 am …
There are two voices —
the first is that of the man
holding the kite string —
he says everything and yet nothing.
The second is the deep hum of the rope
linking the man and the kite —
this voice says nothing and yet everything
(from night flying with hanly)
Published in Auckland by Stephen Chan's Association of Orientally Flavoured Syndics in 1972, David Mitchell's first, and for several decades his only poetry collection, Pipe Dreams in Ponsonby, was reprinted in a second edition in 1975 by Caveman Press, whose publisher was Trevor Reeves. That is the edition, acquired second-hand years later, that I have in my possession, knocked out by Tablet Print in Dunedin and, though in a similar thin black cardboard jacket, not quite as elegant and well-printed as the earlier one. Yet it still conveys the magic, the mojo, of a poet who celebrated the poem as spoken word. For me, David Mitchell is an exemplar of the shaman able to take a poem off the page and make it into something performative, transcendent, on a stage. In Auckland in 1980, David Mitchell established the Globe Hotel weekly poetry readings which became inspirational. Mitchell was a poet of the primal, one who had an ability to suggest and conjure up the electric atmosphere of raw improvisation. A master of syllabics, the man with the golden ear, he was actually all craft. He worked with silence, building up cadences out of short phrases and using the pregnant pause to create resonance. He was intent on emphasising the evanescence of the moment; with the use of subtle intonation and enunciation, seeking to establish an authentic encounter with the poem he was reciting, its mood, its music.
Kendrick Smithyman was another early enthusiasm of mine, in particular his 1972 collection Earthquake Weather in its drab olive green cover, containing the poem 'Hail' whose last lines give the book its resonantly memorable title: 'We call this earthquake weather. We may not be wrong.'
But it is his later epic 1997 poem Atua Wera that spun my compass round as an example of what a truly ambitious New Zealand poem could be. Atua Wera, is a poem glued together out of bits and bobs. It muses on historical hearsay, folklore, museological keepsakes, and intertextual chunks of letters and journals. It requires you to latch onto the poet's rhythms of thought, his oblique way of saying things as he tells the story of Papahurihia, a Northland Māori millennial prophet who was a tohunga descended from tohunga.
In this verse biography, Smithyman is a prose Browning, up to his elbows in the old colonial dust, breaking up journalistic reportage into cryptic fragments, into crabbed lines scattered across the page, except that where Robert Browning embroidered endlessly in his epic The Ring and the Book on a story that, as Thomas Carlyle said, might have been told in ten lines and were better forgotten, Smithyman's effort is a superb revivification of an amazing chapter in New Zealand colonial history.
A master-ventriloquist, like his subject, Smithyman uses James Busby, Thomas Kendall and Frederic Maning to tell us about Yankee sailors encountering Moriori voodoo, and about the Garden of Eden snake in Genesis being transformed into a lizard, then a dragon, then 'a fiery flying serpent' who turns out to be Te Atau Wera himself, the shape-shifter. Atua Wera is itself a shape-shifting poem of ghost-riders and end-of-world portents, of the phantom canoe on Lake Tarawera before the eruption, and of a light in the sky which turns out to be a TV repeater mast. It's a book which is a palimpest, a treasure trove, a landmark, a beacon.
Sam Duckor-Jones
DIFFERENT DANCES / SHEL SILVERSTEIN
This is a large coffee table book of drawings of naked men and women fucking and sucking and being impaled in various ways. There is straight sex, queer sex, and not-so-subtle nods towards fun things like necrophilia! incest! bestiality! We loved this book when we were kids, we poured over it wide eyed, impatient, tingling and desirous and competitively appalled or nonchalant, depending. A little later, ie adolescence, when my friends and I started liking boys but had no language or real world models with which to express it, we drew: cousins rutting in basements, fey teachers with debased secrets, musclemen kissing in pantries… Different Dances was my manual for lusty expression: put it on the page. To this day I still prefer a pen and paper to real life, sigh.
DEAR PRUDENCE / DAVID TRINIDAD
David Trinidad has this long prose poem called 'Mothers' in which he remembers all the mothers from his childhood neighbourhoods. It's intimate and cinematic and filled with satisfyingly stifling pastels and veneers of conformity and simmering desperations and a serious deluge of kitsch, moving from comic portrait to heartbreaking confession. I read it in 2016 and immediately made David Trinidad one of my favourite poets and Dear Prudence one of my most frequently thumbed books. David Trinidad constructs his poems from celebrity interviews, soap opera scripts, trashy novels, idol infatuations, all with a serious wash of queer love and it's associated traumas. He takes plain language and wrings it with tight margins til it becomes something crystalized. I love him.
BLISS / PETER CAREY
When I lived in Auckland I was a bad employee. I worked in a number of cafes, briefly. I was scared of the customers and didn't have the cahones for kitchen trash talk. All I wanted to do was read and draw, why was this not allowed? On a lunch break at a Ponsonby spot where I was the lame FOH, I read Bliss in the upstairs staffroom. The barista came and sat beside me and talked and talked and would not stop talking so I picked up my book and climbed right out the window. I ran along the awnings and shimmied down a drainpipe, stormed righteously to Grey Lynn park, finished my chapter. Caught the next train home to Wellington. Ever since, Bliss has represented a real particular sort of escape to me, and is a reminder that a good book is worth it.
Amy Leigh Wicks
I came across Jack Kerouac's On the Road in university. I resonated with his ability to articulate the insatiable longings of the human heart. The novel wasn't the best written thing I'd read, but the timing of it, the casual language paired with a desperate feeling of urgency coincided perfectly with my itch for travel and spiritual discovery. Kerouac said in a later interview that the book was really just about two catholic boys in search of God. I think a lot of people might have trouble seeing it because of all the Benzedrine and riotous living, but it hit me in the guts as true.
I was in my early twenties when I read Edna St. Vincent Millay's Collected Poems. Her sonnets continue to be one great sources of inspiration and reflection. From Sonnet XXX which begins, 'Love is not all,' and ends in a surprising turn, to her sonnet What lips my lips have kissed and where and why, which appeared in Vanity Fair in 1920, but reads to me as if it were written now, her poems are delicious, layered, and precisely crafted.
I started studying James K. Baxter while I was working on my Masters in New York, and found a very hard time finding his books. When I moved to New Zealand and came across New Selected Poems: James K. Baxter edited by Paul Millar, I felt I had struck gold. I carry it with me in my purse most days, as it is not cumbersome, and it has a selection of poetry from all of Baxter's books as well as a selection of previously unpublished works. I find myself coming back to Farmhand, where 'He has his awkward hopes, his envious dreams to yarn to […]' to later in his life, the bittersweet but undeniably beautiful He Waiata mo Te Kare where he says, 'Nobody would have given tuppence for our chances,/ Yet our love did not turn to hate.'
Plants of New Zealand by R.M.Laing and E.W.Blackwell (Whitcombe and Tombs , 1906)
Shanties by the Way: a selection of New Zealand Popular Songs and Ballads collected and edited by Rona Baily and Herbert Roth (Whitcombe and Tombs, 1967)
Hidden Camera by Zoran Zivkovic, trans. Alice Copple-Tosic, (London: Dalkey Archive, 2008)
I think I was given 'Laing and Blackwell' (as it was always called) for my 12th birthday, at the end of 1961. I would have asked for it. I had recently joined the Hamilton Junior Naturalists Club and had begun to discover 'another world' in the flora of Aotearoa, which was to be a gateway for understanding many other things about the country I lived in that no one had yet mentioned. Robert Laing and Ellen Blackwell's Plants of New Zealand was the first serious, semi-populist, reasonably comprehensive book on New Zealand plants. Ellen Blackwell, an amateur botanist in her late thirties, had met Robert Laing, Christchurch school teacher, graduate of Canterbury University College, and botanist with a special interest in marine algae, on a ship heading for New Zealand in 1903. Laing was returning from an overseas trip, Blackwell was visiting her brother Frank at Pahi in the northern Kaipara, her first (and only!) visit to New Zealand. The fruit of this meeting was the publication of the evergreen 'Laing and Blackwell' in 1906, with Ellen contributing photos (along with brother Frank) and much of the northern botanical information. The sixth edition I received had been published in 1957. It's a strange old hodge-podge of a book, with reliable basic botanical coverage, mixed with Maori 'lore' on plant use, plus some poetical diversions to William Pember Reeves and Alfred Domett. Pretty soon us budding naturalists had graduated to Lucy Moore and H.H.Allan's properly scientific Flora of New Zealand, but we never forgot our Laing and Blackwell. Ellen Blackwell returned to England after three years in New Zealand, never to return, but she left a little gem behind her. I wrote a poem called 'Te Ngahere' ('The Bush'), using my new discoveries, and next year, 1963, my first year at high school, it was published in the school magazine.
I bought Rona Bailey and Bert Roth's anthology Shanties by the Way, when I was a first year student at Auckland University in 1968. It might be my favourite New Zealand poetry anthology. Of the 85 songs, ballads, chants, rhymes, jingles, ditties, shanties, broadsides, protests, burlesques, etc. 21 are by the illustrious Anon. It's a history book and a poetry book at the same time, a collection of voices, registers and, indeed, languages of Aotearoa. When Russell Haley and I wrote our satire, Progress in the Dark, on the sordid history of Auckland city, for the Living Theatre Troupe in 1971, I raided the prohibition section of the anthology for our play:
I am a young teetotaller
And though but six years old,
Within my little breast there beats
A heart as true as gold.
Bert Roth, socialist, Viennese Jew, escapee from Hitler's Austria, declared 'enemy alien' by the New Zealand Government, became the historian of the Union movement in New Zealand; Rona Bailey, physical education teacher, dancer, communist, activist, had studied modern dance and the collecting of folk dance and song in the USA just before World War Two. Together these two created a rich record in verse and song of the story of Aotearoa – read it, sing it, and you'll get the picture!
Lisa Samuels gave me Zoran Zivkovic's novel Hidden Camera not so long ago. It's a scary, funny, dark, narratively powerful and hauntingly intoxicating tale that makes you question the very reality around you as you read. Zivkovic, who wrote his masters' thesis at Belgrade University on Arthur C. Clarke, and latterly taught there for many years, knows his Lem, his Kafka, his Bulgakov and his Gogol. Perhaps his work evokes what a Robert Louis Stevenson thriller or a Henry James ghost story in the 21st century might read like. Aren't we all being recorded, all the time? Are the narratives of us that are recorded more real than the lives we think we are living? Zivkovic is a writer who makes me want to record narratives myself, if only to fight back against the capture of ourselves, to escape the horror of the prisons we have built for ourselves.
Sam Duckor-Jones is a sculptor and poet who lives in Featherston. In 2017 he won the Biggs Poetry Prize from the International Institute of Modern Letters at Victoria University of Wellington. Victoria University press published his debut collection People from the Pit Stand Up in 2018. His website.
Murray Edmond is a playwright, poet and fiction writer; he has worked as an editor, critic and dramaturge. Several of his poetry collections have been finalists in the New Zealand Book Awards: Letters and Paragraphs, Fool Moon and Shaggy Magpie Songs. He has worked extensively in theatre including twenty years with Indian Ink on the creation of all the company's scripts. His latest poetry collection Back Before You Know was published by Compound Press in 2019.
David Eggleton is a Dunedin-based poet and writer, who was formerly the editor of Landfall. He is working on a number of projects, including a new poetry collection.
Joan Fleming is a poet, teacher, and researcher. She is the author of two books of poetry, The Same as Yes and Failed Love Poems (both with Victoria University Press), and her third book is forthcoming with Cordite Books. She has recently completed a PhD in ethnopoetics at Monash University, a project which arose out of deep family ties and ongoing relationships with Warlpiri families in Central Australia. She is the New Zealand/Aotearoa Commissioning Editor for Cordite Poetry Review and teaches creative writing from Madrid, where she currently lives. She recently performed and served as Impresario for the Unamuno Author Series Festival in Madrid, and in 2020 she will travel to Honduras for the Our Little Roses Poetry Teaching Fellowship.
Fiona Kidman has published over 30 books including novels, poetry, memoir and a play. She has received a number of awards and honours including a DNZM, OBE and the French Legion of Honour. Her most recent book This Mortal Boy won the Acorn Foundation Fiction Prize at the Ockham Book Awards 2019. She has published a number of poetry collections; her debut Honey and Bitters appeared in 1975 while her more recent collections were published by Random House: Where Your Left Hand Rests (2010) and This Change in the Light (2016).
Amy Leigh Wicks is the author of The Dangerous Country of Love and Marriage (Auckland University Press 2019) and Orange Juice and Rooftops.
Hannah Mettner is a Wellington-based poet from Gisborne. Her first collection, Fully Clothed and so Forgetful (VUP 2017), was longlisted for the 2018 Ockham New Zealand Book Awards, and won the Jessie Mackay Award for best first book of poetry. She is co-editor with Morgan Bach and Sugar Magnolia Wilson of Sweet Mammalian, an online poetry journal launched in 2014.
This entry was posted in NZ author, NZ poetry, NZ poetry book, Uncategorized and tagged Amy Leigh Wicks, David Eggleton, fiona kidman, Hannah Mettner, Joan Fleming, Murray edmond, POetry shelf questions, Sam Duckor-Jones on June 14, 2019 by Paula Green.
Poetry Shelf audio spot: Joan Fleming's 'Imprints of Water'
https://nzpoetryshelf.files.wordpress.com/2019/02/buen-retiro-park.mp3
Joan Fleming is the author of two books of poetry, The Same as Yes and Failed Love Poems (both with Victoria University Press), and her third book is forthcoming with Cordite Press in 2019. She has recently completed a PhD in ethnopoetics at Monash University, a project which arose out of deep family ties and ongoing relationships with Warlpiri families in Central Australia. Her honours include the Biggs Poetry Prize, a Creative New Zealand writing fellowship, an Australian Postgraduate Award, the Verge Prize for Poetry, and the Harri Jones Memorial Prize from the Hunter Writers Centre.
This entry was posted in NZ author, NZ poems, NZ poetry, Uncategorized and tagged Audio spot, Joan Fleming on February 21, 2019 by Paula Green.
The NZ edition of Poetry
I know I find it hard to listen.
I read too much. I often need a drink.
It isn't the world that makes us think,
it's words that we can't come up with.
Sure, I can work up fresh examples
and send them off to the committee.
But the poetry is in the bird. And in the pretty.
Bill Manhire, from 'Polly'
International poetry traffic is so often dependent upon fortuitous connections. The degree of familiarity with poetry from elsewhere is utterly paltry compared with the degree of familiarity I have with local writing. Yes I have studied American and British poetry but I am more aware of the luminous stars in these poetry constellations than the grassroot outings.
On the other hand, we are no longer dependent upon ocean voyages and the constraints of distance, but to what degree does our poetry travel (compared say with fiction)? Or our poetry conversations extend beyond our lapping tidelines.
I am acutely aware of my impoverished relations with contemporary Australian poetry. Perhaps Joan Fleming and Amy Brown could guest edit a local journal with an Australian focus? But then again our journals are often annual and offer vital but scant opportunities for local poets.
This is not the first time an overseas journal has showcased New Zealand poetry, but it is perhaps the example I am most excited by. The editors – Stephanie Burt (USA), Paul Millar (NZ) and Chris Price (NZ) – have worked hard to present a distinctive and diverse overview of our current poetry. The selected poets cross all manner of borders: age, geographical location, style, university affiliation, gender, ethnicity. This matters if we want to move beyond the legacy of white male predomination, urban bias and privileged poetry models. I cannot name a NZ journal that has achieved such movement.
Yes the five books Daisy Fried reviewed – from the fifteen 2017 publications she was sent – were all Victoria University Press. Her selection certainly does not reflect the contours of that year, and we can all stand on the sidelines and shout (or sing) about the books we loved, but I have no issue with reviews reflecting individual taste. However I do take issue that a short intro and five VUP books can respond to her opening question: 'How to characterise a national poetry?' Why would you even try! It is a personal take on five excellent books.
The rest of the journal is an altogether different joy. The effect of reading is symphonic in the different hues and chords. Every single poem lifts off the page and catches both ear and eye. Such freshness, such lightness, darkness, musicality, room to breathe, surprising arcs and links and undercurrents. I keep swaying between Anna Jackson's glorious bee poem and the flickering titles that coalesce in Nina Powles's offering or the infectious wit of James Brown, Ashleigh Young and Tim Upperton. I am pulled into the bite of Anahera Gildea, Chris Tse and then Tayi Tibble and stop in the tracks of reading. Travelling with Janet Charman and the revelatory suite makes me weep. Switching to Anne Kennedy and the momentum coils and overlaps and poetry transforms a starting point into elasticity on the line. Bill Manhire flips me over into the second stanza, and the lacework of reading – intricate yet full of holes – offers mystery, surprise, wit, curious things.
The time of breathing into clasped hands
hovering over a lighter to make a flame
not knowing
that an angry man threw his eyes into the night
the belly of his shattered father
weeping rain for separation of earth and sky
Jessie Puru from 'Matariki'
The editors did not feel beholden to poetry that targets versions of New Zealand/ Aotearoa; our poetry might do this and then again it might not. The poems have the freedom to do and be anything whether they spring from spoken-word rhythms or talkiness or thinginess or anecdotal revelations or sumptuous Baroque-detail or story or slanted humour or cutting political edges.
The poets: Anna Jackson, Kate Camp, Michele Leggott, Therese Lloyd, Jessie Puru, Essa Ranapiri, Tayi Tibble, Robert Sullivan, Kerrin P. Sharpe, Hera Lindsay Bird, Dylan Horrocks, James Brown, Murray Edmond, Jenny Bornholdt, Anne Kennedy, Bill Manhire, Nina Powles, Janet Charman, Anahera Gildea, Bernadette Hall, Vincent O'Sullivan, Courtney Sina Meredith, C.K. Stead, Chris Tse, Tim Upperton, Gregory O'Brien and John Pule, Faith Wilson, Ashleigh Young, Albert Wendt, Steven Toussaint, Erik Kennedy
This issue is a cause for celebration – I absolutely love it – and my celebration will take the form of a subscription. New Zealand poetry has been well served – congratulations!
Poetry here
everything I never asked my grandmother
I can understand but I can't speak
no one has played that piano since
New Zealand is so far away from here
let me translate for you the poem on the wall
Nina Powles from 'Some titles for my childhood memoir'
This entry was posted in NZ author, NZ poems, NZ poetry, nz poetry review, NZ Poets, Uncategorized and tagged Amy Brown, Anahera Gildea, Anna Jackson, Anne Kennedy, Ashleigh Young, Bill Manhire, Chris Price, James Brown, Janet Charman, jessie puru, Joan Fleming, Nina Powles, paul millar, Poetry Foundation, stephanie Burk, tayi tibble, Tim Upperton on March 2, 2018 by Paula Green.
Are NZ poetry reviews an endangered species?
I have a swag of poetry books from 2017 that I have not yet got to – but over the next months I am flagging them through a suite of Summer Postcards.
How important is it that our poetry books get reviewed?
Poetry books get so little attention in the media these days. NZ Books still offers a handful of poetry reviews. Not sure about Takahe. There is Landfall-on-line steered by poet Emma Neale and the occasional attention in print media (Siobhan Harvey in The Herald). For members there is the quarterly NZ Poetry Society Review. There are a few reviews at The Spin Off or in The Listener. Poetry (USA) recently did a NZ cluster and you find some in the Poetry New Zealand Annual. Pantograph Punch has supported poetry, but until they can pay reviewers a decent amount, they are no longer doing reviews.
From The Pantograph Editors:
The Hardest Call
Because of these changes, we've made the difficult decision to hit pause on publishing reviews. It's been one of the toughest decisions we've made.
During the existential crisis of 2017 (refer above) we came to the somewhat crushing realisation that in underpaying our writers (sometimes as low as $50 a review), we were contributing to a structure that systematically devalues those writers and privileges voices who can afford to write for low pay. In trying to support critical culture, we were simultaneously contributing to its decay.
It's one of the hardest decisions because it feels so contradictory: we're stopping doing one of the exact things we believe in the most.
We strongly believe in critical dialogue, and one of our areas of focus for 2018 is finding a way to bring reviewing back. We're committed to creating a sustainable pathway for future critics, so one of the things we'll be doing is creating a fund which will be dedicated to commissioning reviews. Our commitment is to be able to pay reviewers a minimum of $300 per review, and if you feel as strongly about this as we do, we invite you to donate to that fund here.
Pantograph Punch
You can read the full piece and contribute to the funding call here. They favour posting less (one a week) and building a climate of critical dialogue. This is exciting news. Bravo PP!
We are hungry for critical forums. Joan Fleming recently started a vital discussion on reviewing with her Facebook friends:
The Question of Claws
As I step into a new role at Cordite Poetry Review – that of NZ Commissioning Editor – I have been troubling my head about how critical to be of New Zealand poetry books that strike me as undeveloped. Particularly when I've admired a writer's poems in journals, and am frustrated by their book; or am struck by the first few stunning poems of a collection, which then disappointingly levels out. It is tough to be honest in a poetry culture that is so intimately small. Often in our poetry reviewing, there is gentleness where I want rigour, and there is faint praise where I want productive disagreement. We are overly careful because we are reviewing friends and colleagues. We don't want to offend. It is tricky. Do aesthetic battles push writers to better writing, or ought we to only support and encourage each other, trusting that we are all already pushing ourselves?
On the one hand, the stakes are so low: there is no money, there is no fame (except for the occasional meteoric anomaly!), and poetry is hardly a career. On the other hand, the stakes are painfully high. We are talking about our raw-edged souls on the page here. In a Facebook thread, I asked the question (provocatively worded, I suppose): "Should we be showing our claws more often?" For claws, read: Do I dare to write a thoughtful yet unfavourable review? I hope to think there is nothing in me that wants to tear down other writers because of agendas, grudges, or jealousies – but we all have our lenses and leanings, our sometimes-unconscious preferences and biases.
I, myself, am trying to thicken up my own dreadfully thin skin. A solution to this bind (and this is not an original thought – I think Ellie Catton suggested this way back) is to foster more trans-Tasman reviewing: New Zealand poets reviewing Australians, and Australians reviewing New Zealand books. At Cordite, we're doing a little of this. We have lots of NZ books on our review list. I wonder if a New Zealand publication might take up this challenge? (Pantograph Punch: I'm looking at you!)
Last week I posted a piece on my Poetry-Shelf aims to see if it was worth keeping up the blog. Is it relevant? Does it matter that I do this? I want to post poems and do reviews, interviews, news, events, musings on local and international poetry. And at times involve other people (as I have done), but in the current drive for decent payment, how can this possibly work?
I strongly believe we need a go-to-place for NZ poetry that crosses borders of all kinds. I like the idea of a mix of reviews (long and short) so that a decent number of published books catch your attention. Ha! so there is a new James Brown out! Or Joan Fleming is reading from a new book at TimeOut (if only!).
To have a long review of your book where the reviewer has paid utmost attention is ideal. But to have no reviews and feel like your book has drifted into the ether is heartbreaking.
I posted this on Joan's Facebook feed:
I review books on my blog that I love. My life is too short to absorb the toxic fallout of writing about books that I don't love. I aim to celebrate and explore what a book of poetry might do.
I so often read negative reviews that incense me because the writers seems straitjacketed by a narrow reading and clear bias (I don't like experimental poetry but here I am reviewing it kinda thing!). Or poets and reviewers who insist there are certain things a poem must do, and if it doesn't, then it is a failure.
I am not afraid to put my claws out when an important book warrants it – as with the AUP literary omnibus. That attracted utter venom towards me on social media and affected me in all kinds of other ways – but I would still do it. My doctoral thesis (Italian) challenged the way the academy is driven to deconstruct and tear apart, rather than forge connections and produce different intellectual models of thought.
That said, in a world that continues to privilege the status of white men, we still need claws to unpick the ideas that shape us and that we so easily become immune to and accept.
Ellie Catton once used the word kindness in talking to students about writing. Our PM has used the word in view of governing a nation. I want to review out of kindness. That doesn't mean I will say things I don't mean when I talk about your poetry. It doesn't mean I only say good things. It means I pay attention to the fact a human being has written it. It means I work hard to find path ways through a book that might present itself with shuttered windows on foreign pathways on a first reading.
Sometimes the bridge between the reader and a book fails. When I can't cross that bridge, I am going to share a book where I can.
I believe we can have critical discussions and write out of state of kindness.
This may not be the majority point of view, but it is my view. I have almost finished a book that rescues some of the women from the past who have been misread, unread, muted and sidelined by men with their claws out because in their view the women were not writing poetry.
We, as women poets, have come a long way since our banishment to the shadows, but things are still not ideal. So I will continue to be part of the small (and it is SO very small) group of writers who go public on what they love (outside institutions, financial reward and so on, so beholden to nobody) because I want you (in the widest reach a pronoun is capable of) to fall in love with poetry and what a poem can do.
As I said at the Poetry & Essay conference in Wellington in December this is a matter of JOY!
This entry was posted in NZ author, NZ poems, NZ poetry, nz poetry review, Uncategorized and tagged Emma Neale, Joan Fleming, Pantograph Punch, The Spin Off on February 25, 2018 by Paula Green.
A new poem from Joan Fleming: 'Was the night before'
Was the night before
[because fast and faster aren't necessarily
[this lucky and the lights burning her feet like
[angry because people are saying "happy hols" and the jingling
[was the first sign the roast was too long in the
[wondering if burnt feet stay burnt like
[decorations and shoved them onto the coffee table like here
[dry streets don't you remember how we always
[someone is always closing them again, "it's the flies"
[her favourite, marshmallows liquefying into the mashed
[a skin on it because we left it too long or
[not the smell that sets the alarms off, it's the smoke's
[makes my soul slack out she said, those tunes you want to claw your
["over here" said the Santa, because where were all the little
[crackling, that's my favourite part even though my mouth can't
[if I'm going to do it, I'm not going to do it wearing
[be always telling you shut the
[not the family I thought I
[happens when I lit the pine
[bauble just comes right apart in your hand
©Joan Fleming 2017
Joan was one of the highlights for me at the recent Poetry & the Essay conference at Victoria University. Her paper raised important questions on borrowing, acknowledging, taking risks, building conversations, processing different ways of doing and being, especially of being white woman alongside aborigine women. Having had a taste of the poems, I can't wait for a book to emerge. And I just loved listening to her reading.
This poem, however, is a little – as Joan said – slightly prickly toast to Christmas.
This entry was posted in NZ author, NZ poems, NZ poetry, Uncategorized and tagged Joan Fleming on December 12, 2017 by Paula Green.
A week of poems: Joan Fleming's 'The mattress'
several hot
winters ago
on the dune
is a fantastical
fevering
in the coastal
with their backs
to the reddirt
is being
eaten by
fantasise
of making
such an object
with its look
of casual
its tessellate
its industrial
its coil
and cushion
insides
rupturing
gorgeously
its once-
scuppered
its purpose
brindling
its sense of history
(perfect)
is possible
in the white
of the gallery
(not so much
in Nyirripi
Papunya
Kintore)
the sorry
kardiya
Art Mattress
and convolutes
back at camp
bedframe
as a butcher's table
then later
we sleep
©Joan Fleming
This entry was posted in NZ author, Uncategorized and tagged a week of poems, Joan Fleming on December 22, 2016 by Paula Green.
A week of poems: Joan Fleming's 'The kids'
Thousand apologies but I had to take this poem down as I couldn't get the format right on the blog (crazy to have tried!) and my screen shots didn't work in all browsers.
I am posting another fabulous Joan-Fleming poem instead.
This entry was posted in NZ author, NZ poems, NZ poetry, Uncategorized and tagged a week of poems, Joan Fleming on December 22, 2016 by Paula Green.