DYING PIGEONS AND UGLY BABIES

There is a whole urban mythology about writers and their rejected manuscripts. James Mitchener wrote (in his novel THE NOVEL) about having work rejected, something about a manuscript returning and flopping about on his desk 'like a dying pigeon.' All too real. Writers' magazines try to cheer us, 'turn the rejection slip over and write the opening sentence of your next story,' said one. Another would be writer claimed to have papered her study walls with rejection slips. Rejection is like a mother would feel if someone looked into her pram and said, 'What an ugly baby!'

What brought this on? Last month I posted one of my dying pigeons to a blog, specifically asking for feed back. Well, I got no feed back, not from either of the two people, one in England one in New Zealand,who clicked on to my story. So seven billion people did not even bother!

I was saved from total despair by a call from a lady in Oamaru who is reading my current work in progress, a novel about a dairy farmer and a rugby player, the rugby player being the heroine, I admire the Black Ferns. Would I please hurry up and write the next bit, my reader asked, she wanted to know what was going to happen. Now that gave me enough confidence to keep on writing for a while.

And to the two nice people who clicked on http://waiata's witterings,blogspot.com thank you anyway, even though you were too polite to comment on my ugly baby.

Something for Free

At four minutes before seven o'clock on a lovely autumn morning, My computer is doing as I tell it and I have posted one of my unsuccessful attempts at a short story to Waiata's Witterings.blogspot.com

What I am hoping for is feedback - Why is this one not getting published? I have had a lot of short stories published on radio and in anthologies. If you read it and enjoy it, please say so. If you find a glaring error please point it out to me. But I want people to read my stories for pleasure, so I am now giving them away by posting them to Waiata's Witterings.

I have progressed as a poet over recent years because I subscribe to an on line poetry group, Poetry Kit. I really miss the writing groups I belonged to when living in the Wairarapa.

So please read the stories and comment.

NICE TO BE BACK

Maybe there is some malign gremlin lurking in my desk top because every time I have tried to post a blog it it has refused to let me in, until now.

I read an interesting feature in the Writers' Magazine about a writer, Scott Siegler who publishes his novels on line free of charge. He must work very hard because I receive installments twice a week. To be frank his style is not one that appeals to me, but that does not mean he is not a good writer, just I am a fuddy duddy. Scott Siegler has an audience who enjoys his style.

Anyway, his blog gave me an idea. I am going to post some of my rejected writings to Waiata's Witterings.blogspot.com and see is anyone enjoys them. Also I plan to return to Crete in June (Sgt Anastatakis take cover) for two weeks, and will be in Liverpool for World Poetry Night in September. That sweet patron saint of performing poets, Jim Bennett, has asked me to talk about New Zealand Poetry at the Liverpool Library during the weekend. The main night was booked for the third room of Everyman Theatre, redolent of Ferlinghetti, Ginsberg, and other luminaries. Now it is to be demolished, so we will have to meet elsewhere. I read some of my poems to the third room during the first World Poetry Night in 2007, so I can feel honoured to have performed there. I hope the fact that I was coming this year has no connection with the developers' decision to knock it all down!

A GREAT BIRTHDAY

9.20 p.m. at the end of one of the best birthdays ever. My crib is full of flowers, courtesy of neighbours, son Peter and niece Mary from Plymouth Mass. My in box is full of messages from friends from all over and my phone is busiest it has been since last birthday. This afternoon, in company with friends Glennys and Ethelwynne, I went to see the Metrpolitan Opera production of Don Pasquale; The music is still ringing in my brain. Then we had roast beef at the Star and Garter, my favourite restaurant in Oamaru. I tried to upload a couple of photos to share but my machine kept making excuses, drat it. I think the pictures have gone to Facebook.

The Opera season, showing once a month at Movie World, is incredible. Das Reingold, the first of Wagner's Ring Cycle, is German, Boris Gudenov, by Moussorgski, is Russian and today, Donizetti's Don Pasquale, Italian, so we are seeing a range of pera styles and hearing music in different languages. Also we are seeing behind the scenes to the incredible and vast complex which makes staging these operas possible. In Don Pasquale we saw entire stage settings mounted on tracks moved silently off stage, to be just as silently replaced by the next scene, from Don Pasquale's dilapidated Roman villa to Norrina's rooftop terrace to Don Pasquale's garden. The singing and acting was brilliant of course but the stand out performance was Anna Netrebko, a stunningly beautiful lyric soprano who literally danced about the stage, while singing, she even turned a couple of somersaults! Another highlight was the Duet between Don Pasquale and Dr. Malatesta , what musical comedy would call a patter song, but delivered at full operatic throttle with machine gun speed but perfect ennunciation.

DISGUSTING, WHERE CAN I GET ONE?

A news item on Yahoo this morning shows a photograph of a nude rugby player mid interception. Not a Whetton or a Brookes or a Bunce, or whoever the pin up All Blacks are these days. A Women's Rugby Club decided to raise money by publishing a calendar a la 'Calendar Girls'.Not completely unclothed, she wore boots and socks and looked rather nice. I have several adolescent grand sons who would appreciate a calendar like that for Christmas.
But where is this going to stop? Imagine the shelves in Paper Plus or Whitcoulls some December in the future - all the groups who huddle at tables outside supermarkets on freezing cold days selling raffle tickets could each have their own nude calander: Cancer Society with daffodils in strategic places, St Johns Ambulance,Stroke Foundation;Gray Power; Citizens'Advice? Fire fighters and Women's Institute have been done. The mind boggles.

SOME PEOPLE GIVE ALL YEAR ROUND

Ruth Arnison is a Dunedin poet who recently won both first and second prize in the Timaru Rose Society's annual poetry competition. But as well as writing great poetry Ruth prodces POEMS IN THE WAITING ROOM a pamphlet of poems distributed free to doctors' waiting rooms and rest homes. They are a mix of old fashioned traditional main stream and new poems by New Zealand poets. Ruth selects the poems, clears copyright, sweet talks sponsors and arranges printing and distribution four times a year, a big task and all voluntary.

Jan Vernon is a Temuka poet who won first prize in the Rose festival contest three years ago. She is often published in The Listener and other magazines. Recently she completed a magnificent long dramatic work of Poetry, 'Pele's Children'. Jan regularly visits a local rest home in Temuka and reads poetry to the residents, many of whom are younger than she is.

These are just two of the people who quietly give their talents and time to making life better for people around them. As well as these two there are the secretaries of groups,social, religious,sporting dramatic, musical who work incredibly long hours without pay. I wonder, if some 21st century Guy Fawkes succeeded in exterminating Parliament would we notice? If our unpaid volunteers disappeared how long would our communities be able to carry on?

GODUNOV FOR OAMARU

Our local cinema complex holds Sunday afternoon screenings of what I can only describe as 'cultural events'. They are sparsely attended.
In 2004 I paid $4,000 to travel to and attend the Adelaide production of Wagner's Ring Cycle, all four operas. They were magnificent but last month I paid $28 to attend the screening of New York Metropolitan Opers's production of Das Rheingold, the first of the Ring Cycle and it was even more magnificent that the Adelaide experience. Brilliant photography put us right on the stage of the Met, looking at Bryn Terfel's tonsils, we were so close.
So yesterday I, and six other people watched and listened to Mussorgsky's Boris Godunov which ran for 5 hours 30 minutes. My head is still ringing with the music, my eyes are still dazzled from the opulence of the production, and my mind is still grappling with the complexities of a plot straight out of Aristotle's Poetics.
Boris Gudonov ruled Russia in the sixteenth century. He was a kindly, well intentioned man who did not understand the hugeness of his task. He wanted to be loved by his subjects so he handed out scraps of bread to a few beggars be but had no concept of the reforms needed to make a real difference. He was gullible, believing the fairy tales fed to him by corrupt boyars and greedy churchmen.
There is a lot of subtle political comment, for example the itinerant friars who rob a sleeping guest in a wayside inn, the shallow bitchiness of the Polish court,and finally the dying Boris who advises his son to rule Russia by 'heeding the simple wisdom of the common people and to trust in God,' while outside those common people are rioting and welcoming the false pretender Dmitri, and the military arm of the Roman church including those two venal friars who have swapped from Orthodox to Catholic.
What I found tragic was the thought that four hundred years later people have still not learned 'simple wisdom'. But the sight of two horses being ridden on to the vast stage at the Metropolitan Opera House was worth every cent of the admission price.

if you want to learn more google www.nzmetopera.com