See Also… » Publishers hate you. You should hate them back..
A spectacularly awesome angry rant from Steve Lawson, Librarian. Seriously, all librarians should introduce themselves as “Firstname Surname, Librarian”. Make sure you give it a “Bond, James Bond” inflection and a little head tilt. I love you guys.
More Six Feet Down Under by Chris Mann, ISBN 978047316325, RRP$24.95, Available now.
Ah, self publishing. I could write a whole post on the phenomenon… but it’s taken me a while to just get this post done, so one step at a time.
There’s self-publishing and then there’s self-publishing. Chris Mann has now managed to produce two books in the former category. Er, that’s the good one.
More Six Feet Down Under is a simple follow up to Six Feet Down Under (a book which I really enjoyed) and Mann uses the same formula to produce another interesting read. He writes reasonably well, he tells a good yarn and he knows a lot about an industry we all come in contact with in one way or another – that of death.
Yes, Mann was a funeral director for many years and More Six Feet Down Under answers many of the questions people have about funerals and death but, yes, were afraid to ask. Such as do you have to have a funeral? (No.) How do you move a body in rigor mortis? (Move their limbs around until they soften.) What temperature is needed for cremation? (Preheat to 650 degrees.) Can we bury Dad in the backyard? (No.) Do bodies fart? (Not really but you’ll never use the word “purge” the same way again.)
The great thing about More Six Feet Down Under is that Chris Mann approaches his subject forthrightly and pragmatically but also gently and with humour. Much like you imagine the best funeral directors would. As with Six Feet Down Under you might never want to let your loved ones in a car again and some of stories particularly regarding children will be pretty upsetting to most people.
But the truth is, despite our best efforts, death remains one of life’s certainties. I would definitely recommend More Six Feet Down Under and why not buy both titles? Mr Mann sells them both on TradeMe for a very respectable $24.95 (including postage) , or they’re also both available on Publish Me or The Copy Press website. There, you’ve got no excuse now.
The Millions : Judging Books by Their Covers: U.S. Vs. U.K..
You know I love book covers, and I love comparing book covers from different territories just as much. It’s amazing to see the decisions on book design made for different markets. Some bad, some good.
Today’s guest post: Tim Jones (author of Men Briefly Explained) interviews Keith Westwater (author of Tongues of Ash). Thanks Keith and Tim!
1) The publisher of Tongues of Ash, Interactive Publications, has described the collection as ‘travel poetry’. Is that how you see the collection?
I must admit, when I first saw the term I was a little taken aback, as I had not considered the work in that light. My thinking was that the poems as a whole are representative of landscape writing, in the sense that they are to do with place, memories of place, the physical world, and the environment. They also touch on what is meant by ‘home’.
On reflection, I think the publisher has insightfully picked up on the journeys that are also woven into the fabric of the collection – my personal journey through time and place and my travels within New Zealand and overseas.
2) What led you to choose the rather striking image for the cover of Tongues of Ash?
A lot of serendipity – I met the artist, Turi Park, some years ago shortly after I had written the found poems ‘Camera Obscura Revealed’. The poems are taken from words in two essays used to describe the paintings in an exhibition of Turi’s work. When I was looking for some cover art for Tongues of Ash I went immediately to the exhibition catalogue.
I settled on the painting ‘Dawn Poem for Taranaki’ (see my blog) because it resonated with me on many levels. The title Tongues of Ash is drawn from my poem ‘Navigation point on the Desert Road’, which refers to the colour orange twice and Dawn Poem for Taranaki is vibrant with orange.
‘Navigation point’ is set with a backdrop of Ruapehu and Ngauruhoe, which the painting depicts in the distance and I thought this was a good metaphor for the time that has elapsed since I lived near those mountains. Finally, and as I found out when seeking permission to use the painting, it is owned by Charles Dawson, who wrote one of the two Camera Obscura descriptive essays.
3) The poems in Tongues of Ash are grouped into five blocks that have their own coherence and unities. How did you settle on this sequencing and order?
The first and third sections generally relate to places I have lived in or travelled to. The second section is mainly to do with the physical world and the fourth is more about landscape, environmental issues, and personal identity. The last section focuses on overseas places and notions of home. (Although if readers see an entirely different logic to the groupings, that’s fine by me.)
Once I had settled on which of my poems belonged in the collection as a whole and I had identified the sub-themes present in the collection, the poems more or less self-selected into these groupings. The sequence of the groupings was based on the need to provide variety and maintain reader interest, as was the sequencing within each group.
4) Who do you see as the main readers/audiences of Tongues of Ash and are your suppositions panning out?
I thought at first that the readers would be other poets and people who know me – friends and relatives, people of about my own age. While this has largely turned out to be the case, I didn’t anticipate – and am rather tickled by – the interest being shown in the work by my children’s generation.
5) What’s next for you as a writer/poet? More landscape poetry collections, or something else?
I am currently working on poems that are more to do with societal critique (child abuse, domestic violence) and natural violence (earthquakes). I have in mind a next collection that will pull together these poems and some others of a more satirical bent that I have written.
I also want to pick up again a fictionalized memoir that I started some time ago and put down when working on Tongues of Ash.
Ah, if there were only more hours…
Find out more about Tongues of Ash at http://www.keithwestwater.com/p/tongues-of-ash.html
Today’s guest post: Keith Westwater (author of Tongues of Ash) interviews Tim Jones (author of Men Briefly Explained). Thanks Tim and Keith!
1) Is it possible to explain men, briefly or otherwise?
It would probably take a much longer book than mine to do that job full justice. I guess that Men Briefly Explained attempts to reveal the mysteries of the male from two angles: partly internally, through a report on what it’s been like so far to grow up male, and partly externally, through observing how other men behave. I have tried to look at how men’s biological role affects our behaviour too – although it’s important not to try to push such sociobiological explanations too far.
(That’s a frightfully serious explanation, so I should also add that the book is a great deal less serious than I’ve just made it sound!)
2) Is this really an explanation of men in general, or would it be more accurate to call it an explanation of one particular man, i.e. a Mr T. Jones?
I did observe at a couple of the recent readings on the Men Briefly Explained/Tongues of Ash Book Tour that the title of the book would be even more accurate if the “n” was removed from the first word in the title – in other word, if the book was called “Me Briefly Explained”! So, to the extent that I’m a middle-aged, middle class (well, struggling middle class anyway), straight Pakeha male of English descent, it does less well at explaining men who don’t have those characteristics. Still, even with these restrictions, there are still a lot of us around.
3) When we were on our joint book tour with David Reiter, I noticed as the tour went on that you seemed to settle on a core group of poems to read each night, plus one or two different ones for each venue. How did you decide which poems worked best?
Trial and error! If a poem got a good response from the audience the first time I read it, then I read it again – and if it didn’t, I didn’t.
Mind you, I had a reasonable idea before I started which poems would work best with an audience. Complicated poems don’t work well live; humour does. Complicated, funny poems are a line call!
I think the title poem, Men Briefly Explained itself, was the biggest hit live, which was a nice feeling.
4) What sort of people seem to respond best to Men Briefly Explained – and are they the people you were expecting?
Well, I hoped that both women and men would respond well to the book. It’s not that men have responded badly – or, if they are responding badly, they are doing so in private and not telling me about it – but there’s been a very positive response from women who have bought and read the book – I’ve quoted some of these responses on my blog.
I hope that means that I am providing some enlightenment as well as some entertainment!
5) What are your hopes for Men Briefly Explained?
To sell a decent number of copies – it’s never wise to hold out huge sales expectations for poetry, but when there have been such good reactions from the people who have read the book, that motivates me to try to get the word about it out to more people.
To engage the reader’s emotions and intellect, not to mention the reader’s sense of humour.
To write a set of poems that people will keep coming back to and finding new angles on.
Find out more about Men Briefly Explained (including where to buy) at http://timjonesbooks.blogspot.com/p/men-briefly-explained.html
Tomorrow’s guest post: Tim Jones (author of Men Briefly Explained) interviews Keith Westwater (author of Tongues of Ash). Yes, they are busy men!