a conversation with ten writers
How can you provide a sanctuary instead of more noise?
We caught up with Anuja Mitra, Ash Davida Jane, Caroline Shepherd, essa may ranapiri, Joy Holley, Rebecca Hawkes, Rhys Feeney, Ruby Solly, Sinead Overbye and Vanessa Crofskey, ten writers who have appeared in the ten issues of Starling to date.
Do you remember your first piece of writing?
Caroline: Absolutely not, which is probably for the best.
Vanessa: I remember writing a poem to my teacher at the end of high school about why I didn’t submit my assignment to class. It was about being depressed!
Ruby: Yes! I have a love/hate relationship with this story. When I was eight I wrote a poem called ‘Dying Dead’ and was sent to the principal’s office because my teacher was concerned… but I thought it was because it was such a great piece of work that they wanted me to show her, which was what would happen to other kids occasionally and they’d get to pick a little prize from a special box under her desk. So I went up there to get my prize and she just read the book and handed it back to me and I said ‘Hey, where’s my prize?’ and she just awkwardly put a gold sticker on it and I had to go back to class empty handed after talking this big talk about getting to choose a prize from the box. In retrospect it’s kind of hilarious and definitely helped me to be humble.
Rhys: no, but i remember my first piece of writing that meant something to me. it was a cliché poem about satellites and the moon that i wrote laying on a bench in the locked courtyard of the lower hutt psych ward. it was p sylvia plath tbh
essa: Yeah I do! It was a task in first year. Just one line; ‘I went to the beach with my nan.’ accompanied by a drawing of me and my nan. I don’t know if that counts but it’s the first thing I remember. Other more realised stories were about my barbie and action man toys and something to do with dragons. I dunno lol.
Ash: I don’t know if it was my first ever but I do have this poem I wrote when I was 9 that I found when I was sorting through some old notebooks:
Sinead: One of the first pieces of writing that I remember clearly was when I was in primary school. I wrote this rhyming poem about what I could do with my life when I grew up, and there was this twist at the end which I was really proud of. The poem went something like this:
Tomorrow I could be an astronaut, up in outerspace
I could be an actress with a pretty face
Tomorrow I could be a swimmer, turn out number one
There’s just one tiny problem – tomorrow never comes!
What books got you through the Covid-19 lockdown? What are your favourite new discoveries of 2020?
Ash: I actually read quite a lot during level 4, to the point where I was turning to the books on my shelf that I’ve had for ages and never read. My stand-out read was definitely The Years by French memoirist Annie Ernaux, which moves from the year of her birth (1940) to 2006, mixing personal history with social and political ones. It’s written mostly from the plural ‘we’, and covers such a wide scope that it becomes a kind of collective autobiography.
Caroline: God, so I wouldn’t say got me through but lockdown did give me an opportunity to slog through the final 500 pages of Steven King’s IT, which shone in places and in others made me want to throw it in the bin. I have far less complicated feelings about Weather by Jenny Offill, which was stellar. I also had to read On the Road for a paper I was taking and the less said on that the better, although every 50 pages I’d find a decent paragraph and almost see why everyone went crazy over it 70 years ago. But then the violent misogyny and racism would crop up again and make me crazy, so all in all lockdown was very much a mixed bag reading-wise. I did watch a lot of ER though, which is never a regret.
Sinead: I had a fun experience of getting to read Pip Adam’s new novel Nothing to See during lockdown. I was living alone, and painting a self-portrait based on my ‘Rxtx’ poem. Reading Pip’s novel (which is about clones) at that time was the perfect accompaniment for my lockdown strangeness. It made me think very deeply about how I was literally ‘hanging out with myself’ for those few months. And it felt special. Like I had been gifted that book at that time, and it was exactly what I needed. I came out of reading that book with this new sense of how I lived in my own body, and what was more important was that the book led me through some really dark feelings and thoughts, to emerge as a healthy, sober person who cooks and cares for herself. I like to think that there is still another Sinead hanging around with me, even now that I’m back in the wider world, outside of lockdown. I’ve also rediscovered Witi Ihimaera. I think there was quite a long time where I didn’t read his work. But it is really quite special, because we are from the same hapū, and a lot of his novels are set out at Rongopai, which is the marae I most closely affiliate myself to, as I grew up going there. I read The Matriarch during lockdown and I really enjoyed it. I loved being able to read about my own whakapapa, and the place I grew up in.
What music got you through the lockdown? What are your favourite new discoveries of 2020?
Ruby: I love this question! I spent a lot of time finishing off my album over lockdown so I often just wanted some empty space when I wasn’t working on that. But the rotation in our house was mostly Troy Kingi, Joni Mitchell, Nick Cave, Marlon Williams and The Beach Boys, respectively. I also started working on some research/background for the next project I want to write which has a very Kai Tahu/Waitaha gothic vibe so I listened to this playlist on repeat. Post-lockdown I went out and got a whole lot of new CDs including ‘Our Native Daughters’ which is this amazing album by a group of black female blue grass/old-time musicians focusing on their histories and survival. It’s played daily in our house at the moment.
Rhys: for gay cowboy vibes – orville peck. for anger – rage against the machine, grlwood, denzel curry & alien weaponry. for the start of a goth phase – the cure, molchat doma, gary numan. fav new artists – phoebe bridgers, the songs of native birds at dusk, this song.
Joy: My essential lockdown discovery was Essentials by Erika de Casier. I would describe it as 90s R&B x bedroom pop: it’s cute, it’s sexy, it’s crushy. All my favourite things!
Anuja and Vanessa, you both ran online festivals, with Oscen and Pantograph Punch respectively, during lockdown, holding events on instagram and zoom. How did they go, and what would you suggest for other festival curators planning similar events in the future?
Anuja: Oscen’s weekend festival — inventively called ‘the Unlockdown’ — was something we did in response to the unique challenges brought by the lockdown and how a lot of people were feeling bored, burned out and demoralised. The idea was to put together a schedule of chill online sessions helping viewers ‘unlock’ their creativity during a trying time (without that underlying pressure to ‘be productive’). I was proud of the variety of ‘workshops’ we arranged, from cooking to dance fitness to song-writing and smartphone photography, and the fact we could use our Creative Communities funding to pay artists hosting the sessions was great. My advice to festival curators would be to plan in advance and ramp up the advertising to maximise audience numbers. Online platforms are very accessible, so really clear and effective advertising should draw a big crowd!
Vanessa: Online Festival was awesome to host on Pantograph Punch over lockdown. It was really specific to the period that we were in, where we were all bored, anxious, stuck at home and missing what art could provide us. There was a need to fill that space for a captive audience. Making readings more interactive makes for more engaging events is one suggestion. It’s worth being intentional about what space you’re filling on the internet, it’s so full and overwhelming already. How can you provide a sanctuary instead of more noise?
Starling is all about creating space for a community of writers. Have any collaborations or writing relationships come about for you as a result of appearing in Starling?
Anuja: Starling has definitely given me opportunities, thanks to the tireless promotion of all our work! Hannah Mettner included ‘Precarious’ from Issue 2 in a National Library exhibition called ‘The Next Word: Contemporary New Zealand Poetry’ a few years ago, and I feel like there’s some connection between my appearing in Starling and the readings I’ve done at The Open Book in Ponsonby...I haven’t really had any collaborations or writing relationships though. Maybe this has to do with the fact I’m not a Wellingtonian so haven’t met much of the young writers community in person!
Ruby: This has been my favourite part of being involved with Starling. Because I didn’t do the masters at the IIML, I often felt like I didn’t have a proper crew or cohort to write with. But Starling was a good way to meet people and to read what else was coming from people my age. Some of my favourite young writers (and now good friends) have come through Starling like Sinead Overbye, essa may ranapiri and Tayi Tibble. There’s a nice feeling too with young Māori writers where we all support each other to do our collective best, it makes me push myself to create for all of us, not just me.
Rebecca: Starling is full of darlings, obviously! You’ve published most of the best writers/people I know, too many to name but u kno who u r <3 And Starling helped bring us together at launches and LitCrawl and residences and suchlike. I am so grateful for the effort you as editors have put into fostering a wholesome, welcoming community, both online and IRL, right from the start.
Sinead: I have definitely formed a lot of friendships through Starling. I’ve met heaps of other writers, particularly through doing readings, and generally becoming more familiar with their work. The community is one of my favourite things about it. There’s a lot of genuine nurturing going on, and people are getting excited about one another’s writing. Whenever I meet another Starling, it feels like we’ve already got a bond. I feel so lucky to be a part of it.
Rhys: not writing relationships hahaha. starling poets are on tinder.
Joy: I’ve met some of my closest friends through Starling, including Tayi Tibble, who is now also my flatmate!
Sinead and Anuja, you’ve both co-founded new literary journals, Stasis and Oscen. Can you tell us a little about this experience and what set you on this path? What have been some of the practical difficulties and the biggest rewards?
Sinead: The main difficulty is that there isn’t quite enough time in the day to do everything I want to do. I work full-time at a job that I love, and even throughout lockdown I was working full time from my living room. Finding enough hours in the week to be able to do my day job, as well as Stasis, and writing of my own has been the main challenge of the project. Stasis has been really intense, because it is so tied to the particular time in which it was created. It was very urgent, but also we were working off this crazy publishing model that I just made up out of thin air – which was that we would publish things ‘live’. This meant we were publishing five days a week for two months. Now we’re down to 3 times a week because we were burning out – it just wasn’t sustainable. I’m so lucky that I have two fantastic co-workers who share my vision of what Stasis should be. It wouldn’t have been possible without them. The biggest reward, for me, was the community-building aspect of the journal. That was our main driver for starting Stasis in the first place. I found the community that built up around Stasis to be so heart-warming and motivating. I loved that the pieces we published received such glowing feedback, and that we could financially support artists (thanks to funding from Creative New Zealand), as well as give people awesome things to read during lockdown. All of the reading we did as editors reminded me of why I love to write. If I hadn’t had Stasis throughout those months, I think I might’ve felt quite lonely.
Anuja: Oscen began as an idea I discussed with some like-minded friends because I just liked the concept of being behind an arts journal creating and curating content. We decided to start a magazine aiming to ‘uplift marginalised voices’, spotlighting the work of people from socially marginalised groups and those who may be excluded from the dominant narratives reflected by our media. (Most of the organising team are women of colour and we still don’t see enough stories by and about us.) We also wanted to start an inclusive publication more broadly that wasn’t just about ourselves and our friends. Aotearoa’s writing community can be seen as quite small, centred around people who’ve done an MFA or who otherwise move in certain circles. There are definitely practical difficulties: we’re all busy people and the nature of a passion project is that work and studying have to come first! There’s also the fact that we don’t have regular funding. The biggest reward, though, is how we’ve supported creatives doing amazing things and really fostered a sense of community. That feeling of community was very apparent when we held an event to ‘launch’ our first issue and were shocked by the turnout — people were lining up outside the door! It was incredible to see so many people engaged, sharing the things that mattered to them and (clichéd though it sounds) bonding through art.
Caroline, we first published your writing in Starling Issue 3 and since then you have appeared in a whopping seven issues – for very good reason! In that time you’ve moved from high school to university, and from Auckland to Wellington. Can you speak a little about how you feel your writing has evolved in that time?
Well firstly, Starling has been exceedingly good to me and provided me with not just opportunities but also a lot of confidence, which is something I lacked when I wrote in high school. I am very grateful to Starling always. I feel like my poems aren’t as serious anymore, or at the very least I don’t think of poetry and jokes as incredibly far apart. When I was 15 I thought that serious was a mark of quality, so would write a lot of navel-gazing, melodramatic stuff that tried very hard and remained terrible for no reason I could figure out. Now I know it’s the sneaky funny stuff that not only works but provides gravity to the heavier stuff too. When I was in high school I also used to write a lot of stuff from varying perspectives, trying to figure out how much was Too Much and what worked in what voice. Now, I usually just write in my voice, probably because it’s easier and also because I have one now. I know what it sounds like.
essa, Sinead and Ruby, all of you are kaituhi Māori and have worked together as part of a collective of young Māori authors, Ngā Rangatahi o te Pene, who have been writing, publishing and presenting new work in the past year. How has your work as part of this collective (and other Māori writing groups) informed your writing?
essa: I think I’ve talked before about not even feeling Māori til I met other Māori writers. And this group really make me feel welcome in te ao Māori in a way that I haven’t felt in other places (not anyone else’s fault necessarily). I am so thankful for them, and being able to talk past a lot of things with them and talk through writing in a way that feels distinct from the pākehā world has been so important to me. It also gives an opportunity to talk to each other in our work which I find beautiful.
Sinead: There is a whakapapa to the work that we do, and the fact that I can identity myself as a kaituhi Māori means that I am positioning myself within that whakapapa of others who have come before me, and the generations yet to come. It’s nice to feel like I’m not creating in isolation. That’s the main feeling I get from being included in Māori groups such as Ngā Rangatahi o te Pene, Te Hā, and Te Whē. I don’t know if I’d keep writing if I didn’t have those groups. They are my audience, as well as my conscience. Other people can read my writing, and they may find things in it that speak to them, but primarily, the work I do now is for my community and my whānau, but most of all for future generations. I spend a lot of time thinking about the generations yet to come, and about what my writing could do for them. I think being surrounded by other kaituhi Māori both humbles and inspires me. It’s important to remember who you are. I like to think about writing as a method of giving back, helping Māori to see more of their experiences represented. Because we really need that. We need to be able to see a whole lot of different experiences of being Māori. Mine is just one of those, but if I add it to the collection of voices, the picture of what it is to be Māori becomes richer. Being takatāpui is important to me as well, and we need more takatāpui stories too. There is so much power in telling your story.
Ruby: I just wanna start here saying I feel so so lucky to be part of this particular generation of rakatahi Māori writers and it is a massive support for me knowing that there’s a group of us all doing the mahi together. Rakatahi o te Pene is great because it basically runs on a similar model to other Māori writers groups like Te Hā where each person is ‘Rakatahi o te Pene’ within themselves, so people go off and do projects that feed into each other’s work and that’s great. It’s good too being able to assemble people to tautoko each other’s work and feel the support from being part of a larger whole. There’s parts of writing within te ao Māori that are challenging and it’s pretty much impossible to write as Māori without being political or being assumed to be political in my opinion, which is good, but it can take a toll. So having a rōpū is important. Covid put a rāhui on a lot of our plans/events but things always bloom again for us.
Ash, essa, Rhys and Vanessa, your writing is often informed by politics – both in the sense of directly addressing issues like racism and climate change, and in the personal-political sense of writing openly about mental health and trauma. How important is it for you for your writing to address issues like these, and what other writers have influenced you in this area?
Ash: I think I write about politics because these issues are things that permeate the lives of people around me, and they’re what I spend a lot of time thinking and talking about. It’s less that I actively set out to write poems about the climate crisis and more that it would feel unnatural and disingenuous to avoid it. I don’t want to write poems that exist outside of our real world with its real problems, because then what’s the point?
essa: I think it’s important to write about things I care about? And that just so happens to be politics in whatever shape. I’ve had a lot of weird feelings lately about writing about these things but I dunno it’s part of my life, it’s part of all our lives really. Cody-Rose Clevidence and Harry Josephine Giles are important poets in influencing how I write about things. Both are political poets in very different ways. One writes from the body of the earth and the other writes against the body of the State. This is a gross oversimplification of both of their work that I’m sure they would be stoked with haha.
Rhys: when you write a poem & submit it to a journal (like starling) it will end up joining the endless river of content online. the poem sits next to the firehose streams of boris & donald & vladimir & jair & scott. to not react to this is to be complicit. to me, poetry must be anticapitalist/antifascist. it must give a shit. like, how can you write about domestic love when the world is dying? there is always danger in silence. e.g. in aotearoa, we have some of the lowest awareness of the climate crisis among rangatahi in the oecd. we have some of the highest suicide rates in the oecd. if you try write universal truths, you end up speaking for others. embracing subjectivity of voice avoids in part the colonisation of literary spaces. &, really, politics are always personal. writing about mental health, for example, is an act of reclamation over a disabling system. to write as a queer, neuroatypical person is a fuck you to the status quo of exploitation, oppression, and monetisation. but, actually, maybe political poems don’t work. didn’t in spain. maybe we should slash the tyres of police cars. just a thought. people who inspire me in this: sam sax, essa may ranapiri, karlo mila, danez smith, harry josephine giles.
Vanessa: Since I’m interested in false honesty and casual confessionalism in my writing, the starting point of poems tend to be discomforts I am feeling. From there, political issues start to bleed in and shape the agenda of pieces, much as they do to one’s life. I’m not sure that there’s an active decision to *focus* on writing about topics such as mental health and casual racism, but there’s definitely a decision to keep and include it in what’s written. I’m very interested in authors who write around grief, Brian Dillon was amazing to read in that respect. I’ve just finished Anne Boyer’s book The Undying which was cataclysmic.
Vanessa and Rebecca, you’re a staff writer for Pantograph Punch and co-editor for Sweet Mammalian respectively. What are the biggest things you’ve learnt from reading and commissioning others’ work, and how would you suggest young writers interested in editing get their start in this field?
Vanessa: Editing is magic and I don’t quite understand it (sort of like Photoshop). Recently I commissioned and edited my first piece for the site, on home cooking. It was pretty scary to suddenly be the voice of reason giving google doc comments! Usually I'm the one groaning or huffily rejecting them. Turns out that I already knew what I was doing with editing, it was about trusting my intuition and knowing that I could hold space for other writers. If you’re interested, know what it’s like to be edited and get some practice editing others!
Rebecca: For editing a journal with open submission calls, like Sweet Mammalian, I’d say developing a confident critical sense is important. Participating in writing workshops before taking on editorship was valuable for me, as a place to practice communicating what was working for me or not in any given piece of writing. This helps you work with other editors as well as feel settled in your own selections. My partner in crime Nikki-Lee and I have some shared sensibilities but can still strongly disagree, which is where it helps to be able to argue one’s position. Because selecting work is really tough! Also, you will likely end up rejecting friends and people you admire. Don’t worry about it. We’ve all been rejected from somewhere – I was rejected from Sweet Mammalian back in the day, lol. And thus far no-one has nursed a bitter hatred after we’ve sent a rejection (that I know about) (if you are nursing a bitter hatred, please do not tell me about it). For Sweet Mammalian, which is assembled issue by issue with around 15-20 poets in each, much of my and Nikki-Lee’s work goes towards shaping a cohesive-feeling suite of individually successful poems. This focus helps narrow the scope. We have generous hearts when it comes to poetry but try to be ruthless enough in our editing to get the best outcome for each issue as its own self-contained collection. We receive so much great writing and simply cannot publish everything. If you’re keen to edit a poetry journal, I recommend reading them – as much as I would for someone submitting poems for publication. There are so many great journals on the scene, with varied approaches to platforming work. Check out fresh indie darlings like Starling and Sweet Mammalian (obvs!), Stasis, Oscen, Tupuranga, Min-a-rets, Food Court, the Saltwater Love zine. While obviously you have to enjoy reading and the craft of writing, getting started in editing doesn’t require an academic background… if you care enough about others’ writing to want to contribute your time and energy to share their work in its best light, then you’re most of the way there tbh. My other advice would be not to underestimate the hours required, especially to assemble an issue in a timely fashion. But give it a hoon – ask friends for creative writing and try putting together a zine, and consider why you chose the submissions you did.
Rebecca and essa, you are co-editors of an upcoming climate change anthology, which is one of a number of upcoming literary anthologies. What role do you feel the anthology plays in NZ literature presently, and what are you looking for in curating your anthology?
Rebecca: Climate change is a crucial issue for everyone alive – arguably more so the younger we are. It already affects our lives in so many different ways… climate crisis is in how we imagine our futures, talk to each other, and make choices; the challenge of adapting myriad industries and ways of life to new approaches; which people and landscapes and creatures we worry for and why; and where we direct our hope, anger, guilt, grief, denial and apathy. This book will capture some sense of how a range of writers across Aotearoa are responding to climate issues in their work. In doing this it will also provide another anthologised snapshot of the poetry resounding where we are right now. Of course, to do all this we need your writing! We are especially interested in hearing from rangatahi. As for what we’re looking for… well, there are so many ways to approach climate change issues and process them into poetry. As an editorial team we’ve decided against throwing too many prompts around as we don’t want to pre-empt what you have to say. Plus, as with a lot of editing, we know good writing when we see it but we can’t necessarily give out a definitive formula everyone can follow. We don’t want to put words in your mouths – we want you to spit at us what only you can say. So, what can I say that’s actually helpful? I’m most interested in original and unexpected work that tells me things I didn’t already know or expressed things I simply hadn’t had the words for. So while didactic sermons are an easy way to approach the theme, we are also keen to see more slant approaches. Plus, grand statements about the human condition and how we are the virus or whatever tend to create less effective poems than specific observations about a place, a vision, a feeling... poems with tangible anchors, y’know? I’d recommend checking out Cordite’s recent ‘Earth’ issue for a sense of the range of ways there are to approach poetry about the planet.
essa: Just anything that speaks to this overwhelming moment in time (moment being what like the last 50 years?) and anything that feels less obvious than statements like ‘we are the sickness’ or ‘Mother Nature is dying’. I for one am excited to see more indigenous voices take a centre stage in this anthology, it would be pretty embarrassing if we had an anthology about climate change and we didn’t represent those of us that have the knowledge to deal with it. So I’m looking for more writing from tangata whenua personally, writing about our connection to the land and this place.
How would you describe your own writing style? What is something you’ve tried to improve on from a craft perspective?
Caroline: I’d say my writing is increasingly conversational and sentimental, like an old woman on a bus. Line breaks and I have had a tumultuous relationship because they basically define poetry and I always used to misuse them, giving my poems the sense that they knew they were poems and were trying too hard. Overtime I’ve tried to make them read smoother on the page and have them put emphasis on the relevant idea, not just thrown in because it sounds dramatic to end a line on the word ‘die’.
Anuja: I find it hard to distinguish between how my writing is and how I want it to be, but I’d probably describe it as introspective, lyrical and image-based. In the writing I read, I’m a big fan of the startling metaphor, the clever turn of phrase. Recently I’ve been thinking about the flow of my poetry in particular: sometimes you read poems that flow so naturally, where the line breaks convey such skill and meaning. I’m envious of that sense of effortless spontaneity. In general — in terms of both poetry and prose — I’ve tried to improve my control of a piece structurally. This has really involved reading widely and exposing myself to the work of writers I admire so I can learn from them.
Rebecca: Other people tend to call me a ‘maximalist’. I love this, please keep saying it. I feel personally threatened when people mention Marie Kondo. IRL I have a sort of relentless personal gravity that attracts clutter I find lovely or interesting or otherwise necessary (feathers, stones, books, medieval gowns, recently an entire tree of multicoloured glass apples) and this hoarding of small fancies makes its way into my poems. It often feels like I’m assembling memento mori or vanitas still life imagery in poetry. Still I reckon my poems can become dull and droning, or overcooked and overwhelming. I don’t consciously try to write so excessively – it just gushes merrily out on its own. Actually I am currently trying to write shorter, sharper, more reined-in poems… which so far has resulted in several long meandering ones.
Joy, you’ve recently published several memoir pieces, in addition to your poetry which has appeared in multiple forums over the past few years! What drew you to memoir, and is your approach to it any different to your approach to poetry?
I’m really interested in the overlap between memoir, poetry and also fiction, and I am often unsure which of these labels to place on my writing. My approach to memoir is pretty similar to my approach to poetry, but I have been thinking a lot during the MA about what drives me towards fiction. While we were in lockdown, I clicked that all of the stories I have written were sparked by ‘what if’s: especially ‘what if I did this thing that I know I shouldn't’. Which means that my protagonists make a lot of foolish decisions!
Vanessa, Rhys and Rebecca, you have all recently appeared (or are about to) in the AUP New Poets series. What has this meant for you and what advice would you give younger writers hoping to do the same?
Vanessa: It’s buzzy as to be an author of a book (or a co-author at least). It’s given me the opportunity to see how individual pieces fit alongside one another, when usually I just work on various tidbits that float independent from one another across the internet. It’s very lucky, being given space like that. It means you learn more about what sort of voice you carry and what the things you like writing about are. Advice: You don’t have to feel like an expert at writing or be ‘trained’, just curious! It can be more fun and worthwhile beginning by doing 'the wrong thing' and following a feeling. I'm not sure I have any advice except for do what feels fun for you.
Rhys: i am so v v tired. there’s no way i could have written a whole book, so it’s a dream come true. anna jackson is a very kind person. i feel v happy to be part of the new new poets series because it’s a very exciting group of poets. like to see ria masae’s poem in print is so fucking cool. did you see vanessa’s visual poems? ah, & claudia’s ‘things that spooked the ancient romans’!! & like becca makes cold ham sexy somehow. advice: don’t believe the tortured artist stereotype – you deserve to be happy.
Rebecca: Being invited to the series’ reignition was an encouraging statement of faith in my work and a useful introduction to AUP’s process of book-making. Working with eds Anna Jackson and Sam Elworthy was dreamy, as was getting to know Caro and Sophie better as we developed our volume together. It’s also been lovely to join the community of past and future AUP New Poets. If you’re hoping to join the AUPNP posse, I’d say engaging with poetry wherever you are and putting your work into the world through journals and live readings etc are all good places to start. Having publications under your belt and being heard as an emerging voice will help you be picked up on the AUP radar. Also, having not planned this in advance myself, think about how 20-ish of your poems could sit alongside each other to shape a collection read end-to-end... that’s another skill I’m working on now, trying to write sequences of poems rather than random shotgun-blasts. I do note that while the various University Presses have a certain heavyweight gravitas there is also a lot of exciting stuff happening in other publishing channels and I wouldn’t overlook independent presses and even online chapbooks etc as options for your work too. I’m stoked with AUP obviously, both for the warm and attentive editing and the swoon-worthy poets I share company with there. But the sanctioned behemoths of cultural capital aren’t all that’s out there. It’s a good time to be a poet, I reckon, with a lot of publication channels around putting out exceptional writing. So I recommend both flirting with the establishment and with dynamic indie grassroots things, and seeing what suits you and the work you’re doing. This goes back to submitting poems to a range of places and seeing what sticks, who hears and celebrates your voice. It is so heartening that AUP are explicitly seeking new New Poets now, and if you (reader) are a writer especially keen on joining our poetry cult then I’d be happy to chat with you about it in detail.
essa, last year VUP published your amazing collection of poetry, ransack, which is a huge experience in itself. If you could say anything to essa the writer of two years ago, what would it be?
Gosh I don’t know if I would want to say anything to them. Not because I dislike who I was (like that might be true I’m not sure) just I feel like I knew more about writing then than I do now. Maybe it’s that weird thing that the more you know something the more you become aware of what you don’t know. I don’t know. Keep writing, I guess?
Ash and Ruby, you both have poetry collections coming out with VUP next year – congratulations! What are you most proud of about your forthcoming books?
Ash: Thank you! The thing I’m most proud of is that, when I read poems from the book that I think are funny, people actually laugh. It’s very validating.
Ruby: Thank you! I think I’m most proud of both creating Tōku Pāpā with what time and material I had available to me during my late teens/early twenties. I wrote a lot of it by just noting down a line here or there, then I used those lines as building blocks to write the poems when I had time. One third was written in Tina Makareti’s paper at the IIML which I took during undergrad, another third at the Starling residency, and the last third in bits of time I had around study and work. The other thing that I’m proud of is that it feels like a complete piece of work and a little world you can step into. I love poetry books that can do that (Gregory Kan really inspires me for this) and I feel like the book has this very dark alpine type aesthetic, with I guess a light sprinkling of childhood trauma if I’m being honest. I hope people like it but I think more importantly for me, it helped me understand a lot of things and to put a lot of things that I needed to contain, or crystallise into one place where I could pick them up and look at them, then put them down again to rest until I needed them again.
Joy and Rebecca, you’re both founding members of the Show Ponies group, who staged a poetry reading at Meow bar complete with backing music, stage lights and back-up dancers in 2019. What did that approach offer your work, and what are the next steps for Show Ponies now that public gatherings and live events are back on the table?
Joy: I’m not sure how much I’m allowed to say about future Show Ponies plans haha, but we are definitely keen to get back on the stage - with new ponies too. The poem I read at Meow was called "never underestimate the power of girls who want a secret to keep", and I wanted it to sound and feel like a spell. I was lucky to have two wonderful dancers (Ata and Lucy) who choreographed a routine that perfectly captured this! The whole experience was very lovely, I was the youngest of the ponies and I feel like I learned so much from everyone involved. Forever grateful!
Rebecca: Poets grapple with a perception of pretentiousness so there’s a certain mode of self-deprecating humble-banter it’s easy to slip into. But plenty of us are also genuine divas who live for the stage – after all, why subject you to our poems otherwise? The first Show Ponies gig was thus an opportunity to air out this actual vanity at its most charming. To be both playfully and sincerely camp amped-up egotistical aesthetes, prancing between the hot pink lights and smoke machine, living the sequinned dream. Performers’ hedonism – u love to see it. And the fact that people apparently did love to see it was encouraging… Show Ponies #1 was risky and fun, largely because it really could have been a hot mess. Thankfully we are (secretly) serious professionals and it wasn’t. It was a huge amount of work – logistics and budgets and disasters oh my - but also pure play. The show was so creatively generative as a luxuriant experiment, a reminder that as artists we really can do whatever we bloody want and nobody can stop us except our shoestring budgets. We learned a lot from it that we’ll take into the next Show Ponies performance (sssshhhhh….. top secret and also funding dependent…………).
What project(s) are you working on next?
Sinead: In terms of my own creative work, I am researching and writing a collection of poetry. It’s going really well and makes me feel very happy. The research part of it is interesting, as I am drawing on my own whakapapa, and there are quite a few books that have been written about various ancestors of mine. I also found a book about my Nan’s family that was written by her, her siblings and her cousins. That was really emotional. It’s interesting to take a deeper dive into the way Aotearoa used to be, far back beyond the lives we can remember. Aside from poetry, I’m still working on a novel, which I am rewriting from the beginning. It’s turned into a time-travel novel, which is exciting. Time is very exciting to me.
Joy: This year, as part of the MA, I am working on a collection of short stories about crushes, fantasy and intimacy between young women. There is also a lot of fruit and a lot of astrology! The MA kept me very busy over lockdown, but I am so happy to be able to socialise with the rest of the class now that we are back out in the real world. I think my writing this year is more fun and more funny than anything I have had published. It is also maybe more honest, which is interesting considering that it is my most fictional writing yet!
essa: I am working on a lot of things. Like all the things! I just self-published a poetry zine/chapbook called POLEMIC that is basically just a little anthology of my more political and ranty poems. Also working on many other chapbook things that are like POLEMIC, one called irrational animal cross-dresses and a little book of visual poems called ĀHUA, and a project called HOME/SICK which is about my connection to the land and my ancestors and state of things. (Wow, just writing it all down here is daunting…and I’m 100% sure at least one of these things won’t see the light of day). Anyways there is something freeing about self-publishing little things, it’s a good vibe. In bigger projects; I’m working on my second book of poems tentatively titled Echidna which is a sequence about this character Echidna who combines aspects of Pūrakau, Greek Mythology and Bible stories. It’s been a fun journey so far writing more narrative driven poetry. Also I might be writing a novel? But saying I’m working on my first novel feels too embarrassing so I’m just going to lampshade that fact here while still saying it haha.
Anuja: Oscen’s third issue will be rolling around, so we’d love to receive some submissions for that! Other than that, I’ll be focusing on my own writing and trying to commit to some longer pieces, since the reason I started writing poems at all was because they were shorter and suited my limited patience. I’m currently working on my first creative essay, which will be published in Cordite Poetry Review. My most important goal is really just to keep writing as I (dauntingly) transition from student life into full-time work next year.
Rhys: gonna retire from poetry; new career in doomsday prepping.
Ash: I’m not working on anything specific at the moment. I’m definitely still in that typical phase of burnout that so many people experience after doing an MA at the IIML. However, I have been enjoying getting into some different kinds of writing, like a short prose piece on poetry and the environment that I’m writing for NZ Poetry Shelf.
Caroline: My degree is going to be over in six months and then I’ll have to make a decision about what I want my life to look like for real, so the project is simply trying not to despair really. Exciting!!
Vanessa: I was lucky enough to win second place in the Surrey Hotel Writer’s Residency this year, so I’ll be working on some art-collages soon that are like a comic book/poem/memoir while lounging in a spa.
Ruby: I was really lucky to be part of a few music projects that received CNZ funding so I’m working on a few different group albums and a lot of freelance style work which is taking up a lot of the time that I might have used for writing… but life is long and I’ll get back to it soon. I’m trying to keep my hand in by writing for journals or anthologies when they come out. So many people are putting together really important collections for groups like rakatahi or takatāpui at the moment and it feels really important to document who was writing and what and how they were doing it, so that’s a motivator for me. I’ve also started researching and playing with a new manuscript/book idea that’s a poetic novel or long form poem but I really want to take my time to make sure I do it justice as it involves a lot of old kōrero and characters from where I’m from. But let’s just say Waitaha southern gothic for now.
Rebecca: These days I mainly work on my actual paid work – the career keeping me housed and fed is in corporate communications and sustainability reporting. Then there’s Sweet Mammalian and the climate anthology to muster. Around those commitments, I’m slowly brewing a solo poetry debut. That collection’s coming together at a leisurely pace. I’m not rushing it cos I’m focused on, like, just living through the global pandemic and looming recession etc. From this vantage the book-to-be seems like a gothic nostalgic rural dreamscape steeped in my usual specialties of beastliness, weeds, and uneasy longing. For personal entertainment/torment purposes, I’ve also started writing a sapphic werewolf story. Who knows whether it’ll ever enter the world. We probs all have a stack of dormant projects tucked under our mattresses, right? But it’s good to try mucking in for fiction after spending years disavowing the sheer commitment required for prose. Ugh I don’t know why I keep telling people I’m doing this. Maybe to give myself accountability through guilt when people ask where the story’s at..? Hopefully I don’t look back on this interview in a year and curse myself for mentioning it, haha.
Vanessa Crofskey is an artist and writer based in Tāmaki Makaurau. She is a staff writer for The Pantograph Punch and has a collection of poetry out in AUP New Poets 6. Rhys Feeney is a high school teacher and volunteer mental health worker in Te Whanganui-a-Tara. His debut chapbook, soyboy, is available for pre-order now as part of AUP New Poets 7. Rebecca Hawkes’ first chapbook ‘Softcore coldsores’ was published in 2019 in AUP New Poets 5. You can find her art and writing online at her vanity mirror rebeccahawkesart.com or in publications like Min-a-rets, Starling, Sport, Scum, and Stasis. She co-edits the journal Sweet Mammalian and is a member of popstar poets’ collective Show Ponies. Joy Holley lives in Wellington and is currently studying her Masters in fiction at the IIML. Her writing has been published in Landfall, Sport, The Spinoff and other New Zealand journals. Ash Davida Jane is a poet and bookseller from Wellington. Some of her recent work can be found in Peach Mag, Scum, The Spinoff, and Stasis. Her second book, How to Live with Mammals, is due to be published by VUP in 2021. Anuja Mitra lives in Auckland. Her writing has appeared in Signals, Sweet Mammalian, The Three Lamps, Mayhem and Poetry NZ. She is co-founder of Oscen magazine and she has written theatre and poetry reviews for Tearaway, Theatre Scenes, Minarets and the New Zealand Poetry Society. Sinead Overbye (Te Aitanga-a-Māhaki, Rongowhakaata, Ngāti Porou) is a writer, research assistant, and co-editor of Stasis Journal. She lives in Wellington. Her work has been published in The Pantograph Punch, Turbine|Kapohau, Oscen and other places. essa may ranapiri (Ngāti Wehi Wehi/Ngāti Takatāpui/Clan Gunn/Highgate) is a person or some shit / they wrote a book of poems called ransack / it’s still in the world / the only time they use they/them pronouns for themselves is in these bios / isn’t that funny / thx goes out to their ancestors / who are as big as everything / just wow / just everything. Caroline Shepherd is studying for a BA in English and Public Policy and Victoria, and has been featured in Mimicry, Starling, and Signals. Ruby Solly is a Kai Tahu/Waitaha writer and musician from Aotearoa. She has had poetry and creative non-fiction published in Landfall, Sport, Poetry NZ, Starling, Mimicry, Minarets, E-Tangata, The Spinoff, and Pantograph Punch amongst others. Victoria University Press will be publishing her debut book of poetry Tōku Pāpā in 2021. Her first album, Pōneke, which also features poetry, was released in June 2020, and she will be beginning a PhD this year.