http://www.stuff.co.nz/national/crime/2337623/Veitch-author-of-own-misfortune
I’m not famous. If you’re reading this, you probably know me. If you don’t know me personally, you may not have heard of me before- in fact, most people haven’t. I might not recognise you from, say, a newspaper editor. But I’m a very important person- as are you. We’re important because we’re members of the public, and we recognise Tony Veitch. Tony Veitch is a former New Zealand sports presenter who has been convicted of a violent act. As he is a public figure, we, the public, were apparently entitled to be judge, jury and executioner for him. The facts that you were expected to use for your decision? What ever you saw and read in the media. That could be a headline, an article, or days of media coverage. As to your jurisdiction, you were entitled to punish who ever you considered at fault, for the rest of their public life. Was there anyone else feeling uncomfortable about this?
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Filed under: Poetry
She rides taxis for free
through government subsidy
She talks to strangers when
She is supposed to
She sleeps uneasily
Has forgotten about another girls’
used tampon found stuffed under the sofa cushions in the lounge after a one night stand with an army boy because
Earth’s signature spin delivered her
Toga clad
Long hair trailing beneath
Spiralling through the night half cut
To the
“It’s how we’re drinking” scene
She receives the sympathy of strangers
She drinks copious cups of tea
She dreams uneasily
Carries memories around in sound bitten press statements
is
absent from the archival image of a station wagon and its makeshift awning
her form filleted in a
knife exhibited
her anonymous contribution
an admonition
from foreign shores as to the
inappropriate apparition of
serious crime in
other people’s holidays -
long hair trailing forlornly through the aperture of a hiker’s tent ten years earlier notwithstanding
It’s obviously how we’re camping
it’s how she’s writing
long legged words striding out in bare skin
It’s
how she’s reading
Head bowed as if her mouth works in silent prayer asking for it
It’s
how she’s too young and too stupid and her skirt is too short
Or she’s old enough to know better
She’s simply not helping herself or she’s walking home alone
When obviously she shouldn’t
She’s just a crazy cat woman gone missing
Some poor old lady attacked in her own home
Some saintly teacher screaming in an isolated rural classroom
Some burka figure in yet another war zone
Or perhaps
She’s
Just
A
Whore.
Your stoned silence
washed out evidence spilling into the shower plug-hole
words served up in whispers
Your name
just a necessary intonation
dressed demurely as a warning
Exploited
As if I am suddenly now wiser than before and I wish
Somehow
Serving it up in literary form would deliver you from the cliché that it is
But this has happened for centuries and you’re
one
more
sentence
One
more
name that’s gone on
I can
Capture your long blond hair limp and lifeless and the way your eyes wouldn’t meet mine
On this page and I can
Read them out loud
Again and again
So that your position as victim takes shape
Absolving guilt in a hushed moment contemplating THAT shame
Aestheticising violence
My voice colludes with a verb-
subjects you to scrutiny
we don’t say
He-verb-period
We write you in as subject
Giving the awful deed
perennial relevance
We look you not quite in the face.
We say
I remember her name
As if
She remains: A statistic; defined in the past tense
Filed under: Poetry
Your imprint
where you sat, once
has lifted,
your image remaining
unchanging
from pixels pushed into position.
At a distance
you are almost moving
-my eyes slit
I turn my head,
refuse to see you
through periphery’s dynamic lens
unless you shift:
thus, you slide through memory,
as I prefer it.
It is unfortunate
I now see you
lucidly
shadows lending clarity
to that last encounter.
Filed under: Prose, Public Announcement | Tags: fiction, NZ, Spectrum 5, writing
- Spectrum 5, An Anthology of New Graduate Writers
A new collection of short stories by University of Auckland Fiction Writing students explores the myriad myths and realities, pains and rewards, fears and desires of life in contemporary New Zealand.
Spectrum 5 is the fifth edition of an anthology that showcases the talent of the University’s burgeoning fiction writers. The first collection, published in 2004, was the brainchild of acclaimed writer and Department of English Professor Witi Ihimaera, who regularly heads up the 3rd-year Fiction Writing paper.
Associate Professor of English Lisa Samuels calls Spectrum 5 “a stellar anthology … bristling with life”.
Emily Perkins, an internationally respected novelist and Senior Tutor in the Department of English, concurs. She guided the Fiction Writing class in their work on Spectrum 5, overseeing the 12-student committee that spent hours vetting and editing submissions. Emily notes that the collection features stories that range from terrorism, snakes and suburbia to time travellers, arsonists and families.
“Spectrum 5 gives us a wonderful range, from inventive comedy to stories full of fear and longing. Teaching these students was stimulating and fun – they responded to the form with great enthusiasm and curiosity, and I think you can see that delight reflected in the collection. From a really strong year, the stories in this book are the cream of the crop,” she says.
I was one of the managing editors of Spectrum 5 and was responsible for seeing the project through from start to finish. One of my short stories is in there, and I was privileged enough to MC the launch last Thursday at the University of Auckland. If you’d like a copy of the book, click the image and buy it online, or visit Unity Books in High St, Auckland, or UBS Ltd on Alfred St, Auckland.
There will be readings from the book at Lounge 5, and Spectrum 5 will also be featuring soon on the Arts on Sunday, Radio New Zealand. Check out the Spectrum 5 blog.
Filed under: Personal
007
007: Licensed to Pt Chev
Able to kneel on request
Takes a turn for the worse Northwest
North being direct
If being five
Returning
With ice creams melting
Mum’s change
With runaway dogs gone roaming
Is accurate a compass
Somebody’s backyard
Thrown head first onto the street
Sundressed formica table
Left out for rain to wear
Plant pot arrangement
Corrugated iron accent fence
Kitsch of brick monument
That’s when I saw the apiarist
Modern day Edmund Hillary
Climbing
Out of a Toyota Starlet
Blue Circa 1990s
This isn’t
B e e k e e p e r P a w el K o w a l c z y k i n U p p e r S i l e s i a n E t h n o g r a p h i c P a r k
This is
Parked on the side of the road
Veiled against the threat of
Angry bloody insects in frantic orbit
Brush flailing
Trying to
Knock the buggers off
I walk past
She climbs back behind the wheel
Drives off
Hive half boxed in the back seat
Half swarming into the city towards me
So I keep walking
Cops wailing past the both of us
Helmet blind bee struck motorist
Pedestrian half-drunk on cough mix
Thinking
The state of our suburbs
The architecture’s shit
POST SCRIPT OF SCRIPT TO SCREEN
Tena koe
Or tena koutou
Hello one and all
I am of a tribe you do not know
One now remembered by housing projects and shopping malls
profit mountains and legal avenues and oil slick seas
And fictionally accurate movies
Defined urban
By what is not available
Under jurisdiction
Under the table
To the Underprivileged
To the lost generations
For our children are lost
Between two stories
They are lost
They are stumbling over the kerb with their eyes fixed on a digital screen
They are milling around Queen St
They are falling out of bars laughing and crying
They are huffing on bags and tagged high on corner dairies
They are lying under bus shelters for white people to write about
They are under hooded sweatshirts on the news on TV
They are waving guilt like a gun demanding your money
Give me your money
Your fucking cash
You got a dollar, mate?
All I’ve got is a blanket.
Well I walked out the door
On that speech
Went looking instead for poetry.
STORM IN A TEACUP
I tried to catch
what fell -
your
hand
on
my
shoulder,
slipped
-in words
this verse being
what was left
broken
no truth in it
READING
History
pinned
to cream scene
subject
to sterile slip
of digital time:
Newton to Putin
sold out like so many
school galas
BBQ meat,
afterthought to
after hours audience.
Murmurs rise
in clouds of tar
of arsenic
Clouds pattern
in the shape of speech
Conversations
held captive
in cylinders
twist
off into the
breath of opinion
inhaling it.
You stand awkwardly
We pull applause from our sleeves.
Choop!
In the plosive
choop
-before-karatoom
poppa said
silence!
no more
he-said-she-said
no more
it’s-not-fair;
forced calm of
a putting green-
soft breeze
held breath;
choop!
the rough navigated
forgotten secrets
photographs
disappear,
those lice races
that cross country escape
soiled silk underwear
relegated
flag placed
where one may not tread
lost on my tongue
borscht
peroshki
sweet sherry
ashes
Great Aunts in Auschwitz
dialysis
-choop!
our silent heritage
(never really knew what it meant)
Different Ways
In the block
hand to hand
status spins
into nothing
aching step back
off pressure
Set free
Notes swim out
oblivious
severed strokes tapped
out
in
muted beat
Waves sway
with time
turn away
Hooked
she returns
Measured steps
strung out on a stave
commands float
at her hemline
salt water whispers
stinging melody
