Ventiak - an island somewhere in the brain

A Pricking on the Plain

22 December 2006

Yesterday Felix informed me that the International Spenser Society et al is again mounting a competition for the best poem in the classic Spenserian form. He proposed that we furnish a joint entry. It seemed like an interesting idea so, true to the spirit of Pelican Manifesto, I offered him the following as the purest Spenserian stanza possible.

De dum de dum de dum de dum de dum
De dum de dum de dum de dum de dee
De dum de dum de dum de dum de dum
De dum de dum de dum de dum de dee
De dum de dum de dum de dum de dee
De dum de dum de dum de dum de dah
De dum de dum de dum de dum de dee
De dum de dum de dum de dum de dah
De dum de dum de dum de dum de dum de dah

Felix, you must understand is not a post-modernist or even a modernist. In his view, no poetry worth reading has been written since 1940 and Eliot and Pound are agents of the Devil. I knew he wasn't likely to be enamoured of my offering but I was not prepared for the hissy fit he threw. If I wasn't going to take the exercise seriously, he declared, I could go *uc* myself (I assume the word is 'puce', although I've never heard it used as a verb.)

I felt I had to do something to mollify him and given that I have no innate poetic talent I also knew that I had to seek assistance. Might some variant of the computational method work? Felix's favourite poet is Keats. So I looked through those famous odes for a passable rhyme scheme and managed to come up with this.

De dum de dum more sweetly than our rhyme
De dum de dum de bride of quietness
De dum de dum de silence and slow time
De dum de dum de dum de dum express
De dum de dum de in thine happiness
De dum de dum de Dryad of the trees
De dum de dum de shadows numberless
De dum de dum de in full throated ease
De dum de dum de think warm days will never cease.

Would Felix be satisfied? I doubted it somehow. More depth was required, more richness, more connotation and association. Back to the odes I went. A random selection, culled for metric anomalies, furnished this.

Sylvan de dum more sweetly than our rhyme
Pipe to de dum de bride of quietness
De dum forlorn de silence and slow time
De dum a flowery tale de dum express
Forever dum de in thine happiness
Ripeness de dum de Dryad of the trees
Beauty is truth de shadows numberless
De dum de dum de in full throated ease
Oh happy, happy think warm days will never cease.

Will Felix be pleased, do you suppose?

Ex Libris

21 December 2006

Writers' libraries are peculiar assemblages. They do not contain the items you might expect. Ours is a case in point. There are copies of the classics, to be sure, and first editions of New Zealand poetry and fiction, signed by friends and enemies alike. The most interesting books, though, and the ones that we treasures most of all are the odd-ball volumes.

Old encyclopaedias. for example. We have a 1901 Chambers. Obsolete for most purposes but if you happen to be writing a novel set at the turn of the last century, invaluable for the picture of the world it can provide. We also have a copy of The Young Man, Volume 10, January to December 1896 - An Illustrated Monthly Magazine, which offers entertainment, information and wise counsel from a long series of earnest blokes with fixed stares and large moustaches. A third item is A Year in the Infant School, a comprehensive set of teaching notes of uncertain date (although it was already second hand in 1932, judging by the various inscriptions). Who knows when this might be useful?

Our latest acquisition is Veterinary Diagnosis, 3rd Edition, 1950 by Geo. F Boddie, BSc(Edin), MRCVS, FRSE. It was earlier owned by one Dermot McManus, who was a 5th year veterinary student at Dublin University in 1954. Here we have everything that a 1950's vet might need to know from the operation of the lymphatic system in sheep and cattle to the techniques for wielding large and particularly brutal looking calipers and syringes. There are also annotations. On page 136, for example, is the sentence 'Many technical difficulties render the use of the electrocardiograph in the dog an unsatisfactory procedure.' To which someone, in the margin (and it does not look McManus's hand) has added the gloss 'not true?'.

One can imagine a scene in a novel in which the old vet, an irascible fellow with mutton chop whiskers refuses to try these new fangled electrical techniques on the spaniel, Anastasia, and the upstart youngster, daringly good-looking, insists (perhaps it is done discreetly after everyone has gone home) in monitoring the poor dog's heart. And the upshot? Anastasia's owner, dark-eyed and passionate, rides off with the vet into the sunset. (Set the genders how you like here).

Of course, one has to remember the question mark in the 'not true?'. What difference would that make?

An Unfortunate Condition

20 December 2006

Felix has produced a new volume of poetry. It's lovingly bound in quarter calf-skin, gold embossed, each copy individually numbered out of 54 and signed. It comes in a neatly constructed cardboard slipcase with bevelled blue corners. It consists of the first four cantos of his (as yet unfinished) epic, Escherichia. He is determined to give it to his friends for Christmas.

What can one say? I want to acknowledge the achievement and wish all power to Felix's muse. Unfortunately, this approbation has to be tempered by an aesthetic judgement and, possibly, by the memory of Felix leaning over the rail on our deck and throwing up into the runner beans (Drunk? Drunk.).

Felix, dear rich friend that he is, is a fine example of a condition that all writer's fear. We might call it the McGonagall Syndrome. It is characterised by a yawning gap between the inspiration and the achievement. McGonagall himself was oblivious to this discrepancy and his work is justly famous in consequence. Most of us suffer from a mild form of the syndrome, a sneaking suspicion that what we write might not be as good as we think it is or, indeed, as other people tell us it is. This is why bad reviews are hurtful. They seem to suggest that we are precisely the fools we feared we might be.

It is a little known feature of the McGonagall legend that he followed the example of some of his illustrious fellow artists and writers and spent some time in the South Pacific. Tahiti has its Gaugin. Samoa has its Stevenson. Ventiak has McGonagall. There is a small monument marking his stay here on the hill overlooking the tennis court at the Jack George Hotel in Mialia. I don't have a photo of it but I can offer a page on this website as a commemoration.

How itchy can we get?

18 December 2006

We are now working on the press release for Black Earth/White Bones. Jennifer thinks the itchy tagline is great and she has included quite a bit about computational poetry. The problem for me, miserable pincher that I am, is how much gets left out.

Every writer has to deal with this. Someone describes your book as A and B and C and you immediately want to say, yes, but what about P, Q and R, not to mention X, Y and Z. Of course, no book worth its salt can be described in two or three hundred words. If I could have done the job in that space, I wouldn't have taken 75,000.

I just have to remember that the whole purpose of this exercise has nothing to do with a comprehensive description. All a successful press release does is angle the message so that the media (whoever they might be) are hooked into requesting interviews with me. We have to appeal, therefore, to the inestimable Iain Sharpe, the discerning Kim Hill, the sensitive and discriminating Guy Somerset, the yes-we're-right-there-with-you Catherine Ryan, the ever popular Robyn Langwell. And Chris Laidlaw? (Well I used to be a fan of his when he was a footy player and I like his Sunday morning session but does he interview writers? I don't think so. But maybe a book like this with all its subtle political and philosophical angles...?)

Fawning is the order of the day here. Of course, if I don't get the interview then whoever it is that doesn't front up had better watch out. They'll be pilloried the length and breadth of Ventiak. Until the next novel when we'll be right back on their doorsteps gazing up at them with adoring eyes.

A Question of Timing

17 December 2006

We have a clock in our garden. It is in an area that we've named the Writers' Block. We picked that name because our original intention was to have a typewriter on a plinth as a centrepiece.

It is one of the noteworthy things about the modern world that you cannot buy a manual typewriter. We have been all round the second hand dealers in the Valley and a fair few of the others in Pelican City and they all say the same thing. 'Wouldn't give one of those things houseroom. If I get one, I take it straight to the tip.'

What's going to happen in the Apocalypse, when the power falls permanently? Will we have to go back to scratching things on stones?

We did find a typewriter in the end. It was an old grey, office Imperial - a monster of a thing that St Vincent de Paul nonetheless had faith in. They obviously believed that someone might come along and be mad enough to buy it and they were right. Unfortunately, though, it was too big for the plinth, so it now sits on our deck under the plum tree.

So instead of the typewriter, we have a clock on the plinth. It had to be a clock because it's too shady for a sun-dial. We bought the clock in Foxton at a second hand place that was closing down. I can understand why it was closing down. The clock doesn't go. But that doesn't matter. As I said, a sundial wouldn't go either so it's no great loss.

What's Love got to do with it?

16 December 2006

I mentioned a few posts back that I might say something about function of art. Ever since then Rupert has been pestering me about it so I fear I am going to have to deliver.

The point, I suppose, is that whereas art might be useless and literature, in consequence, meaningless that does not mean that either are without a function.

Use is a notion that operates within the conscious purposes of an individual. I use that copy of the Bible to prop my door open, for in instance. Function, on the other hand, involves causative relationships in part of a structure or system. The function of the nerves is to send messages to the brain.

Use and function don't necessarily correlate. For example, the function of heterosexual love might be the propagation of the species. That doesn't mean that love has a use. On the contrary, if Alice had sex with Rupert in order to have a child, we might well decide that she loved him less than if she was overcome with passion. She might be using his love for her but not her love for him.

The same goes for art. The function of a painting might be to signal the social status of its owner but that's not the use of the painting. Or, at least, we would probably decide that if Felix bought a painting purely because possessing it conferred social status then his appreciation of it (his aesthetic response) was somehow impaired.

What is the function of art and literature? I've no idea but there are no doubt dozens of pelicans pecking away out there, trying to find out.

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