Kate Maxwell's Never Good At Maths - Q&A

 

With her recent release of Never Good at Maths, we wanted to know more about Kate Maxwell beyond her inability to do maths...so we interviewed her.

Q: Your book doesn't actually explore math. How and why did you choose to title it the way you did? 

A: There's some truth in the title that maths has never been my strength, but I chose the title primarily to express the way it often feels to be pigeonholed as a 'type' of person. As a predominantly right-brain thinker, it's also a tongue-in-cheek way of dealing with a fairly dismissive label. Mathematicians are often very creative, and creative poets are often good at maths. I'm just not in either group. The title is my quirky introduction to a level of satirical and self-deprecating humour I sometimes use in this book. I'm trying to tap into the self-conscious feeling many of us have when we are conflicted about our abilities and the way in which we are perceived.

Q: You cover a lot of different themes in Never Good at Maths, how did you choose what to cover, what inspired you to cover so many themes and did you have to do a lot of research? 

A: Many of the poems span decades and original versions have been tweaked over time. Some themes are of the simple every day, little curiosities, character portraits, and more global and political themes. Most of the time, if my interest is sparked in something, then it leads more naturally into forming images and builds into a stronger piece. Unless I'm writing to purpose; for a competition or special journal issue, I don't usually pick a theme first. It usually comes as I build the poem. A few poems do require research if I'm describing something historical or quite specific e.g., White Man in a Hole or Katy, Bar the Door and many poems are inspired by what I read, watch, and observe. 

 

Q: Did you face many personal challenges when addressing the various themes when writing Never Good at Maths?

A: Some topics are inspired by road trips, emotions, the news, literature, art, or characters I find interesting. If I write in somebody else's voice, then I can remove myself a little from the poem. A few of the more personal and biographical poems can pose personal challenges as it's not easy admitting who you are, or how you've felt at times, but it can also serve as free therapy. Obviously, not everyone will agree with the messges portrayed or political stnce I take but that's why it's called freedom of expression.  

 

Q: How and why did you get started as a poet? 

A: I don't know if I can answer that as clearly as I'd like. As a child, I think I liked playing with rhyme and the sounds words make. When I worked out that you could make a succinct and powerful little package with words and messages, then I started to become entranced with poetry's power. I still love the puzzle of placing just the right word or phrase but am not always as keen on the frustration when I know I'm still missing pieces in my self-made puzzles. 

 

Q: From the Poet's point of view, how important do you think it is for readers to be able to understand the meaning of a poem? Are some better left unsolved, or do you believe that readers should work to know the underlying meaning/s?

A: I am not an obtuse poet. I love writing stories as much as poetry and find the narrative very important. I love to paint pictures with my words, take on other voices, and tell stories. It's important to me that my poems are relatable and strike a chord with readers. My favourite poems are ones where language and emotion blend to bring you a slice of life that you can almost se and feel. I know many talented poets who embed their poems with oblique layers that make meaning either unclear or reliant on prior knowledge. I can often enjoy these poems too, even though I may not always be able to access what the poet really intended. Sometimes the beauty of the words, or strength of the mood is more important than the narrative. But that is their skill set, and not necessarily mine.  

 

Q: This is your debut release, what were the biggest lessons you learned and what do you plan and hope for the future? 

A: I supposed the lessons learned werethat you should always let your work rest for a while and return to it with fresh eyes before editing again. On the other hand, poems never quite seem finished but at some point, you have to let them go. Also, an editor's eye on your work is so valuable. You get to close to your work and can become blind to flaws and repreated ideas. I'm hoping this is my first of many anthologies. I'm writing quite a lot right now. I also have some children's book manuscripts that I'd like to see out in the world.  

Q: Your debut covers a lot from personal recounts to views and belieds, do you think you'll take the same approach for your next book? Why or why not? 

A: Yes and No. I have enough collected works for another book of poetry and a short story collection. Both have no obvious unifying threads but there are patterns and repeated themes. Following that, however, I would like to attempt to write more poem suites in order to flesh out veryin perspectives, voices on theme or topic. As my experience grows, I'm hoping my breadth and voice will also develop.  

 

Click here to get your copy of Never Good at Maths

Click here to watch the vitural launch of Never Good at Maths

Paul Scully's The Fickle Pendulum - Q&A

With so many views on belief and doubt, we interviewed Paul Scully to get a better insight on navigating the philosophical discussions, as explored in his poems in The Fickle Pendulum.

Q: What motivated you to explore belief and doubt, and the way we view them?

A: I attempted to Australianise The Conference of the Birds in my previous book, Sature Lines, and investigated how the Sufis used poetry to explore their beliefs. I'd read bits of Rumi and Hafiz before but not widely. During my process, I wondered about the converse known as doubt, and it grew from there. I also recalled Graham Greene, his fallen believers and moral ambiguities. A Catholic upbringing must have also been in the mix somewhere!

 

Q:  What do you hope is the biggest take away amongst readers of The Fickle Pendulum? 

A: I try to be neither didactic nor dogmatic. I take heed of the say, don't tell maxim. There were elements of personal investigation, interest in the stories found, some education, wonderment, etc.. I'd be happy for people to catch a sense of these and perhaps be interested, if not equally, then somewhat, and to appreciate the writing at some level. 

 

Q: Did writing The Fickle Pendulum change your views on belief and doubt?

A: Not Really. The biggest surprise was finding out someone like Laura (Riding) Jackson could walk away from poetry. This discovery drove me to reading up on why she did so. My findings were that her flinty personality radiated absolutism and her poetry suggests a difficulty in maintaining such intensity over a prolonged period, but it is still a surpsise to me. We've all had times when we've felt our writing has become insipid or perfunctory, but her reaction is way beyond that. Although my writing process didn't change my views on belief and doubt, it has caused me to think about what I love about poetry, and to challenge my premises. 

Q: Why did you choose to review the beliefs and doubts specifically through St Thomas the Apostle, Galileo Galilei and Laura (Riding) Jackson? 

A: The challenge is to ground the discussion of abstractions in some way and I wanted to take multiple perspectives. I've used historical characters in the past and it seemed natural to do so here. They bring a storyline with them which can act as scaffolding while you work at the detail. St Thomas, known as the Doubting Thomas due to his lack of faith, suggested himself. Science is in some ways a counterpoint to religion and I just needed to find the right scientist. Galileo Galilei was a Catholic who on one hand believed in God and religion, but on the other hand, was torn by his beliefs in the role of science. I had doubt in poetry in mind from early on as perhaps a tangential take on the theme. Someone had suggested the work of Laura (Riding) Jackson to me alongside Rimbaud, who was another candidate. 

Q: Do you often find yourself in doubt and how do you prevent or overcome doubt? 

A: I wouldn't say I face doubt often but I certainly entertain doubt as more than a momentary feeling from time to time. Climate Change has been a persistent source in recent years, especially when people espouse views that it is nonsense or that we shouldn't take restorative actions for nationally competitive reasons. I find it incredibly hard to understand how intelligent people could arrive at such conclusions and wonder at humanity. Likewise truly evil acts. People offer both despair in such instances, but they also offer salvation through love and friendship. As in many things, it is necessary to accept paradox as a natural and recurrent phenomenon. It also helps to bring things down to an everyday scale and find meaning and pleasure there. 

"If there are no easy answers here, there is nevertheless a sense, as Browning says, that ' All our life is some form of religion.' In verse that is measured and always thoughtful, Sculy weighs the detail and delight of things against their difficult, confronting implications."
- Martin Langford, author of Groud

 

Click here to get your copy of The Fickle Pendulum 

Click here to watch Paul Scully's virtual launch of The Fickle Pendulum 

Outer Space, Inner Minds Digital Anthology

Calling all "self isolating" artists (& others)

We think it's time to blast off from this virus-fuelled 'hot spot' to the fresh air of inspiration to be found in the cosmos.

So we're calling for entries to our first-ever digital anthology, which will have the theme/title Outer Space, Inner Minds. Any work that touches on our relation to the cosmos and its impact on our thinking or creativity is eligible.

Our idea for this took flight from the success of Dark Sky Dreaming: an Inland Skywriters Anthology, which brought together creatives and scientists from regional New South Wales and elsewhere in Australia. Check it out to see the types of work that were accepted.

The anthology will be published online in 2021 and be comprised of the best poetry and prose that are submitted, but also audio and short films. Artists from anywhere on or slightly above Earth are eligible, but any text must be in English (ETs, please note).

Previously published work is eligible, but you must have clearance from any licensee to the work for it to be published in our anthology royalty-free.

As well as text-based works such as poetry and prose (up to 1500 words per entry), we're open to:

• audio files

• moving poems / prose

• short films

Format:

• text: Word (.docx) or Pages

• images: .jpgs @ 300dpi resolution, preferred

• audio as .mp3s (5 minutes playing time maximum)

• video as .m4v, .mov or .wav (5 minutes playing time maximum)

Entry fee is AUD20 for each group of up to three poems, each story or non-fiction work, or each audio or film entry.

Entries, with the required fee, must be submitted via our online form. Extended deadline due to COVID-19 and other considerations: 31 July 2020.

Full-time students, people on a pension or people under-employed due to COVID-19 are eligible for a fee waiver for one entry. Please apply to info@ipoz.biz with your details.

As a special bonus, all entrants will receive a free eBook of David P Reiter's Time Lords Remixed.

We look forward to seeing, reading and publishing the best work out there. 

May the Cosmos be with you!

Rebecca Kylie Law: A Contemporary Metaphysical Poet

Rebecca Kylie Laws talks intimately about her new IP book In My Days and In My Sleep from her perspective as a poet and Catholic.

Rebecca's book will be launched at Bookoccino Bookshop on Sunday, 17 May, from 3 p.m. You can RSVP here.

The organ in St Mary’s Cathedral, St. Mary’s Road, Sydney has a beautiful console in the nave, designed I think by Eric Wisden and consisting of brass piping across horizontally slatted wooden backings that form part of a complex wooden sound structure. The piping is remarkable for the precision of its varying heights, remaining consistent in the increments by which they become taller and by which they recede. Indeed, they seem, toward the back, almost fan-like in their arrangement and the stronger, bigger and taller pipes at both sides add to this symphony of the delicate with the robust. 

When I first saw it I thought it was, aesthetically, a little like a book of poems, some short, some medium and others long. My new book essentially began here and became the reason for the religious overtones of the poems within. 

Of course, I was not at St Mary’s by accident but, rather, was attending a weekly service as a Catholic. To the non-religious person it truly is impossible to explain what it means to worship God in this ritualistic fashion other than to profess a faith I have had since a child, a faith that was given to me by my parents, vis-à-vis my education. 

The experience is extremely personal and rewarding in the sense the quietude of prayer, that dark space behind closed eyes in which you are with your soul, your heart, your feeling, directs you toward calmness. It is as though in drawing together your hands and kneeling you are facing yourself at your most composed and most beautiful: your most un-self. This is integrity and through prayer and worship, I follow it as my God and my light, my truth. 

At the same time I am with God, I am recognising a divine presence and sharing my most private life with him. I sometimes laugh at how useful that word, God, is, because it means in the one address, for instance, the beginning of prayer with “dear God”, I am really saying hello to the Trinity, to the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. Which in this sense means I am also addressing my church. So you see, prayer can be complicated! 

This point brings me to an important question a few people have recently asked: “how can you reconcile what has been happening in the media lately with your own faith?” This, more precisely, refers to the innumerable sex crimes the church tried to hide.

Well, my answer is very simple. Sexual abuse is everywhere. It is happening next door or over the street from where you live. It is happening to your best friend or friend of a friend. It is perpetrated by lovers, by strangers, by new acquaintances or teachers; and, sadly, by priests. In light of this, to my mind, the church has been disproportionately singled out by a media spotlight that, almost through bemusement, won’t beam the light of exposition elsewhere. So I continue in my relationship with God and go to Mass etc. because there are a lot of people in the world and some are bad, some so-so and some good.  

Now to poetry… 

My prayers are not poems. One comes to mind that could be with potential but, no, onthe whole they are quite different. They were written to share with others the experience of prayer, of being quiet with yourself and looking around at the world, of appreciating life and the loves you have in it, the people, animals or favourite moments. 

Some of the poems were inspired by walks in the botanic gardens, others at the beach whilst others were more sudden, for example, a child break-dancing or at my feet, sunlight catching the iridescent colours of a pigeon’s neck. 

One of the greatest tests, I think, for any person, is accommodating tragedy into the pace of everyday life. Halfway through the book, my dad became quite sick with cancer and died after a four-month battle. Spending time with him during his illness and in the last weeks whilst composing my book I remember making a very firm decision that this would not ‘become’ the book. I wanted to be sure the book showed enough resilience and faith to take my life past what I was about to lose. So there are a few dad poems, but not too many! 

To be honest, when I was first bedside with dad (an architect and later, church architect) I didn’t want to write any poems about his illness or last days. I was annoyed at Dylan Thomas for writing his exquisite poem “Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night” because to my mind he had cashed in on a personal tragedy. Yet write about it I did. And take the book past the fact, I did too.  

I have always written poetry. In my early twenties I tried out short fiction and was published, even shortlisted for a national prize; but, in all honesty, this is not my genre. Nor would anyone want it to be if they read any of my attempts. 

This book is poetry because it is the closest I get to prayer without telling the world my most private, intimate thoughts or worse, introducing you to the God I talk to before falling asleep.In My Days and In My Sleep is personal but not private, shared publicly because I think what I have witnessed, lived and loved is important.     

     

#Dalek & David in the Sydney Morning Herald

IP is very proud of our Poetry Series. Born out of the ashes of the Penguin Poetry Series, IP has published an impressive range of established & emerging Australian and New Zealand poets, and, last year, our first American poet, the excellent Andrew Hubbard, with his delightful Things That Get You.

Recently, we dipped our collective toe into the anthology market with two ground-breaking books that were thematically related: Voyagers: Science Fiction Poetry from New Zealand and The Stars Like Sand: Australian Speculative Poetry.

In the most recent anthology, which features a Who's Who of Australian poets, as well as some emerging authors, the common denominator was New Zealand based Tim Jones, who edited Voyagers with Mark Pirie. The new anthology was co-edited by Canberra poet PS Cottier. Tim and PS worked over several months with our Senior Poetry Editor, David Reiter.

Poetry publishing is always a risky business, and even more so with such a specialised focus as "speculative" work. But as Mark Pirie said of Voyagers, "prose writers have had their way for too long", and it's time we showcased poets working in that mode.

Voyagers was a Listener Book of the Year in New Zealand, and we hope that The Stars wins the recognition it deserves here in Australia. Already a critical success, The Stars made it into the Big League this weekend, with an extensive review in the Sydney Morning Herald and the Canberra Times, and other Fairfax newspaper syndication hopefully soon to follow.

Peter Pierce's review is so detailed that we couldn't resist reprinting it in whole here. Thanks to Karen Hardy, Editor at the Canberra Times for making it happen! And to our Business Manager, the #Dalek, for reminding you to buy the book soon and share this posting with your networks so that you are not EXTERMINATED!!

The Stars Like Sand: Australian Speculative Poetry.
Edited by Tim Jones and P.S. Cottier. Interactive Press. $26.

One of the most enterprising, unusual and rewarding anthologies of the last year is The Stars Like Sand: Australian Speculative Poetry, edited by New Zealand writer Tim Jones and Australian poet PS (Penelope) Cottier. The key word in the sub-title is defined with an appropriate generality: "the speculative is the area in which we attempt to write what we can't possibly know". 

The poets included range from the 19th century to the present, a much narrower temporal span than their poems, which travel millennia into the future and across galaxies. Bearing the latter point in mind, the editors note that theirs is a book "with a wide geography and an interesting fauna". They continue: "Here be dragons, true, but also zombies (traditional and vegetarian), werewolves, swagmen, poets small enough to fit into pockets, aliens of various sorts, angels, people made mostly of spare parts, or preserved wholly in DNA, and intergalactic tradies."

The Stars Like Sand: Australian Speculative Poetry, 

Edited by Tim Jones and P.S. Cottier. Photo: supplied

Though the book covers so much territory (and given the list above, unsurprisingly has several poems set in museums and zoos), it is tightly and wittily organised into five thematic sections, each taking its name from a notable nineteenth-century poem. The first, dealing with "space travels and related pursuits", is "We don't know where he's at" (from Banjo Paterson's "Clancy of the Overflow"); the second, "Howsoe'er anomalous", concerned with "aliens, weird creatures, surrealism and magic realism", comes from a poem as strange as any that is to be found here: Barron Field's "Kangaroo". Next – with its title from Henry Lawson – is "On the Wallaby (temporal)", whose subject is "time travel and visions of the end of the world". It is followed by "The fifth part of the earth" (Field again): "Australia in various lights".  Last is "His ghost may be heard" (Paterson – in a version of Waltzing Matilda – and the ballad is here in its entirety too), whose business is "ghosts, fairies, myths and legends".

The collection opens with the controlled whimsy of "Tea and Stars" by the always engaging John Jenkins: "The mouse travelled to the stars/in a blue teacup". John Dolce's "Job for a Hyperdrive Mechanic" works with a wry matter-of-factness: "As I recall the ambient temperature/of the angular discharge tub/airlocked the anode rod". David Adès' travel to "The Three Moons of Tenoa" ends plangently: "how unimaginable a world/with placid seas, and no capacious moons/to sing serenades by". Travel is also the affair of S.K. Kelen's brilliant parody of a tourist brochure in "Flying Toasters". This of Kursa in Beta Eridani: "booking accommodation well in advance is wise though entirely futile". This first section also contains "The Last Man Out" by David Reiter, who is also the publisher of the admirable risk-taking Interactive Press that we can thank for this book.

As promised, aliens roam in Part Two. Diane Fahey's "Silverfish" imagines the Thysaurans, while Benjamin Dodds' "Others" muses of a possible arrival from so-called outer space and then decides "Perhaps they'll simply pass us by/indifferent in sleek behemoths/on the way to a place less/parochial than here". Emilie Zoey Baker presents "The Vegetarian Zombie – the undead salad beast" – while there is homage to a master of the weird, H.P. Lovecraft, in Jude Aquilina's "Cthulhu Calls". Jan Napier's "Poets in Pockets" shows how "they shrill and argue/like an aggravation of lorikeets", while there are poems by Philip Salom and Lisa Jacobson about Daedalus, the space traveller who flew too close to the sun. A number of the poems in The Stars Like Sand were invited. Much to the editors' pleasure, one of those who accepted was Les Murray, whose superb poem "The Future" begins: "There is nothing about it. Much science fiction is set there/but it is not about it. Prophecy is not about it … Even the man we nailed to a tree for a lookout/said little about it".

In this splendid anthology, that entertains from start to finish, we find such colonial poets as J. Brunton Stephens in "The Courtship of the Future" (AD 2876) depicts a world where – even though people coupling have been "taught to draw the whole soul though/A foot of gutta-percha tubing"– sexual misconduct has not been eradicated. Tim Sinclair'svision of the future in "Silent City" is quietly mournful: "There is no sunrise or sunset in the city,/just a uniform, sourceless glow". In "The End of the World", Lawson's contemporary Victor Daley reveals a peevish and disappointed God who brushes Man off his knees: "With all its glories ripe/The Earth passed, like a spark/Blown from a sailor's pipe/Into the hollow dark". The Stars Like Sand shows us, in the work of the more than 80 poets included, much of that illimitable dark, as well as the flights of fancy and hope that can give brief and brilliant illumination. Seek out this book – admirable, and one of a kind.

Publisher David P. Reiter. Photo: Karen Hardy

Local poet garners international reviews

Local Australian poet Murray Alfredson is off and racing with his second international review!  It's hard to hold a good poet down.


"Certainly not for the faint-hearted, Gleaming Clouds by Murray Alfredson is the work of an unsparingly brave poet who looks at life, just as it is and hard in face. With impressive and sometimes daring linguistic virtuosity, forever looking to amplify experience, find meaningful resonance, explore faith in its fullest sense and take honest comfort wherever possible.

Alfredson's translations from old Norse and 18th century German texts are also touchingly excellent - not only technically, but equally persuasive in their capture of nuance and a beautiful sensitivity of tone that seems to speaks directly to the very soul of our forebears.

[The] Gleaming Clouds is altogether a marvellous and impressively unique creative achievement that, for me, makes sense of one poets life lived always ambitiously and with consistent integrity.

You will struggle to find a robust literary read quite like this anywhere else in the contemporary canon and for that reason, it has my highest recommendation." 

- Scott Hastie, Writer and Poet, Angel Voices

The Gleaming Clouds by Murray Alfredson

The value of a 'New & Selected' collection

As Geoff Page wrote in The Australian this weekend ('New and selected Australian poetry'), the 'New & Selected' poetry collection always presents the interesting question of how to order the pieces - whether to order them chronologically (oldest to newest) or by topic, etc.  Will the reader prefer to read the poet's story from the beginning, or do they want to start with the latest exciting chapter?

Page says award-winning poet Jane Williams got it right in Days Like These: New and Selected 1998-2013 (IP, 2013).  She ordered her poems in straight chronological order, beginning with her first collection.  Take a look at this great review in the article:

'Days Like These: New and selected 1998-2013' by award-winning poet Jane Williams

"Days Like These, Jane Williams's 'New & Selected' has a rather different trajectory. Twenty-three years younger than [Rae Desmond] Jones, Williams did not publish her first book until 1998. A relatively late-starter needs to make up for lost time and a well-edited New & Selected is often a good way to consolidate a reputation. Thus Williams's straight chronological ordering here serves her well.

Williams' first collection, Outside Temple Boundaries (1998), from which she has retained only eight poems, shows, in comparison with more recent work, a certain tentativeness of manner and a poet a little subdued by her influences.

From The Last Tourist (2006) onwards, however, Williams is the mature artist with a style very much her own (though her preference for minimal punctuation is widely shared these days).

Williams also has an unfailingly personal slant on her subject matter, along with a talent for evoking character and situation in a short space. In poems such as 'Thirst', 'The Begging Bowl' and 'To the Burglar Boys' Williams's concerns are often not unlike those of Jones, namely the almost-accidental by-blows of an otherwise prosperous society.

There is also, however, a welcome degree of humour in Williams's work, and an unapologetic celebration of life, most notably in 'Ag Borradh', dedicated to a man
"back from the coma
which held (him) like worry
 
back from the fog ...
... back to bud and to blossom ...
... called back to the world
and its quivering song
praise the light we grow into
the dark we grow from".
 
This balancing of light and dark is a mark of Williams's maturity as a technically versatile and forceful poet."

- Geoff Page, The Australian

International review of 'The Gleaming Clouds' by Murray Alfredson

Murray Alfredson's poetry makes you stop and think.  Popular UK reviewer Valerie Penny agrees:

"When this anthology first came to my attention, I had no idea what to expect from it.  Whatever it was the works far exceeded my expectations and I highly recommend this collection of poems to poetry lovers everywhere.

 

I was excited and amazed by the wide variety of styles of poetry: each at a thought provoking level.  The anthology displays a sound knowledge and understanding of the important ideologies and beliefs of the world.

 

I was particularly interested by Isaac’s boyhood.  It addresses issues that had concerned me and I was delighted to learn of someone else voicing the thoughts so eloquently. 

Another poem that fascinated me was Bi- meets uni-polar.  My cousin is bi-polar and I have lived with clinical depression for years. This poem aptly reflects many of our conversations!

I have already read and enjoyed The Sandwich several times, on each occasion  discovering new images, aspirations and impressions.  So few lines weave so detailed a pattern.

 

One of the translations he includes is Presence, one of my favourite Goethe poems.  I enjoyed the translation, and the excuse to re-read the original."

 

- Valerie Penny's Book Reviews

Read the full review here!
 

Find out more about The Gleaming Clouds here.

A poem about leeches

This is for Anne Morgan, on Bruny Island, who asked to see my poem about leeches, which appeared in The Cave After Saltwater Tide, p. 97 (Penguin, 1994). Happy to oblige, Anne!

Snakes and Leeches

she’s an islander

she teases leeches 

cuddles tiger snakes

at low tide or when 

she’s between men

i’m not an islander

though i’ve assaulted 

leeches with salt before

and tapped tiger snakes

moulting behind glass

i bring no frills free

running table salt

for the leeches

i have an eye for snakes

i have an eye for her

there’s a snake dead

at the head of the track

will ours be a one day

stand?  she flicks it away

like unwashed foreskin

my boot barely misses

the first tiger branch

yellow belly hissing off

through the undergrowth

‘hello stranger’ she croons

like a marianne faithful

and i nearly bite her tongue

when i see the first leeches 

maggot up my laces i spill

over-salt my haste 

‘for every snake you see’

she says ‘a hundred more

are coiling in the bush

with their scaley lovers

but no French champagne!’

when we’ve finished

with rainforest we wash off 

our sweat in a tidal pool

and her sock’s all bloody

with the dark love of leeches