I see David Beach won the Prize in Modern Letters for his book of poetry, Abandoned Novel. It sounds complex – “Abandoned Novel introduces a strikingly different new voice to New Zealand poetry. These sixty decasyllabic sonnets are formally rigorous and bracingly anti-poetic.” A lot was made of his job as a mail sorter. I guess jobs with NZPost lend themselves to poets, artists and writers because of the hours. JK Baxter for example – who I can’t stop thinking of as “Dopey” now, after reading Roma Potiki’s interview with JC Sturm in Trout.
I sort of wonder how many ‘mistakes’ were made with delivery by Baxter – or Clairmont in Waikanae in the ’70s? And which other artists or writers have worked as posties?
I have also been thinking about correspondence by ‘real’ mail and letters. So much of our history is in “The Letters of XXXX”. I doubt email will be preserved in the same way. Email can be also be deadly as it is too quick and immediate sometimes and I wonder if it makes people too available? I am a bit of an email addict, so I love the stuff but I like the idea of sitting down and writing a well thought out and contemplative letter. The act of hand writing is so different and the selection of paper, pen, ink comes into play as well.
Technology changes so much. For instance the use of word processing. Apart from all the other advantages, I guess it does make it easier to produce an index. I was reading an autobiography today and was looking at the index and it almost felt like I was cheating a little. However other books I have with poor indexes or none at all can be very frustrating.
Another techno advance (for you art buffs) is this: MFA Mobile.
There are some interesting comments of this here. “Seems like an opportunity missed: Does the likely audience for Harnett and Eakins care about its cell phone ‘wallpaper?’ And does the likely audience for cell phone ‘wallpaper’ want to pay $2 for Harnett and Eakins?“. I was thinking about a NZ version… But how would a McCahon look squished into your phone? Perhaps as a slide-show of the Northland Panels? Or maybe a marketing angle for emerging artists?
And back to literature, I got a bunch of Mark Pirie’s books in the mail this week which has been good reading, it reminded me of the recent DomPost article about his and collaborator Michael O’Leary’s work on their album cover recreations.
I like the detail in the first – that’s John Quiliter in the background. I wonder if Pirie ever worked as a postie?
Roma said…
Not a word. Once I thought, hang on a minute mate, you know, give us a break, say something, and I said to him, “Look, got anything to say about it?” He (JKB) said “No comment.”
There’s a world in that “No Comment” right there.
I don’t think so… The mail would have been delivered to the exact people it was ment for in such a poetic tone that they wouldnt take it! Maybe dopey…arguably the best poet the land of the long white cloud has ever seen