Highlight: Beate Jones

Waikato

Waikato,
You are not the river of my birth
But on your way home
You touched my heart
And now my feet, free from their native soil,
Are growing tender roots into your lovely banks.

Flanked by my dogs
I pause and watch you flow beneath.
I see a shoal of fish –
Dancing in river green –
Turn into river birds
In the reflection of the native trees.

A Tui sings nearby.
The voices of Maori men
Float through the autumn air
As they discuss some native plants.
Their rolling r’s remind me
Of my Southern German home.

Waikato – River of my heart.
My roots are drinking of your water.
Your soil, your sun, yours sounds
Are home to me.
The dogs are getting restless.
Let’s go, I say, let’s go.

*

Beate Jones, a Bavarian by birth, lived  for seven years in Munich, where she studied English and French at the Ludwig-Maximilian University, before following her New Zealand husband-to-be to Hamilton, New Zealand.  She has been living in Hamilton ever since. While her first impression of Hamilton, after having lived in Munich, was not entirely positive, the city and its people, like the river Waikato, have wormed their way into her heart and these days she feels very protective of her elected home, which she feels offers some of the best possible compromises of living a city life in an almost rural way.

Beate has been teaching German for more than 20 years at the University of Waikato. She is currently enrolled in a PhD in Literary Translation at Victoria University in Wellington. Writing poetry, short stories and the translation from German to English of a range of texts have been an interesting and challenging  sideline to her work.

The poem Waikato was written after one of her walks by the river, which take place almost daily and provide her and her two border collies not only with the necessary physical exercise but also with the beauty and the meditative quiet the Hamilton Gardens and the river walks can provide at any time of the year and in any kind of weather.

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Highlight: Lyrikline

Tags

Übersetzungen, Berlin, Blog, culture, Gedichte, languages, literature, poetry, Sprachen, translation

Poetic translations from Berlin into more than 50 languages

For years now, the literaturWERKstatt berlin has been staging an annual Summer Night’s Poetry Festival called “Weltklang”. This is the largest poetry event in Germany featuring poets from home and abroad. Parallel to that, the literaturWERKstatt berlin has set up a poetry platform on the Internet which regularly presents collections of poetry read by the authors themselves: Lyrikline.org

Lyrikline’s declared intention is to exploit the multimedia experience the Internet offers (text, image, sound) so as to increase the dissemination, popularity, reception and sales of poetry – and the translation of poems: Started as a German-language poetry platform, the webpage itself now opens in 5 language versions: german, english, french, slovakian and arabic and includes poems and translations inover 50 languages, with more than 10.000 translated poem online, some links:

• Lyrikline website in English
• Latest voices
• German poets at lyrikline
• Lyrikline blog

Highlight: Mike Crowl

Backpfeifengesicht

English speakers have no word for
a face that badly needs a punch.

The German compound word is
Backpfeifengesicht

Which could easily seem to mean
a face like a smelly drain

Though transliterally it’s close to
a back-pipe face, which isn’t

Complementary. And
on the face of it, the word looks like

Bagpipes make me sick¸though
since I have a friend who’s learning

To play the bagpipes, using
Backpfeifengesicht

In a pretended translation
seems likely to bring me to a

Place where I might well have
a face that badly needs a punch.

*

Mike Crowl is a New Zealand writer whose musical, Grimhilda! (which he composed and co-wrote), was performed in Dunedin in late April-early May this year. He writes on several blogs. His poems more often have a tongue-in-cheek flavour more than a serious one. He has also been experimenting with more traditional poetic forms over the last year.

Of his poem Backpfeifengesicht, Mike says: I discovered the word, Backpfeifengesicht, while reading Twitter. It struck me as an ideal word to weave a humorous poem around. My ‘guide to pronunciation’ in my blog post  about this poem is very approximate.

Highlight: Vaughan Gunson

dialogue

she did an impression of a German comedian.

I did an impression of a French mime.

she explained herself.

I said, “I didn’t know him.”

she said he was really funny.

leaning her face close to mine
with her eyes very wide,
“Berlin,” she said, “is a horrible city.”

she was from Hanover,
studied in Hamburg,
second richest city in Germany
after Munich.

“I know Hamburg—The Beatles.”

“they’ve built a memorial square.”

“I wouldn’t want to see that.”
“what’s wrong with Berlin?” I asked.

“it’s still divided. I don’t like it.”

“isn’t everywhere divided?”

“no, not here.”

“you think?”

“yes, I love it here.”

she told me a joke
I didn’t understand.

*

Vaughan Gunson is a writer living in Hikurangi, Northland. His poems have been published in a number of publications in New Zealand. He teaches art history at NorthTec in Whangarei and is the curator of the campus gallery. More of Vaughan’s poetry can be found at falling away from blue.

Highlight: Kay McKenzie Cooke

picking up feathers

You want to make things
– sew a home-made skirt
from my green pinny, make me
a herb garden – which
you achieved on one of our more
windless autumn days
before you both left, you and my son
pushing the plants you bought
into earth  – corriander,
parsley, mint and one
you didn’t know the English word for

until we got out our English-German
Dictionary, discovered it was rocket;
in German, Rucola. You make a chain
of daisies for the van, for good luck.
You want to make feather earrings.
You want to see all
of New Zealand. You were eight
when the Wall came down.
You tell me bits
about your childhood
on the Baltic coast,

about your parents’ old car
a Trabant. A Trabant? I said,
Funny – my Grandad’s car,
the one he owned
just before he died,
I’m pretty sure was a Trabant.
What colour was your one?
Light blue, you said. I said, Same!
But they were all that colour,
you said, light-blue
and made from paper.

You walk as light as a bird,
as strong as a lion. The morning
my son and you leave in the van,
I heard your voice as if I was hearing
the voice of a daughter and yesterday
while walking, I started picking up feathers
lost by seagulls in the grass
of playing fields. Only two days
away and already
I have forgotten your voice
how it sounds. How kiwi

your German accent is becoming.
For example how you say ‘bed’
the way you hear us saying it.
“I’m off to bid now. Good-night”,
you say. Ready for you to make
into earrings, I place the feathers,
soft, grey and white,
on a windowsill where they float
weightless, full of the light
and the distance
of a home away from home.

*

Author Commentary on the poem

Our oldest son is married to E. from Japan. They have two children
whom they are bringing up with a knowledge of two cultures and two
languages. We have visited them twice now in Japan, and E. (as well as
her wider family and friends) have visited us here in New Zealand.

Nearly half a year ago, our son was in Colombia and met a young woman
from Germany. That young woman is now his partner. Our son recently
returned to New Zealand, bringing Jenny with him.

Consequently even more windows and doors to different cultures and
languages have been opened. Within all the families involved, the
welcoming in of these two young women from foreign countries has
helped join together and heal previous generations and their
historical memories. Our friends laughingly refer to us as ‘The United
Nations’.

Jenny and I have found a common bond in writing. She confessed she
couldn’t really understand poetry that was written in English. (Poetry
it seems is a little more ‘slippery’ to translate than prose).
However, she read the poem I wrote about / for her, ‘picking up
feathers’, and loved it. She said she could understand every word.

Jenny has a blog written in Deutsch which you can visit here

*

Kay McKenzie Cooke is a writer who lives in Dunedin. She has had two
books of poetry published: Feeding the Dogs (OUP. 2002) and Made
for Weather (OUP 2007). She is in the process of compiling her third
poetry book, called Born to a Red-headed Woman. She is also writing
a novel which is very loosely based on her family tree.

You can read her blog here and you can find ‘picking up feathers’ on her blog here.

Highlight: Christopher Kloeble

Being Honest

An essay on writing

Let’s start by being honest: When I first decided to choose the topic “Why I Write The Way I Do” it was because of one reason: I once already had written an essay about that and thought it would mean less work in Iowa and more time to focus on my next novel.

But things have changed. After making friends with writers and non-writers from all over the world (plus Iowa), after running each day along the Iowa River, after visiting so many cultural events in Iowa City and elsewhere, after being challenged to sing the forbidden German anthem, witnessing cowboys fighting off the bad Indians in Fort Madison, shocking Americans by telling them that I walked to Sycamore Mall, got soaked in down-pouring rain because I dared to walk to Sycamore Mall, laughed my head off among Amish people, met a biology teacher who doesn’t believe in evolutionary theory, called four fire trucks in the middle of the night, learned a lot about the relationship between men and women in Egypt and was called daddy by Gabriel, after all that, I felt and feel the desire to honor this most intriguing time I’ve spent here by writing something new for the last IWP panel.

So: Why do I write the way I do?

Honestly: I don’t know.

Isn’t this something writers usually get asked by critics and academics? I even think it‘s dangerous to spend too much time thinking about it because I might not like the conclusion. I’m sure, most of you know what happens if you lie in bed and start thinking about falling asleep: You don’t fall asleep. The same happens to me when I start analyzing my writing: I can’t write anymore.
Therefore, I dare to cross out the last four words of the topic and will pretend the question is: Why do I write?

The short answer to this is simple: Because I want to be loved. That sounds good, doesn’t it. That sounds pretty honest.

But, as far as I can tell, writers aren’t loved that much. There will always be more people around that hate their writing (and them) than supporters. If writers do what they do only because they want to be loved, then someone should tell them that there are hundreds of thousands of better possibilities to achieve this.

There has to be more about writing.

When I was a young boy I once saw my mother making notes while she was talking on the phone. I had witnessed this before. But this time was different. I envied her, I wanted to be able to do that, too: Taking a pen, moving it over paper and drawing something that looked like a picture without actually being one. In the following weeks I filled endless pages scribbling, I painted signs that no one could read. Not even me. But it felt like writing. It felt important.

In elementary school, when I was able to read and write a bit, I found happiness in lists. I wasn’t much into books. I lacked focus for literature, I rarely ever made it to the end of a story. I preferred comics. My parents supported that kind of hobby, hoping I would sooner or later lose interest in it and grab a book by my own free will. Plus, at least I was reading text bubbles.
These comics were the first things I listed, and were the only thing I wrote besides what I had to write in school. I remember this deeply satisfying feeling. The fact that I was writing was important, what I was writing was not. Soon I listed other things as well. Everything was put to paper: “Collection albums”, “Commodore Games”, “stuff” (including “29 mini divers”, “1 water necklace”, “6 mini transportation machines”, “3 Batman cards”). Even the ingredients of canned soups. Everything needed to be listed. Sometimes in capital letters, sometimes in red, sometimes with high lighters, sometimes on sticky notes, sometimes underlined, sometimes copied. Last but not least I drew a map of my room and marked with arrows where everything was, which posters were hanging on the walls, and also: Where I kept the lists that listed all that.

Once I had listed everything I could think of, I looked for a new task. I started taking notes about my classmates. I divided them into two obvious groups: boys and girls. On the far left I wrote down her or his name, next to their grade for “Friendliness”, and after that, the grade for “Evilness” and finally the overall grade, which could go from “Super good” (A) to “Alright” (C) all the way to “Yuck, terrible” (F). Some of the grades I crossed out. This was because sometimes classmates, especially female ones, who weren’t content with their grades, would beg me to give them a better one. Usually I gave in (as long as they begged long enough). Additionally I listed the phone numbers of my classmates and demanded them to sign my list. Only very few were okay with that. To convince them I wrote on the bottom of the page: Everyone who signs correctly will get something sometime and everyone who doesn’t won’t get anything.

And still I was thrilled by writing. It was everything to me. I created my own magazine. The first issue was titled: “the nutty one”. Above that it said: Everything inside is superb! But once again I was only attracted by the act of writing. I stole most of the content. A satirical text from MAD-Magazine and riddles of the Mickey Mouse Magazine, walkthroughs for Zelda from the Nintendo Club Magazine. I copied the self-made pages in my father’s office and sold them at school for an impressive five Deutsch-Marks. Every magazine in the supermarket would have cost half the price. My classmates didn’t mind. Motivated by their interest I produced additional issues. And added a new title: NONTE (Which doesn’t mean anything in German either. I remember only trying to employ a word I had never heard before. I wanted to be original!)

That’s how I continued.
I wrote to write.

I believe there’s an archivist in every writer. When I write, I list ideas and memories and things I observed in my head, choose only a few of them and put them together on paper. Of course, I also want to tell a story and not only fill blank pages. But, honestly, what really keeps me going is the deep desire to put one word after the other. Maybe I think much longer about what word that might be, but in the end I’m still writing lists. And I do it out of a simply urge: Because I need to.

*

Christopher Kloeble (novelist, playwright, screen writer) born 1982 in Munich/Germany, studied in Dublin, at the German Creative Writing Program Leipzig and at the University for Film and Television in Munich. He has written for Süddeutsche Zeitung, DIE ZEIT and tageszeitung. His plays U-Turn and Memory have been staged in major theatres in Vienna, Munich, Heidelberg and Nuremberg. For his first novel Amongst Loners he won the Juergen Ponto-Stiftung prize for best debut 2008; his second book A Knock at the Door was published 2009. The third, Almost everything very fast, appeared in March 2012. His first movie script, Inclusion, was produced in 2011 and received a lot of attention.

Highlight: Jenny Powell

Indigo Lady

Her story is written on
every
line

life lined in black on
her
hands

hands full of secrets in
the
skin

skin of indigo stains set
and
dyed.

Indigo leaves leave their mark
powder to paste, lye, lime, rice
wine and the urine of young
boys.

Baths simmering blue black
in copper cauldrons, hands
dipping hemp twice a day
each day.

After the lunar month
every fibre is full
of colour.
Ears droop and drag
silver hoops looped
in double rings
letting her lobes loose
into the hills.

Her face is a folk song,
every line has been sung
in Sa Pa for centuries.

Her chorus breathes in
the blue cloth of night
and moon mist draped

over these high hills
where love hides.

~

With Hao Overlooking Bac Ha

Fans of rice paddies
shyly reveal
the heart of Viet Nam
through a hundred shades
of green.

Mists of finest silk
shyly reveal
the heart of Viet Nam
through a hundred sequins
of rain.

Hands so long apart
shyly reveal
the heart of Viet Nam
through a hundred brush strokes
of one touch.

~

Marble Mountains

Here you will find
your answers

How did he know
I had questions?

Here is
the universe
Thuy Son
water
Moc Son
wood
Hoa Son
fire
Kim So
metal
Tho Son
earth

Mountains
of marble and marvel

The Sanctuary

A blaze of yellow
monks
thankful
in prayer
for the yellow
orchids

The air holds
its breath

calmly

The Caves

Sacred with the scars
of bullets
a new holiness
punctured
into stone
Mandarins guard
the prayers
Hindu
Buddha
Cham

Huyen Khong Cave

Cathedral door
to choirs of shrines
incense heavy
with time

light falling
from the sky
from every heaven
spirits sing
silently

Hai Dai Tower

The ocean view
the breeze
‘I wave my hands
over an unlimited
distance
I don’t know who
will be
beside me.’

*

Poetry from other places – from Jenny Powell’s collection Viet Nam: a poem journey (HeadworX 2010)

Jenny Powell is a Dunedin poet and secondary school literacy coordinator. She has written five individual collections of poetry, Sweet Banana Wax Peppers, Hats, Four French Horns, Viet Nam: a poem journey and Ticket Home. She has worked with other poets to produce two collaborative collections, Double Jointed and Locating the Madonna. She is part of the CD and book New New Zealand Poets and can be found on the 12 Taonga of Aotearoa site. She has been a finalist in the UK 2008 and 2009 Aesthetica Creative Arts Competition, short listed for the 2009 UK Plough Poetry Prize, runner up in the 2010 UK Mslexia Poetry Competition and a finalist in the 2011 Wales Poetry Competition.

Highlight: Diana Menefy

For this week’s highlight, we are pleased to offer an excerpt from award-winning children’s writer Diana Menefy. This is the opening chapter of Shadow of the Boyd, HarperCollins 2010

*

CHAPTER 1

January 10^th 1810, on the City of Edinburgh – anchored in the Bay of Islands, New Zealand

They are all dead. All the crew are dead except for me.

And I’d probably be dead too if it wasn’t for Mr Berry rescuing us – Mrs Morley, baby Mary, little Betsy and me. We’re safe now on the City of Edinburgh and soon we’ll sail for home.

The City of Edinburgh is a barque and smaller than the Boyd – a lot older too and not in such good condition – before the fire that was. There are already two apprentices on board: Mr Berry says I’m to share their duties, but he also said that whenever things are quiet he expected me to report to the great cabin and write my account of what happened.

I don’t like writing, but he wants my story for Mr Brown, the owner the Boyd. Mr Berry writes every day and he reckons if I do it like that, a bit at a time, it will be easier. I wrote those two sentences – and then I couldn’t think what to say next. I was still staring at the blank page an hour later when Mr Berry came back.

‘Start at the beginning with your name,’ he said. ‘Tell me about the voyage – just the important bits until you get to when the trouble started.’

So that’s what I’m doing.

My name is Thomas Davidson. I come from Romford, London. I went to sea as an apprentiss on the brigantine Boyd early in the summer of 1809. Da paid my indenture to the Boyd’s owner, Mr George Brown, and I promised to faithfully serve him while being taught the business of a seaman. I was proud to belong to the Boyd. She was a fine ship, a three-decker with two masts, Thames built and top rated.

There were three of us apprentices, John Bowen who was in his second year and Will Green new like me. John took us down to the fo’c’sle to stow our sea-chests. The air was musty, the light dim and I was to share a hammock with John who was on the opposite watch. He must have noticed the dismayed expression on my face because he laughed. Then John showed us around the ship, starting with the empty hold and finishing on the quarterdeck where we were put to work caulking the deck.

We sailed from London on the full tide early on March 3^rd 1809. Will and I were on the larboard watch under Mr Strunk the first mate. As the ship moved down the river I stopped work to watch the buildings slip by.

‘Stop slackin’ there.’ Bosun’s voice caught me by surprise. I dropped back down to the deck and carried on pounding the caulking cotton into the seams between the deck and hull with the iron. Will was using the mallet not far from me. As Bosun moved away Will looked up and grinned.

‘Do you think we’ll ever get the tar off our fingers?’

‘Better tar than ink. I’d hate to be cooped up inside all day like Da is.’

‘Yeh. Me too. I want to see the world.’ Will looked up at the sailors on the foot ropes by the yards. ‘I wonder how long it’ll be before we get up there,’ he said.

I caught the words drifting down: ‘Yo! Ho! Away to sea we’ll go…’ and with the wind flicking my hair, the slap of the water against the hull the adventure started.

My good mood lasted until we hit open waters, when the heave of the ocean had me clinging to the side.

Over the next two days I reached until my throat was raw and my ribs ached. Between watches I lay on my hammock longing for the quiet comfort of my own bed. The ship never stopped shouting – creaking timbers, the wind booming in the canvas and the rattle of the blocks from the deck. On top of that the bell rang every half hour, even through the night, starting at the beginning of the watch with one ding and building to eight at the end.  I would doze off, then jerk awake with the ring. At eight bells when the watch changed I’d stagger up on deck while John headed for the hammock. He slapped me on my shoulder as he passed, told me the sickness would go and I’d get my sea legs soon. I didn’t believe him.

By the time we dropped anchor at Yarmouth on the Isle of Wight two days later I was ready to abandon ship. Will insisted that I’d feel better once I’d eaten. He was right. We’d stopped at Yarmouth to load a contingent of soldiers with their gear and supplies. Will and I watched as they marched on board – thirty-three of them, their buttons shining, all wearing tall black hats and long grey coats and carrying knap sacks. Will sniggered and the soldier at the back turned to glare at us. He didn’t look much older than me. The officer in front bellowed orders and the soldiers halted on the quarterdeck and stood at ease.

‘Looks like a stove-pipe to me,’ Will said, as some of the men removed their hats.

‘With a feather on top.’ I grinned, happy to be feeling better. We were close to the young soldier and he obviously heard our comments. He swung around to face us.

‘Awa’ an’ bile yer heid, Sassenach!’

‘Just jokin’,’ Will said, taking a step back.

‘Good to see you lads making friends.’ Mr Strunk had come up behind us. “Green, Davidson, you can give a hand to stow some of this gear. Captain Cameron and Lieutenants Pike and Wright will be in the spare cabin below the quarterdeck. You can deliver the trunks there.’

‘Yes, sir.’

It took a day to load and store all the supplies. The rank and file soldiers were bunked ‘tween decks, their equipment stashed in every available space there. I thought it was strange that the hold was left empty until John told me our next stop would be to pick up a load of convicts.

By the time we sailed again my stomach had settled and the weaving of the ship, the noise, even the ship’s bell had dropped into the background. Walking around the capstan singing a shanty as we weighed the anchor I felt like part of the crew for the first time.

‘This is the life,’ I said to Will who was next to me. Will nodded. His face was red with exertion, his black hair blowing to the side in the breeze. That evening while we sat on our sea-chests in the fo’c’sle, eating a boiled mush of beef, potatoes and turnips, we found out that the soldiers were there to act as guards, to keep us sailors safe.

 

*

Diana Menefy was born in Christchurch, New Zealand, but has lived in rural Northland for the last forty years. She started writing and was first published in the late 1970s. Since then, Diana has had stories and articles for both children and adults published in magazines and newspapers. Her major work has been seven non-fiction books and two junior novels. The last novel Shadow of the Boyd (HarperCollins, 2010) was a finalist in the New Zealand Post Children’s Book Awards in 2011 and won the prestigious LIANZA Esther Glen Medal that year.

Diana has her master’s degree in education (specialising in children’s literature) and tutors part-time on the online applied writing programme at NorthTec. She is a member of the New Zealand Book Council’s Writers in Schools programme, the Northland delegate on the national council of NZSA(PEN Inc) and the Northland representative of Storylines CLFNZ.

A farmer’s wife, mother and grandmother, Diana enjoys researching history and then bringing it alive for readers. She is currently working on a children’s novel set in the old silver mines at Puhipuhi in the early 1890s.