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The very talented Tim Jones has recently published a new novella and kindly agreed to a blog interview.
Congratulations on your new novella, ‘Landfall’. I can’t help noticing it bears the same name as a certain NZ literary journal. Is there a connection?
Connection, guv? That was right out – I deny that completely!
There is in fact a connection, in that both the title of the novella and, I believe, the title of the journal both refer to Allen Curnow’s 1942 poem “Landfall in Unknown Seas”, which was then set to music by Douglas Lilburn:
Simply by sailing in a new direction
You could enlarge the world.
… which is a not an attitude that finds much favour in the world of my novella.
What’s the novella about?
I think the blurb does a reasonable job of summarising that:
When the New Zealand Navy torpedoes a Bangladeshi river ferry full of refugees fleeing their drowning country, Nasimul Rahman is one of the few survivors. But even if he can reach the shore alive, he has to make it past the trigger-happy Shore Patrol, set up to keep the world’s poor and desperate at bay.
Donna is a new recruit to the Shore Patrol. She’s signed on mainly because of her friend Mere, but also because it’s good to feel she’s doing something for her country. When word comes through that the Navy has sunk a ship full of infiltrators, and survivors may be trying to make their way ashore, it sounds like she might finally see some action.
(from http://paperroadpress.co.nz/shortcuts/shortcuts-track-1/#5)
To get more of a flavour, there is also a sample extract you can read for free: http://paperroadpress.co.nz/2015/08/01/free-excerpt-landfall-tim-jones/
Sounds intriguing! What defines something as a novella?
The good folks who administer the Hugo Awards, who as I’m sure we’ll agree are the ultimate arbiters of all such matters, define a novella as a story of between seventeen thousand five hundred (17,500) and forty thousand (40,000) words
(from http://www.thehugoawards.org/hugo-categories/)
So, in Hugo Awards terms (a boy can dream!) “Landfall”, which comes in at a tick under 11,000 words, is actually a novelette – happily, however, it met the requirements that Paper Road Press was looking for when it called for novella submissions.
In less mathematical terms, I think of a novella as a novel on a restricted diet, rather than as a longer short story. Novellas are like novels boiled down to the main plot and a few central characters. In my case, there are two main characters and for the most part the action is confined to the same location over a short span of time.
How is writing a novella different from writing a short story or a novel?
It doesn’t take years and years to finish the bloody thing! (Well, that may tell you something about my experience to date of writing novels…)
Although, having said that, the seeds of this novella were in a short story called “Pilot” that I’d had several cracks at writing over the years without success – I had three different partially completed drafts lying around. Each of these was from the point of view of a single character, Nasimul Rahman. When Paper Road Press called the first round of submissions for their Shortcuts series of novellas, I had the idea of adding Donna, the second viewpoint character, and alternating their viewpoints throughout the novella – and that’s what made the narrative work.
I believe it’s going to appear in print soon, too. Who else will be in the print publication?
Paper Road Press are putting out all six novellas in the first Shortcuts series in one print volume entitled Shortcuts: Track 1 – and if you preorder by 1 November, there are a couple of prizes on offer! Check out all the details here: http://paperroadpress.co.nz/books/shortcuts-track-1-collection/
I understand there’s a second Shortcuts series forthcoming from Paper Road Press, too. They are a very active Wellington-based publisher putting out some great work.
Where can I buy a copy?
To start with, it will be available through online sites (such as the Paper Road Press website, Amazon, Fishpond, and Book Depository).
What’s next? Will there be more novellas?
I like writing at novella length because it allows for more complexity than a short story – and because, as quite a slow writer, novellas don’t take me the agonising amounts of time that novels do! So, while I’m currently trying to finish a poetry collection, I do intend to write more novellas.
I already have one unpublished novella, but it’s an the unusual niche of “(association) football romance”, a market segment to which the publishing industry hasn’t yet turned its full attention. If anyone hears about publishers looking for Mills and Boon of the Rovers, please let me know.
Thanks Tim! Best wishes for your writing!
Tim Jones is a fiction writer, poet, and editor. He is also the author of two collections of short fiction, three collections of poetry and one novel. He was co-editor of Voyagers: Science Fiction Poetry from New Zealand (2009) with Mark Pirie. Voyagers won ‘Best Collected Work’ in the 2010 Sir Julius Vogel Awards, and in the same year, Tim Jones won the NZSA Janet Frame Memorial Award for Literature. The Stars Like Sand: Australian Speculative Poetry was published in 2014 and is co-edited by Tim Jones and P.S. Cottier. You can find Tim’s blog at http://timjonesbooks.blogspot.co.nz/
I’m delighted to be interviewing poet, novelist and short story writer Tim Jones about his latest collection of poetry, Men Briefly Explained, as part of his virtual book tour. (And no, that’s not Tim pictured on the cover, but there is a photo of him at the bottom of this post.) It’s a very enjoyable book, which I’ve already read twice and intend to read again.
Tim’s previous publications include poetry collections Boat People and All Blacks’ Kitchen Gardens, short story collections Transported and Extreme Weather Events, and a novel, Anarya’s Secret. He is also co-editor of Voyagers: Science Fiction Poetry from New Zealand, which won “Best Collected Work” in the 2010 Sir Julius Vogel Awards, the same year he was awarded the NZSA Janet Frame Memorial Award for Literature.
First of all, Tim, how did your recent “real-world” book tour go? Any particular highlights?
The highlight of the whole tour was meeting up with friends – both people I already knew in person and enjoyed catching up with again, and people, especially poets, I knew only from the Internet before this.Of all the launch events, I think the Friday night event at the Rona Gallery in Eastbourne, which is part of Lower Hutt in local body terms but feels to me a lot like the seaside suburbs of Wellington, was my favourite. The staff are friendly and knowledgeable (plus there are two Tuesday Poets within their ranks!), the venue is great: you walk into an excellent bookshop and, at a certain point, it morphs into an excellent gallery – what’s not to like? There was a good crowd who laughed at all my jokes (which is, of course, the true measure of success!), books were bought and nibbles nibbled – it was a really good time.But another highlight (and it is so strange for me, an avowed South Islander, to be selecting only North Island highlights) was to read poetry for the first time in Auckland. I wasn’t at my best by by that stage, as I had picked up a cold, I was tired, and the rain was bucketing down, but I have always been nervous about reading in Auckland, and it felt good to break through that particular barrier. It was good of PoetryLive to let Keith Westwater, Dr David Reiterand I be part of their regular weekly readings series.
How does this latest book fit into your body of work to date? Is it a departure from or a continuation of themes from your previous collections?
There have been poems about men, masculinity and growing up male in each of my two previous collections, Boat People and All Blacks’ Kitchen Gardens. The difference this time is that, having initially put together a number of such poems as a chapbook (which I was going to called “Guy Thing” – I’m glad I changed the title!), I then decided to go on and write more poems around these themes, rather than (as in my previous collections) having a collection with several sections, each devoted to a theme or style of poem.
The other difference is that my two previous collections each had a section of science fiction and speculative poetry, whereas this one doesn’t – I guess only “As you know, Bob” and “In A World Without Pity, A Town Without Fear” would qualify as speculative poetry. I’ve just joined the Science Fiction Poetry Association, and even guest-edited an issue of their online magazine Eye To The Telescope this year, so I think this is a temporary aberration – perhaps not much science fiction is needed to explain men!
I gather that these poems were written over a five-year period. Did your approach to writing poems about men change as you went along?
As noted above, having initially discovered that I was writing a number of poems about men and planning to bring them together in a chapbook, I then decided to go for a collection. I don’t usually write with a theme in mind before I start – I usually write first, and look for themes later – so this took a bit of adjustment. Once I got underway on these poems, especially the ones about older men near the end of the book, though, I found that they came quite quickly and relatively easily.
I think I might try writing more themed collections in future – in fact, I have a couple of possible themes in mind for future poetry collections, plus another chapbook idea. I like chapbooks a lot – I am determined to put one together at some point.
You write award-winning fiction as well as poetry. Do you work on your various projects concurrently or sequentially?
I find that I can’t work on a novel and short fiction at the same time, but I have at times been able to work on fiction and poetry at the same time – well, say, a morning on one and an afternoon on the other. I’m concentrating on short fiction at the moment – I went through a nervous time when there seemed to be a blockage between the short story ideas I had squirrelled away and my ability to turn them into stories, but I feel (I hope) as though the knack is beginning to return.
I have many favourites in this book: poems about love, like happened to meet and Honey Moon; Return to Nussbaum Reigel; and the very entertaining Men Briefly Explained:
“My friend and I are talking at
the most attractive woman in the room.
We’re talking big: theories, hypotheses,
each wilder than the rest.
How huge our brains must be!”
What’s your own personal favourite?
That’s a tough question, because it’s like being asked to choose between one’s children. Then again, I only have one child, so [puts names of poems on folded slips of paper in hat, swirls slips of paper around, without looking, pulls out a slip] … my favourite poem is “Thinning”! It’s kind of gloomy and I stopped reading it at readings because it was depressing everyone too much, but I’m particularly pleased with that one. My favourite poem to read out loud is “Men Briefly Explained” itself – I’ve noticed that it’s mainly women who appreciate that one.
What’s next on the writing agenda?
Another collection of short stories, and again, I have a theme in mind as I write them. Right now, I have a couple of published but uncollected stories that fit with the theme, a couple more completed but unpublished stories, and a whole bunch of first drafts, bits of stories, and story ideas – which sometimes consist of no more than a title! So there is a lot to do yet, but I’m enjoying the process.
Links to more interviews on Tim’s virtual book tour here.
How To Buy A Copy Of Men Briefly Explained (a perfect Christmas gift for a poetry fan near you!)
Men Briefly Explained is published by Interactive Press (IP) of Brisbane. You can find out more about Men Briefly Explained, and buy it direct from the publisher, on IP’s mini-site for the book: http://www.ipoz.biz/Titles/MBE.htm
On Tim’s Men Briefly Explained page, there are more options for buying the book in person and online, plus latest reader reactions and reviews: http://timjonesbooks.blogspot.com/p/men-briefly-explained.html
Harbours
He settled
where the sea made a distant mirror
glimpsed from the sloping decks
of fast-subsiding houses.
Dockside cranes, the mournful tones
of cruise ships and coastal traders –
these were his background music,
his theme and variations.
From cliff-tops, from office blocks,
he would monitor departures,
courses set for distant harbours
rich with spice and contraband.
Retired, he had his garden,
books, the heavy ticking
of the farewell clock. He searched
tide tables, shipping movements,
looking for a sailing time,
a vessel heading home.
Tim Jones (pictured above) is a poet and author of both science fiction and literary fiction who was awarded the New Zealand Society of Authors Janet Frame Memorial Award for Literature in 2010. Among his recent books are short story collection Transported (Vintage, 2008) and poetry anthology Voyagers: Science Fiction Poetry from New Zealand (Interactive Press, 2009), co-edited with Mark Pirie. Voyagers won the “Best Collected Work” category in the 2010 Sir Julius Vogel Awards.
Tim’s third poetry collection, the excellent Men Briefly Explained, has just been published by Interactive Press, and he is in the final stages of a book launch tour. Aucklanders can catch the tour on Tuesday 1 November at Poetry Live, Thirsty Dog, 469 Karangahape Road, 8pm. Tim will also be reading at the Poetry Society in Wellington on Monday 21 November at 7.30pm (The Thistle Inn, 3 Mulgrave St, Thorndon) together with Keith Westwater. I very much enjoyed the Wellington library tour stop last week.
I chose ‘Harbours’ because it’s a lovely, musical poem, though tinged with “mournful tones”. Also, it made me think of my father (who isn’t retired yet) as he was in the merchant navy in his youth and spends his spare time building decks.
For more on the engaging and readable Men Briefly Explained, see http://timjonesbooks.blogspot.com/p/men-briefly-explained.htm You can also link to the book’s Facebook page, where I was interested to learn that one of the poems was used as the text for a choral work composed by Brett Weymark, which premiered in Sydney recently.
You can click here or on the quill to the left for more Tuesday poems.
Yayoi Kusama. Singapore Biennale. Image via Wikipedia
The second issue of the online journal of speculative poetry Eye to the Telescope, featuring Australian and New Zealand poets, is now live. It’s been edited by Wellington writer Tim Jones and contains my poem ‘Yayoi Kusama Goes to Iceland’.
I’m in excellent company: other poets in the journal include Raewyn Alexander, Helen Rickerby, Stephen Oliver, Laurice Gilbert, David Reiter, Cy Matthews, Catherine Fitchett, Alicia Ponder and Joe Dolce (better known for the song ‘Shaddup You Face’).
New Zealand e-publisher Rosa Mira Books has just released “Slightly Peculiar Love Stories”, an anthology of 26 love stories. The writers come from New Zealand, Israel, Hong Kong, Argentina and Athens, the UK and the US and include Tim Jones, Tina Makereti, Maxine Alterio, Claire Beynon, Bryan Walpert, Sue Wootton and Craig Cliff. My own contribution is my short story “Mill” which won the BNZ Katherine Mansfield Award in 2001. I’m delighted to be in this beautiful anthology, in such fine company. Congratulations to editor Penelope Todd, who has done a wonderful job.
The e-book version of Tales for Canterbury has now been released, with copies available from Random Static Press. A paperback version will be released soon. I’m very pleased to have a story in it (The Magician).
Tales for Canterbury is an anthology of 34 short stories loosely themed around survival, hope and future. All profits will be donated to the Red Cross Earthquake Appeal.
It features stories by RJ Astruc, Philippa Ballantine, Jesse Bullington, Anna Caro, Cat Connor, Brenda Cooper, Debbie Cowens, Matt Cowens, Merrilee Faber, AJ Fitzwater, Janis Freegard, Neil Gaiman, Cassie Hart, A.M. Harte, Karen Healey, Leigh K Hunt, Lynne Jamneck, Patty Jansen, Gwyneth Jones, Tim Jones, Kim Koning, Jay Lake, Helen Lowe, Kate Mahony, Tina Makereti, Juliet Marillier, Angel Leigh McCoy, Linda Niccol, Ripley Patton, Simon Petrie, Grant Stone, Jeff Vandermeer, Mary Victoria and Sean Williams.
Pre-orders are now available from Random Static Press.
Many thanks to editors Anna Caro and Cassie Hart who made it all happen. So far, they’ve raised over $2,000 for Christchurch.
Here’s another great initiative to support Canterbury. Anna Caro and J.C. Hart have put together a short story anthology – Tales for Canterbury – with stories donated by international and New Zealand writers. Contributors include Neil Gaiman, Sean Williams, Jay Lake, Tim Jones, Tina Makereti, Helen Lowe and me. It’s being published by Random Static Press in both print and ebook forms and all profits will go to the New Zealand Red Cross 2011 Earthquake Appeal. For more information and to watch the promo video, visit talesforcanterbury.wordpress.com
Isn’t the cover beautiful? The anthology is expected to be available by late April, but you can pre-order now. ($12 for the ebook and $24.95 for the print version – I’ve ordered my copy already). As of this morning, the editors had raised $880 towards their target of $5000.
My big excitement last Saturday was the letterbox arrival of the Iron Book of New Humorous Verse (edited by Eileen Jones and published by Iron Press) which has one of my poems in it. The poem is ‘Please Rush Me’ and seeing as I can’t get to the launch in Newcastle, I read it at the Ballroom Cafe yesterday.
Iron Press is a small press in North Shields, Northumberland (all the way over on the other side of the River Tyne from South Shields, where I was born). I’m really enjoying the book, which includes well-known UK poets like Wendy Cope, Linda France and W N Herbert. The Iron Press website says of the book : “Subjects include the annual shindig for Greenland’s literary elite, a paean to a wonderbra, a knitted orgasm, Superman’s pet lemming and a sonnet to a Yorkshire Pudding.” Who says poetry can’t be fun.
I have made a video clip of myself reading the poem, which I would have inserted into this post, but WordPress would charge me $US60 a year for the privilege. Instead, I have made a new blog on Blogspot where I don’t have to pay to upload videos:
http://janisfreegard.blogspot.com/
Tim Jones did a fine job as the Ballroom’s featured poet yesterday – I’m very much looking forward to his next collection: Men Briefly Explained. The Ballroom has really taken off as a poetry venue. Next month, Saradha Koirala will be the guest poet.
Don’t forget to check out the other Tuesday poems, via the quill button to the left.
A quick post about a few things coming up in Wellington:
The Spring Sessions: Live Poetry Readings w/ Fuyukos Fables & The Lost Boys
at The Watusi, 6 Edwards Street, Central Wellington
Thursday 14th October 8pm start
GENRES: folk, indie, pop
The Lost Boys describe themselves as ‘Lost Rock’
Graham Candy – vocals and guitar
Kyo Won (Charles Park) – lead guitar
Campbell Bond – bass
Ethan Lloyd – drums
Then on Sunday, it’s
Poetry at The Ballroom Café
Guest Poet: Tim Jones
Musicians: The Gracious Deviants
Open mic session
Sunday 17 October, 4 – 6pm
The Ballroom Café, cnr Riddiford St & Adelaide Rd, Newtown
and next Monday:
NZPS Monthly Poetry Reading, Wellington
Monday 18 October, 7.30pm
The Thistle Inn, 3 Mulgrave St
The meeting will be all open mic. night. Bring 2-3 (shortish) poems of your own and one of someone else’s to share and introduce us to.
All welcome. Entry: $2.
More events around the country here: http://www.poetrysociety.org.nz/poetrynews
The Voyagers science fiction poetry anthology is being launched around New Zealand this month. A list of dates and readers (shamelessly copied from Tim Jones’ blog) follows. I will be reading a poem from the book at the Wellington Central Library on Monday 19 October 2009 and at Paraparaumu Library on Tuesday 20 October. The book’s received a great review in the latest Listener (10-16 October) – good to see it’s making a splash, as editors Mark Pirie and Tim Jones had quite a journey getting it published.
There are all sorts of notable Kiwi poets in the book – Fleur Adcock, Kevin Ireland, Fiona Kidman, Alistair Campbell, Meg Campbell, Alistair Paterson, David Eggleton – I could go on. Have a browse in your local bookshop, go to a reading, write some yourself!
Voyagers Tour Events: Venues and Readers
Dunedin Public Library, 14 Oct, 5:30 pm. Join Sue Wootton, James Dignan, Tim Jones, David Karena-Holmes and IP Director Dr David Reiter to kick off the national tour of Voyagers: Science Fiction Poetry from New Zealand.
Dunedin, Circadian Rhythm Café, 15 Oct, 7 pm. Our event here will feature Sue Wootton, Jenny Powell, James Dignan, David Eggleton, David Karena-Holmes, Tim Jones and David Reiter.
Christchurch, Madras Café, 16 Oct, 5 pm, with Owen Marshall, James Norcliffe, David Gregory, Tim Jones and David Reiter
Wellington Central Library, 19 Oct, 5:30 pm, with Janis
Freegard, Robin Fry, Helen Rickerby (tbc), Jack Perkins, Rachel McAlpine, Michael O’Leary, Marilyn Duckworth, Tim Jones, Mark Pirie and David Reiter
Kapiti Coast, Paraparaumu Library, 20 Oct, 5:30 pm for 6 pm,
featuring Puri Alvarez, Nic Hill, Helen Rickerby, Michael O’Leary, Janis Freegard and David Reiter
Hamilton, TBC, 21 Oct
Auckland Central Library, 22 Oct, 5.30pm, , with Raewyn Alexander, Jacqueline Ottaway, Iain Sharp, Michael Morrissey, Anna Rugis, Alastair Paterson, Iain Britton, Thomas Mitchell, Janet Charman and David Reiter
Devonport, 24 Oct, 6:30 pm, Depot Arts Space, with Iain Britton, Alistair Paterson, Andrew Fagan, Janet Charman, Anna Rugis, Thomas
Mitchell and David Reiter.
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