Book Review: irony | sincerity, by Hera Lindsay Bird and Klim Type Foundry

Available in bookshops nationwide.

irony|sincerity  is a collaboration between Hera Lindsay Bird and Klim Type Foundry. It is a book about irony and sincerity. Divided into three parts, Bird performs a version of irony on side of the book and sincerity on the other with an more essay type text separating the two parts. The conversation around irony and sincerity has been going for some time now, and this book posits that it is all performance, the lines that break your heart and the lines that make you guffaw come from the same artifice. This a very personal text in that people bother Bird about irony all the time seemingly missing the glowing heart of her work.

Bird is a f**king great poet, so when it comes down to the line to line level of the text, I can’t help be in love with it. And it’s concrete poetry in New Zealand by a New Zealand writer which is just so cool. Words move across the page in fun ways here, they change in font size to fill the space, or they are made small solitary blips in a black expanse, and for one section the words are italicised and shimmering on pink paper. There is just a lot of fun being had here; serious fun.

You have to save the dolphins
but you can only do so…

by killing

many,

many

dolphins.

We have the environmental concern being turned into a kind of nonsensical pattern. This is a section from the irony side and because of the razor sharp focus the poetry has this driving nature to it that keeps you reading. But even in it’s ironic state the text still deals with modern anxieties around work and environment, and there is still this sadness in the text. A quiet laugh turning into sobbing.

Because that is what irony is, it is a coping mechanism.

You
pray
so
often
that
God
refuses
to
exist,
just
to
spite
you.

This hurts my heart even if it isn’t meant to.

And the sincerity side of the book is no less funny or winking or painful. These two sides complement each other and we get the other side of the prayer; “anyway, / thanks / for / listening!” Funny things are often sad and sad things often funny, irony and sincerity aren’t any way to divide a book – and the central text lays this out very clearly. It’s a spoof of a lecture laying out an origin of the conversation around irony and sincerity.

And the argument is that ‘the problem with both attitudes is neither of them consider what it feels like to be alive. You can’t go through life without taking refuge in contradiction and absurdity, but you can’t live without meaning it either.’ This takes the exercise metatext tomfoolery to a place where we always knew it was – life is often a joke but it’s one that makes you cry just as much as laugh.

A part of what is so impressive is Bird here has essentially taken the hundreds or so comments that shit on her work for not being serious literature and turned that into serious literature like an alchemist or someone pretending to be a pharmacist when they’re not and the medicine they’re prescribing miraculously still works.

This experiment excites me, and I hope the design and poetry worlds blend more and get more public attention because I want to see more books with holographic letters on pink pages.

Reviewed by essa may ranapiri

irony | sincerity
by Hera Lindsay Bird and Klim Type Foundry
Published by Klim Type Foundry
ISBN 9780473448806

WORD Christchurch: The Neu! Otāutahi incident

WORD: The Neu! Otāutahi incident

After leaving The Neu! Otāutahi Incident at the Arts Centre Gym and walking in towards the centre of town, with the performances of the evening echoing through my mind there was a fleeting sense of a city that has begun to live and breathe again. After 10pm, people were gathered together, walking, eating out and enjoying life together in a CBD that was shaken to pieces by earthquakes and strangled by the government’s response. Otāutahi has started to feel a little bit grown up again, and it felt right to have such a confident, assured and exciting poetry and performance show on a Saturday night in our city.

The Gym at the Arts Centre is a beautiful venue, and it was a sold out crowd who enjoyed a range of work, from bawdy tales of masturbation (Michael Pedersen) and handjobs gone wrong (Hollie McNish) Leonardo DaVinci fanfic (Hera Lindsay Bird) and the story of a kid whose dad really did beat up the teacher who hit him in class (Dominic Hoey) to an arresting performance from FAFSWAG with an interpretive movement in response to spoken word. There was a rich and deep range of voices on stage, with a sense of commonality and purpose despite their different approaches.

Michael Pedersen was an able, energetic MC, and the pace of the show and flow between performers was lively while still allowing space for each piece to develop and shine. I may have ended up coming back to discussing the earthquakes in this review, but only for the fact that they and their ramifications, 8 years on from the first event, finally feel like they can occasionally (if you turn a blind eye to a few Fahey Fences and empty lots) be forgotten for a while. The communities who oppose the staid conservatism of this city have always been interesting and vital, and the compromises of the last 9 years are finally (occasionally) the least of our worries.  The Neu! Otāutahi incident felt like an opportunity to celebrate this, with an unapologetically talented lineup of performers from around the world.

Reviewed by Brett Johansen

NZF Writers & Readers: Poetry International

‘Featuring local featured poets Hera Lindsay Bird, Anahera Gildea, Bill Manhire, Courtney Sina Meredith and Anna Jackson together with international poetry guests Jeet Thayil, Patricia Lockwood, Harry Giles and Mike Ladd.’

Honestly, I’ve never been really sure where I stand with poetry. I remember Dad reading us Edward Lear as children, and memorising Wilfred Owen’s sonnet in high school (which I can still recite – ask me next time you see me). At uni I studied English, including poetry, and submitted to the belief that poetry was difficult on purpose and only those with the right number of degrees could hope to correctly interpret it.

Since returning to Aotearoa and wiggling my way into booky spaces here I’ve put my hand up to review NZ poetry several times. I always have to take a deep breath first, to try and shake off the terrible lessons of my formal education. To trust myself and my ability to read at least thoughtfully, if not expertly.

So it was with trepidation – plus a good dollop of end-of-the-festival, mind-spinning fatigue – that I turned up to review Poetry International. I hadn’t been scheduled to review it, but I was keen to see as much of Harry Josephine Giles and Patricia Lockwood as I could before they left.

Poetry International was inspired by the February 2018 edition of Poetry magazine that celebrates NZ poets. It was a rather disjointed and long-winded event. The poets came on stage in two lots, since there were nine of them and only six seats. The chair, Chris Price, had come straight from the hospital and added a note of muted medical emergency to the proceedings by holding a bandage up to her face as she listened.

First up were Anahera Gildea, Mike Ladd, Anna Jackson, Harry Josephine Giles, and Hera Lindsay Bird. They all performed their poetry and made some remarks, and then Price briefly interviewed them. The two stand-outs for me were Gildea and Giles, who both spoke with great power. Gildea – like Emma Espiner at Tikanga Now – talked in English and Te Reo about the erasure of wāhine Māori from NZ’s Suffrage 125 celebrations. Her poem was written as a kōrero with C19th suffrage activist Meri Te Tai Mangakahia.

Also on the theme of (de)colonisation, Scottish poet Giles said that most of the places they go around the world they’re following their people, who ‘chose to steal and murder and orchestrate genocide’. Giles is trying to remake the world, but acknowledged that they were doing so ‘in and through system of racialised capitalism from which I benefit’. They then blew up the earnestness of the event by enthusiastically performing a poem in the Scots language about butt plugs. Hashtag festival highlight.

The next tranche of poets comprised Patricia Lockwood, Courtney Sina Meredith, Jeet Thayil, and Bill Manhire. Meredith spoke with understandable exasperation of being constantly required to ‘diversity up’ the place a bit, since she is a queer Samoan-Kiwi woman (triple whammy!). I was particularly struck by her remark that ‘opportunities are often just mountains of hard work’. Too true.

I had been looking forward to seeing more of Lockwood, and enjoyed her poem about being on the plane where John Ashbery no longer exists – although, due to my aforementioned lack of poetry expertise, I didn’t know who Ashbery was or why I should care. Unfortunately Price’s brief interview with Lockwood fell flat: a mismatch between Price’s earnest intellect and Lockwood’s acerbic wit. I had managed to catch the first half of Blazing Stars (Charlotte Graham-McLay chairing Lockwood and Bird) and noticed a similar thing. Lockwood and Bird together were hilarious and I would have preferred to see them by themselves just riffing off each other without the chair interrupting with serious questions.

Thayil, an Indian poet and musician, was the only person I noticed in this festival to mention rats (an extremely underappreciated literary topic – festival organisers please note I have a keynote prepared to remedy this lack). He performed a poem called How To Be A Bandicoot and explained that bandicoots are ‘large unkillable rats’, which of course prejudiced me immediately in favour of them. He also performed a poem called The Consolations of Ageing which comprised him standing on the stage in silence. Do you get it, it’s because there aren’t any. He helpfully held up his book of poetry to demonstrate the blank page.

After three solid days of performing, talking, tweeting, and reviewing, my note-taking skills were faltering. (Under Bill Manhire I’ve written ‘dead All Black’.) I had failed to read the programme correctly and wasn’t prepared for Poetry International to last longer than an hour. Towards the end I slid off my chair and typed rather forlornly on the floor. Emily Perkins smiled at me kindly. Later, Elizabeth Knox very generously described my festival reviewing as ‘a service to humanity’. Over and out, my friends. Ka kite anō au i a koutou.

Reviewed by Elizabeth Heritage 

 

 

NZF Writers & Readers: Blazing Stars – Hera Lindsay Bird and Patricia Lockwood

Tara Black drew this and Sarah Forster wrote out some of her notes. Image, as always, copyright Tara Black.

Patricia Lockwood is the author of 2017 memoir Priestdaddy, as well as two collections of poetry; while Hera Lindsay Bird  is a bestselling poetry author. They are both truly hilarious.

Both women are masters of metaphor, and this forms the centre of part of their discussion. Hera names Mark Leidner and Chelsea Minnis as who she learned the art of dramatic metaphor from. She notes that ‘Tricia’s book was so good that you swear at each page, because you didn’t write it, and you finish off the book feeling less of a person.’ Patricia says, she loves Hera’s ‘permeability to modern culture.’

Each has had a poem go viral, and both loved the experience. They note later that they are both half-internet, with Patricia noting her early poetry experiences were formed by ‘Poetry Boards’ on the internet. Oddly, I remember these as somewhere I published my tragic teenage poetry when nobody understood me. LOL.

Another theme of the discussion was humour. Both are great humourists, and chair Charlotte Graham-McLay delved into this a little with them. Patricia was formed by Jack Andy’s Deep Thoughts, The Far Side – the modern internet humour starters as she saw them. Each agree humour is harder than it looks, but Hera notes that one of her favourite things about the internet is that you can throw a joke out there and guarantee a good percentage will get it, while 20% will be confused and take offense.

I’d highly recommend going to Patricia Lockwood’s session tomorrow. They touched lightly on themes in her memoir – as she begins the book, she sets up her family and gives her audience the understanding that they had to develop a carapace of humour to survive the strength of her dad’s personality.

I think it was Patricia who noted that linguistics in the internet age are exciting and funny. Certain punctuation is hilarious, and the ‘mum texts’ you see online are always funny – a fullstop can feel like a punch.

Patricia and Hera both struggled a little with needing now to be so close to their readers, but each of them has a different emailing audience. Hera attracts 55 year old men with Sigur Ros t-shirts, and 16-year-old girls; while Patricia usually attracts 22 year old boys that weigh 90lbs.

I’ve never laughed so much at a writer’s festival session, and rarely during a stand-up comedy session. You can catch both of them again tomorrow!

You can still catch Hera Lindsay Bird in action at Poetry International, 4.15pm, Sunday 11 March.

And Patricia Lockwood has her solo session Patricia Lockwood: Midwest Memoir at 1.15pm, Sunday 11 March.

 

AWF17: Old Guard, New Guard – Bill Manhire and Hera Lindsay Bird

This session was on Saturday 20 May, 4.30 – 5.30pm, at the Auckland Writers Festival

I love a session chaired by a peer or colleague – in a broad sense – of the panelists. So ‘Old Guard, New Guard’, which featured Bill Manhire and Hera Lindsay Bird and was chaired by Andrew Johnston, was always going to be an exceptional line-up for this poetry-loving, Unity-old-girl, wistfully-dreaming-of-IIML reviewer. Bill the old guard, Hera the new – leaving Andrew to ponder ‘I don’t know where that leaves me, but I think I’ll be the lifeguard’.

Both Bill and Hera had sweeping introductions from Andrew. There was a certain sense of both of them needing no introduction, but on the topic of Bill, at least, Andrew pointed out ‘there are quite a few things that Bill does – most people know some of them, but few people know all of them. His wider contribution to New Zealand culture is huge’. Poet laureate, CNZM. Honorary DLitt from Otago. The list goes on.

Meanwhile, Hera’s introduction contained the phrase – not the first time I’ve heard the sentiment in reference to her work – ‘it’s rare to hear the words “poetry” and “viral” together in the same sentence’. And yet, there’s really no other way to put it. Andrew let Hera explain the genesis of her ascendance to the stratospheric heights of household name poet.

For those who haven’t actively followed Hera’s goings on – or perhaps if you’ve only just plugged back into the literary landscape after a year in the desert – things blew up when two of the poems from her eponymous debut collection were published on The Spinoff. Then the wider internet came knocking.

‘I woke up one day and someone told me I was in The Guardian. There were 300-long furious comment threads. The one that people were angriest about was “Keats Is Dead So F*ck Me From Behind”. I kind of flippantly name-checked the deaths of a whole lot of American and British poets.’

Hera meant no disrespect, though, she assured us. ‘I was careful to only write about poets that I liked.’

At this point, Bill pointed out the similarities between ‘Keats Is Dead…’ and R.A.K Mason’s ‘Song of Allegiance’. Mason’s poem begins:
‘Shakespeare Milton Keats are dead / Donne lies in a lowly bed’…

And ends:
‘Though my song have none to hear / boldly bring I up the rear’.

It’s a glorious comparison – and yet, Hera claims that it’s purely coincidental. At least, as far as she can remember. Whether intentional or not, it still makes for a beautiful bookending of New Zealand poetry to date.

Further elaborating on the ‘furious comments’, Hera pointed out that she often prefers a negative review to a positive one ‘from someone liking you for the wrong reasons.

‘I had lots of considered and thoughtful and intelligent reviews, but there were also a lot of people who it felt like they didn’t understand what I was trying to do.’

Hera noted that she doesn’t mind when people (incorrectly) assume that everything in the first person in her book is actually coming from her own perspective. ‘There’s always a performative aspect.’

That line of questioning let into a conversation with Bill about the dichotomy of being a relatively private person who has had some very public poems – whether through major commissions or through winning major plaudits that pull the spotlight in his direction. Bill agreed with Andrew’s suggestion that his poetry acts ‘as a kind of defense as well as projection.’

They also discussed the International Institute of Modern Letters (IIML) – which Bill set up and Hera attended. While he fell into the role of workshop convener somewhat by chance, his work in that space means that every reader of New Zealand literature owes him a debt of gratitude. So many writers at all ages and stages have gone through the halls of that building on Waiteata Road – and part of the success of so many of them could in part be chalked up to the drive, right from the start, to get people out of their comfort zone. And importantly, to get them towards being the best writer that they can be within their selves, rather than trying to match to some kind of official framework.

‘One of the things I’ve always done in the writing workshop world is give people the equivalent of a commission – make them jump the tracks and go sideways from their own sensible selves.’

At Andrew’s request, Bill went into a potted history of the Victoria creative writing programme – both pre- and post-IIML name being added. It was a fascinating wander through time – from implementing a Cambridge-esque optional original manuscript component for English majors through to the IIML of today – in the building now officially called the Bill Manhire Centre (above).

Hera gave a little insight into her experience at the IIML – and her perception of Bill while an MA student there. ‘Bill was the big boss – I think that the only time I saw him in the classroom was at the beginning of year part. He came up to me with a plate of samosas and silently offered me one.’

She went into some detail regarding her own feelings about creative writing programmes – deemed crucial by some, derivative by others. ‘I don’t think it’s essential to do creative writing courses – but they do speed up the process.’ At what other point in one’s young adult life, she pointed out, do we get the luxury of taking a year out from the world just to write?

Bill talked about students coming in intending to focus on one style – and leaving converted to something else. Hinemoana Baker was an example given as someone who came in wanting to be a short story writer, and came out with her first collection of poetry. That particularly close quarters creative environment seems to have a transformative effect on those who study there.

Both poets read examples of their work – Bill lightheartedly requesting to leave before Hera launched into ‘Keats Is Dead…’, but later drawing an incredible stillness from the crowd as we listened to him read ‘Known Unto God’, a poem commissioned as a response to the Battle of the Somme .

There was much more, so much more. Both poets agreed that they do not exist at nearly such extreme poles as the name of the event would suggest. ‘I’ve always thought of Bill’s poetry being quite modern and mine as being much more old-fashioned than people realise,’ Hera said.

‘I think your work is quite traditional,’ Bill replied, describing it as a familiar house with different furnishing.

Old guard or new – or life guard, an essential role for a panel chair to play, after all – when Bill and Hera and Andrew are three of the face of New Zealand poetry today (and yesterday, and tomorrow), it does make you bloody excited to be a reader in this country, doesn’t it?

Attended and reviewed by Briar Lawry on behalf of Booksellers NZ

Hera Lindsay Bird
by Hera Lindsay Bird
Published by VUP
ISBN 9781776560714

Tell Me My Name
by Bill Manhire
Published by VUP
ISBN 9781776561070

Some Things to Place in a Coffin
by Bill Manhire
Published by VUP
ISBN 9781776561056

Book Review: Hera Lindsay Bird, by Hera Lindsay Bird

Available now in bookshops nationwide.

When a young poet gets an endorsement from a superstar with as much influence as Lorde, you know they are set to make ripples. The team at Victoria University Press have taken a calculated risk with this debut collection, which has already paid off it seems, with a poem republished online receiving thousands of views. Unity Books sold out soon after the print copy hit the shelves. While it may alienate readers who are more accustomed to more traditional poetry offerings from academic presses, it is sure to appeal for readers looking for something fresh, irreverent and hilariously relatable.

With the release of HBO’s TV series, Girls, created by Lena Dunham, we saw a logical extension of the no-holds-barred, female-perspective sexuality made popular by Sex in the City. That this has spawned a trend across different media genres is no accident, with gatekeepers jumping at the chance to capture the next generation. In Hera Lindsay Bird, what we have is not only a signature honesty and sharp wit, but also a poetic agility that many well-seasoned poets would kill for. The work is well-formed, muscular and intelligent.

At times the stories encased in the poems are akin to a car crash or a horror scene, where you feel a sense of bodily shock, but can’t wrench your look away. For all its humour, it’s a dark set piece. Despite its art-world quirkiness, this is no Zoey Deschanel, manic pixie dream. There is no sugar coating here. The word ‘black’ features over 40 times, along with a litany of other words Blake would blush at. Her work might not pass the filter test on your work computer.

Like the writer of The Virgin Suicides, Jeffrey Eugenides, Lindsay Bird captures that intriguing shadow side of existence, acknowledging that the world is not as shiny and full of kittens and rainbows as Katy Perry or Taylor Swift would have us believe. It makes sense that Lorde aligns herself with Hera’s work, as the dark antihero scorning the romantic view of women as pastel, smiling and infantilised objects for the male gaze. The cover may have Hera in a bright yellow coat, but it is interesting to note the shadow, the dual names, the owning of the dark and light. It is no surprise then that we get a generous amount of gothic imagery throughout the book. This, combined with the pop culture references (e.g. Monica from Friends!) give us a dark, cynical take on the familiar, hyper-colour media fed to us as representative of the youth of today.

A standout piece in this collection is the concrete poem, Mirror Traps, broken into several parts, sectioned off by an internet buffering symbol. Its broken, fractured lines embody the fragmented period of emerging womanhood, perfectly summed up in the line, “…wait for the heart to finish buffering.” Encapsulated in this poem is the idea that sometimes our actions, our hearts and even the mirror can be disconnected. This is not a malady unique to the young, but possibly more prevalent among females, who are thrown into a world of “…discount facial peels” and “cucumber slices”. The “mohair of loneliness” sums up the image of the lone model in mohair. We are reminded that no amount of glamour or beauty treatments can purchase the kind of human connection and love we all crave; this despite how much we are sold this idea from a young age.

It’s an intriguing, fresh and well-crafted debut; one you won’t want to put down.

Reviewed by Anna Forsyth

Hera Lindsay Bird
by Hera Lindsay Bird
Published by VUP
ISBN 9781776560714