Search

Sam van Zweden

Writer

Open Search

The Numbers: A Study in Reading Habits

Early last year, I did a little analysis of the numbers around my reading, inspired by a post of Chris Flynn’s. I thought it might be interesting to do the same sort of break-down of my reading for the whole of 2010.

Here goes:

30 men. 52 women. 1 combined.
22 Australian. 31 non-Australian.
1 literary journal*. 2 graphic novels. 7 non-fiction. 43 fiction.

I have to say, I’m surprised by how close the numbers are between men:women and Australian:non-Australian, I thought both these areas would be pretty highly skewed in favour of non-Australian men. There’s definitely room for improvement, to read more women, more Australian writing, but I’m pretty pleased with the effort for 2010.

Next year I’ll start counting literary journals and include that in my tally. My non-fiction:fiction count isn’t quite what I’d like it to be – I’ll be aiming to read more non-fiction in 2011.

*I read many, many more than 1 lit journal during 2010, but I only included KYD in my list. In 2011, lit journals that I’ve read cover-to-cover will be included in my count.

0

A Month Of Reading

I found this meme in “The Victorian Writer”, the Victorian Writer’s Centre magazine.

“A Month Of Reading” outlines what’s gone on on my bookshelf and in my reading time this month. I must say, I find it scary that this is a pretty typical month, acquiring 18 books and reading 3 of them. No wonder I panic about not having time to read “everything”!

What was your month of reading like?

DECEMBER:

Books Bought:
“The Little Prince” by Antoine de Saint-Exupery
“Ham on Rye” by Charles Bukowski
“Perfume” by Patrick Suskind
“Humpty Dumpty in Oakland” by Philip K. Dick
“The Irresponsible Self: On Laughter and The Novel” by James Wood
“Reheated Cabbage” by Irvine Welsh
“The View From Castle Rock” by Alice Munro
“Our Story Begins” by Tobias Wolff

Books Borrowed/Received:
Library:
“The Family Law” by Benjamin Law
“Winning By Losing” by Jillian Michaels
“Black Swan Green” by David Mitchell
“Poemcrazy” by Susan Goldsmith-Woodridge

Gifted:
“The Crying of Lot 49” by Thomas Pynchon
“Yellow Dog” Martin Amis
“Unreliable Memoirs” Clive James
“Flying Visits” Clive James
“Brilliant Creatures” Clive James
“Reliable Essays – the best of Clive James” by Clive James

Books Read:
“The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat” by Oliver Sacks
“The Family Law” by Benjamin Law
“Black Swan Green” by David Mitchell

Books Reading:
“Winning by Losing” by Jillian Michaels
“The Best Australian Poems 2010” ed. Robert Adamson
“The Best Australian Stories 2010” ed. Cate Kennedy
“The Reader”, ed. Aden Rolfe

 

0

2010: A Year In Review

I stole Lisa Dempster’s title for this post. I’m also stealing the layout of Lisa Dempster’s post. And idea.

Dear Lisa,
Stole everything,
Much love,
Sam.

I very much enjoyed reading Lisa’s post a few weeks ago, which outlined her wondrous 2010. She’s had a wildly successful year – I can’t hope to match the scale of her achievements (well done, Lisa!), but I feel like I’ve had a pretty amazing year myself; one worth outlining the great stuff in.

Earlier this month at the Express Media Awards Extravaganza, Bel Schenk talked about how we don’t often enough pat ourselves on the back and say, “You know that thing I did? That was pretty great”.

So feel free to flag this post as the love-fest (of myself) that it is; I’m taking this chance to put it out there: You know all that stuff I did this year? That was all pretty great!

January: I committed myself to a very very large undertaking: the 100+ Books Challenge… Current count stands at 53. That’s 1.019 books per week, every week this year. While it’s a pretty far cry from 100, it’s still an impressive list of books. Next year I’ll aim for more than this year. Perhaps not a hundred, just more than this year. In Janurary, my blog got linked on the Wheeler Centre’s website – might not seem like a huge deal, but I went crazy.

February: I reached 1000 hits on LGWABP since September 2009. My first big blogging milestone! I was invited by Misha Adair to join the book reviewing team on channel 31’s Yartz – Ralph Mclean provided a bounty of support, and the Yartz crew became my Saturday family. I stayed with the show until about September or October this year. I had a ball and learned heaps. I started participating in the Teaser Tuesday meme – there have since been about 30 Teaser Tuesdays on LGWABP.

March: I started my course at RMIT. The fact that I got into this course (very small intake of only 40 in my year-level) floored me. The course is SO supportive and SO helpful; I couldn’t be happier here. Reading back over that post, I was skeptical about whether the course would stay good – it has. I started contributing to L!MP – a publishing collective which has since become Ex Calamus. I spent time writing with people from Streat.

April: Not much happened in April. I realized how behind I was on my way to 100 books.

May: I discovered slam poetry – enter Dead Poet’s Fight Club. The poetry-minded of us Creative Writing students found ourselves a (location suppressed) to slam in. I took part in Express Media’s Connecting Voices workshop, where I met some fantastic people and learned how to run writing workshops.

June: I interviewed EZB and Lisa Dempster for Yartz.

July: I signed up for LitLife’s Comment July Challenge, and did pretty well for most of the month. I think I bowed out in the last week – but the first three weeks were fun. I started the Admiration/Inspiration Thursday meme, which was short-lived, and has given way to interviews posted whenever they’re relevant. I interviewed Sage Francis. In hindsight, it’s not the best interview it could’ve been, and that’s my fault. But I am impressed with myself for interviewing SAGE FRANCIS!

August: I was on the radio! “In Other Words”, on SYN, interviewed me about blogging. Ricochet Mag published my poem, “Tick-Tock Polka”. Benjamin Solah interviewed me about being a student and a writer. I had poetry scrolling across the ticker-text at Fed Square as part of “Poetry 4 U” – a project run by the Melbourne Writers’ Festival and RMIT.

September: I had more poetry up at Fed Square, this time as part of the Overload Poetry Festival. After blogging about the Overload Lentil Poetry Slam, the Overload people asked me to take a media pass and blog about the rest of the festival – I was super-excited that LGWABP got that sort of recognition! (Day 7, 9 and 10 follow the above post). My poem “Dancing on Architecture” was published in Voiceworks issue #82, Hunger.

October: Quiet month, was October. I read a lot. That’s about all.

November: I competed in the Australian Poetry Slam heat at Balwyn and came runner-up! I went on to compete at the State Library of Victoria, which was amazing. My story, “Hold On” was published in the 2010 issue of Page Seventeen. A comic I wrote in collaboration with Tohm Curtis went up on the project website, “12 Moments”.

December: My poem, “Dancing on Architecture” was nominated in the category “best metaphor published in Voiceworks in 2010” at the Express Media Awards Extravaganza. I didn’t win, but somebody liked it enough to nominate it. It means a lot that it wasn’t me.

What a year it’s been! 2011, here we come.

Yartz’ very, very dedicated and supportive producer, Ralph Mclean, passed away on the 25th of December. Ralph played an important part of what made this year so successful for me, and he was a delight to know. Thanks, Ralph, for your support and laughs; for being so immediately accepting. Thanks for helping me improve – I did, indeed, “thank you for it later”.

5

Teaser Tuesday

Teaser Tuesday is hosted by MizB at Should Be Reading.

  • Grab your current read.
  • Let the book fall open to a random page.
  • Share with us two (2) “teaser” sentences from that page.
  • You also need to share the title of the book that you’re getting your “teaser” from … that way people can have some great book recommendations if they like the teaser you’ve given!

“I wonder what secrets she keeps buried beneath her blouse. I want to grab her and tell her about mine – the one lurking beneath my shirt – how I used to walk like an ape because of the rashes, an unfortunate consequence of the aluminium-rich roll-on the doctor prescribed for my hyperhidrosis.”
From David Kelly’s Armadillo in “The Best Australian Stories 2010”, ed. Cate Kennedy. p29.

0

David Mitchell, Will You Marry Me?

On Christmas Day I finished reading Black Swan Green by David Mitchell.

Easily one of my favourite books of 2010… One of my favourite books of ever.

Hence, when I found this interview on Paris Review this morning, I was glad and interested.

He seems quite a lovable chap, no? I think I’ll marry him. Despite the wife.

1

A Very Energetic, Well Expressed, Quotable Guy Gets Interviewed. Here.

The guy is Randall Stephens.

Randall Stephens is a Melbourne performance poet. You may know him from the many, many events he performs at. Melbourne has a solid group of people who keep the poetry going and exciting – Randall is one of those people. He has a stupid amount of energy, and he’s artful. He understands what it is to perform a poem, he knows inside out the things that are available to his performance. Space, volume, silence. He’s an absolute joy to watch.

Randall is a very driven guy – he’s recorded loads of audio of his poetry, he has CD’s, he travels all over Australia to tour, and every time I think I’ll go out for an evening of poetry, there’s Randall. He’s reliable, and always surprising. He blogs very regularly (very, very regularly. And all of it’s GOOD!) at his blog, Tales Told By An Idiot. Next year Randall is touring New Zealand.

He was kind enough to interview for LGWABP. I have to say, I’ve never had this much fun reading interview answers – I feel like I’ve learned something by reading it. And Randall is very quote-worthy!
My favourite quote-worthy thing from the interview? “9 seconds … seriously, that is how long a poet’s grace period is.”
Read the whole thing below the picture of this screaming man, Randall Stephens.

– You’re a performance poet. What does that mean for you – what does it involve, and what’s the writing process like?

It means centrelink, it means getting up at 3pm for an early start to the day, shopping for new scarves, coffee in grimy cafes, complaining about the government and getting hysterical over spilt milk (well, I do actually do that occasionally –drives my housemates crazy).

But truthfully it’s weird. A lot of days I wake up nervously, expecting one of my old bosses will show to grab me by the collar and drag me back to the old work-a-day world, like the past few years doing this have all been a dream.  I still have a day job – technically a night job, casual, and very undemanding (I’m doing this interview from work, as it is), so my days are usually free to allocate as I see fit.

It’s not hard like packing boxes or waiting tables.  But seriously, it does involve lots of work though.  Developing your work to a professional standard ~ the rehearsing and editing, the  planning and co-ordinating of events with people, the tours, making the CDs, and of course promoting, this all takes lots of time.

There’s no career path to follow, no road map or responsibilities to anyone, but the flip side of that is, If I’m not booked for gigs or pushing my work forward somehow, then I’ve only got myself to blame.  I think Steve Smart said this once, that the performance poet really has to do and be everything themself, unlike other types of theatre, or performing arts.  You’re your own agent, publicist, writer, actor and director.  No one’s paying you, patting you on the back, it’s all up to you.

Writing is still the primary thing though, and the process is write constantly, but leave things a while once written, take another look and be objective by asking basic questions: is this poem interesting or relevant to anyone (else)? Is it clear? Will it grab people’s attention with the first line/s?  Does it ask or deal with questions? Does it then move along a dramatic arc? With few exceptions, that’s the process I put my work through before anyone else reads it.

Then you get feedback, for me that means the blog, and the truth is more people still see my work this way, than ever come along to my gigs.  Responses to the blog help me decide what’s worth developing, what needs more work, and what’s better left un-spoken. Simply put, if there are lots of responses, I know I’m onto something.

– You write poetry which often uses comedy to make statements about society. Is this intentional, or are you just a very funny man?

I am not a funny man. Not even a little. Not really. Really a man. A little man.  Or only really a man a little. Really. Man. Okay maybe I am a little. A bit. Of a man.  Who’s funny.

I find things in life funny, there’s a lot that’s worth laughing about.  Absurd things, observations about myself and other people.  We’re a crack up, what can I say?

– How much of the performative aspect do you write into your poetry when you first put pen to page, and how much just appears during later readings?

While I’d like to think all my stuff is at least readable, primarily my poems are designed to be heard.  Sometimes I might get a message from someone saying “can’t wait to hear you perform this” etc.

Starting last year, I’ve attempted to reverse this in a way, almost making the poem perform on the page, the length of a line can imply a mood, a character, the vocabulary can imply force or contentment or happiness, sarcasm, cynicism, confusion, the long breaks I leave between sections are dramatic pauses.  Almost always there will be a character, a person, who is supposed to have written or dictated the words.  I always want my poems to sound like they came from somewhere, they’re being said, by someone.  Words just don’t somehow exist in ether, so in that sense they’re all designed for performance, if not literally by a spoken voice on a stage.

But yeah, once I do start reading it aloud things always change, what might scan well on the page is gonna put people to sleep in 9 seconds when you’re up there (seriously, that is how long a poet’s grace period is).  What reads as vitriolic anger might need a more calm or muted vocal to be effective.  You have to find a way to arc your performance, you can’t (or very rarely) get away with a poem that goes sad-sad-sadder, or goes from love is great to love is really great.  Boring! Incidentally it’s one of the reasons why I have will continue to avoid political poetry like the plague, I just don’t see the same potential there for dramatic arcs, questions, journeys, personal discovery.  For me that’s what it’s all about.

– “Being a poet in Melbourne is a pretty glorious thing.” Discuss.

Well ok, but yes and no.  What Melbourne has when it comes to poetry is volume.  More poets more readings, more often.  I think by sheer mass, statistically we’ve produced some good poets.  But around the country, and in other countries where I’ve seen poetry performed (England, India, USA and Spain) people everywhere else are doing a lot more with a lot less.  Melbourne has a lot of potential opportunity here, because of those volumes.  But we’re complacent, and also have a lot of shit. Shit poetry, just tired, depressing, uninvolving crap that idiots clog up the open mike with, with no real understanding –that they are subjecting people to it.  I saw a convener of a new reading in Melbourne get up and stay that he kinda knew his poetry was boring, but shrugged and said he was going to read it anyway.  Then he complained to me later about how know one supports him or gives him gigs.

For me, that is quintessential Melbourne poetry arrogance.  As I write this, December 2010 poetry in this city is in serious decline. 5 regular readings that I knew have all shut down this year (Drunken poet, Spinning Room, Claypots, Sospesso and Ninja Slam), and frankly I think a lot of that has to do with not understanding or  appreciating the gift of an audience, especially with the respecting to the venue you’re in.

Sydney, Perth and also Brisbane have great things happening, some really great and lively readings coming up, and it’s easy to observe the difference in enthusiasm and energy in those cities’ where the poetry scene is a lot more DIY, and not a line up of crusty old venues run by vain and ineffectual organisers and presenters. Oh and yeah, BAM!

– You’re going on tour in New Zealand! That’s huge! You’ve toured before; do you feel like you know what to expect from this? What on earth happens on a poetry tour?

What happens on tour? …not as much as I’d like, hehe. Steve Smart (with whom I’ve taken 7 trips with to tour this year) and I like to create a certain hedonistic mystique around our touring, and while it can potentially be pretty debauched, it’s more often really tame, If you have a lot of days between gigs, and can’t find people to hang out with (not looking at anyone, Brisbane) it can get downright boring, lonely and isolating, as any travel can be if you’re just there killing time.

Poetry touring is basically just going to another city to perform, which you can arrange through networking easily enough.  Now there are lot of high profile poets in Australia who through winning slams or being invited by festivals etc, are given the opportunity to do this.   Steve Smart and I on the other hand, do it all on our own, by sending emails, cornering individuals at festivals or when an interstater is in town, travelling at our own expense, finding our own accommodation.

I might look back on this one day and laugh for not knowing any better, and how hard I made it for myself. Only recently have I begin to appreciate the significance of this, when I started asking around with some of the big kids about how they poetry-toured New Zealand,  how they did it/who they contacted, and the answers invariably came back “shrug, I dunno, someone arranged  it all for us”.  Until I discover the secret handshake, I just assumed that’s how it’s done.  It was the same as when I made my CD, for better or worse, I just… went and did it.

So New Zealand… yeah big time stuff for me.  I’m expecting a lot from myself on this trip, I think there’ll be many highs and lows, because this is not necessarily going to be the easiest country to find gigs in.  I’ve had a whole spectrum of responses to my enquiries from loving welcome open arms to downright xenophobic rejections.  My aim is win over all different types of audiences, young or old, north or south island, rural or urban.  I believe that I can.

I’ve arranged gigs in the 3 major cities and a couple of towns, and made a lot of contacts through facebook etc.  For the rest I will just turn up, talk to people, find out who’s who and see what I can dig up, and hope for the best.

Some Randall-Related Links:

http://www.randallstephens.blogspot.com/

http://www.youtube.com/brainthatweighsatun

http://www.wordinhand.org/home/shared-words/randall-stephens

http://www.wordplay.org.au/writers/randall-stephens/

Thanks so much to Randall for interviewing for LGWABP. He’s one of the most supportive people I’ve met in Melbourne’s poetry scene, and I appreciate how open and accepting he (and others like him) make it. Cheers!

0

Top 15 Posts 2010

2010 is coming to a close. I’m feeling vaguely sentimental this morning, so here’s my favourite posts from LGWABP from 2010. In chronological order, by no means the order of importance. This list is of posts that I had fun writing or researching. I hope you enjoy reading:

1. Listmaker, 2010 – I like a good list, don’t you? I think this one’s a bit fun.
2. Farewell to Another Great – JD Salinger’s death in January was sad. We’ve lost so many great writers this year.
3. Madonna Melbourne, Parma Sunday, Finished With Cider – this weekend was typical. Madonna have been the band of the year, without a doubt, and I look forward to more from them in 2011. (Eg, 6th of Jan at Yah Yahs, ya’ll. Be there!). I enjoyed writing about them. If you get to see them, they’ll make you want to write too. Such immense creative energy rubs off.
4. Edgy Gritty Realism From Normal Happy People: Irvine Welsh at the Wheeler Centre – one of the best gigs at the Wheeler Centre that I went to this year. Wasn’t Irvine Welsh just unashamedly dysfunctional? Great! I also had a lot of fun writing this review.
5. Reading Anxiety – Reading anxiety has been a major thing for me this year, as I’m surrounding myself with more and more readers and writers. There’s so much out there and so little time! The 100+ Books Challenge (though nowhere near completed) has kept me motivated and honest, and it’s been great tracking what I’ve read.
6. Slamming Into Wordsmith-ry – my discovery of slam. What’s followed has been amazing. Great gigs, great people, great fun. I’ve discovered our local champions, and goodness there are many! Thanks for existing, slam!
7. Chuck Ragan Revival Tour, 30th April 2010 – I managed to get a music review on here, and write about it coherently despite my lack of musical knowledge! Yeah! Go team!
8. Library Greed – similar to reading anxiety. I’ve really enjoyed engaging with questions like this in my posts and writing about reading habits.
9. Thinking About Process – again, writing about solitary-type habits. I enjoy thinking about it. This post never really got much feedback, which I was interested in getting. How do you write? Engage, yo!
10. Breakable Bags, Zelda, and Reframing Rejection – one of the best things to happen in 2010, the EWF with the unstoppable Lisa Dempster at the helm. Wonderful! Had so much fun attending events, and I think writing this post helped me tease out for myself what was helpful about the panels and discussions I’d been to, and what I’d really retained.
11. Why Write? – possibly the most ridiculous “introduce-yourself” question I received all year, “why write” prompted this piece, which is still in the process of being expanded into a longer personal essay, exploring why other authors have written and how I relate to that. So I’m still having fun toying with that question. Thanks for the dumb question, random crappy tutor!
12. You Are Being Judged – I really enjoyed getting in touch with my mean side for this, a high-quality rant.
13. Mistakes You’re Allowed To Make Post-Nobel Prize – also a bit ranty. I really didn’t enjoy this book though… This post was written for a school assignment, and I know that to make it a really good review I’d need a decent knowledge of JM Coetzee’s back-catalogue. However, time didn’t permit. I think I engaged well given my limited knowledge.
14. Overload Day 9 – Poetry Slam Grand Final – one of the best slams I saw all year. The room was FREAKING ELECTRIC! It was educational, and I really enjoyed writing about the reading in a writerly way, if that makes any sense at all. It was fun to attend, it was fun to write about. Also, this post features some wonderful photos by my love Danny Presser. He’s talented – check out the Steve Smart photo. It’s totally Steve all over! And the photo of Luka captures him. Danny and I have done a few events together this year, it’s been fun, and effective, and wonderful.
15. The Spinning Room’s Last Night At ET’s – The night was great, writing about the night was great. I think I’ve found a way to write about poetry readings that stands alone as writing, not just as a review. And I’m very happy about that.

These are the posts I’ve had the most fun writing and researching and thinking about. Being the end of the year, more lists are on their way. Soon, very soon, I’ll be writing a “year in review” piece.

1

The Spinning Room’s Last Night at ET’s

Last night saw The Spinning Room’s last appearance at ET’s in Prahran. I’ve only been going to The Spinning Room in recent months, but I’ve found such a hugely supportive community there and had such a good time that this “last night” announcement was met with sadness. ET’s is shutting down, and The Spinning Room is going with it. Having been run in Melbourne for the last 10 years, this was an important night.

As usual, The Spinning Room’s first half was an open mic. Usually these attract 10 readers or so… Last night’s open mic had a record 22 readers. It wasn’t just readers who showed up, either. The room was packed to capacity, with people peering around door frames and crouched under bars to get in on it. The open mic was packed with awesome talent – John Mckelvie’s quiet, understated intensity blew me away, as well as Randall Stephens and Alex Scott’s high-energy bounce-fest. Geoff Lemon, Steve Smart, Jessica Alice, and close friends of mine, Jo Day and Benjamin Solah… And I managed to get on the open mic list before they ran out of room. SUCH good company to be in!

The second half of the evening was dedicated to “The Best of ’10”; sets by Amy Bodossian and Santo Cazzati. I’d never seen Amy before, but had heard glorious (yet vague…) things from friends.

Amy Bodossian has a six-year old inside of her busting to get out. She twirls and spins and plays with her hair, she laughs and shakes with so much energy that the only place left for it to come out is through her hands. And her smile. She’s not all six year old though. While some of her poetry touches on themes of childhood, she also talks about “misadventures with men” and the nature of being an artist.

Santo… Oh wow. I’d seen Santo host the final evening of the 2010 Overload Poetry Festival, and had seen him read a short piece at a previous Spinning Room. But to appreciate what Santo does, you need to see a full set.

Santo Cazzati’s performance is a cross between a race-caller and an orchestra conductor spastic with passion. His whole body keeps time. He doesn’t pause for his entire set. I can’t tell you how long the set was – time just didn’t exist while I was listening to him. A discussion of themes almost wouldn’t work with Santo… There were times where I wasn’t quite sure what was happening. But I felt it. When my audience neighbour turned to me and beamed “GENIUS!”, I had nothing more to say. That, quite simply, is what Santo Cazzati is.

The future of The Spinning Room seems uncertain – while founder Jon Garrett promises that “this is not the end”, a more sombre email from resigning co-host Anthony O’Sullivan sounded a bit doubtful.

I truly do hope that The Spinning Room finds a venue for 2011 and the future, and it’s an amazing event which never fails to entertain, enlighten, and inspire me. A massive hats-off to those behind the scenes who make it all happen; amazing stuff, which I hope to see more of soon.

The evening was also filmed for Red Lobster, the channel 31 poetry show. Keep an eye out for that episode… While you know, deep down, that you should have been at ET’s last night, you probably wouldn’t have fit in the room anyway. So you can watch the best bits on Red Lobster.

1

Underwater Wonderland

“Just slide under,” he told me, “block your nose, then open your eyes. Yeah all at once. Then come back up after you see the flash.”

I slid under. Water scrambled up my nose like an army marching into battle; violent and painful. I tried again, this time blocking my nose before submerging, but my body had memory of this thing and as soon as I took my hand away the water was back in there. Eventually I managed to sink myself in our bath, which is bigger than me (NB: buoyancy is a very real force, one that’s hard to get past in large spaces), by sticking a toe into the tap and pushing myself down. The whole thing took logic and precision:
Block nose.
Toe in tap. Push down.
Unblock nose. Push air out of nose simultaneously.
Arms by side but not too close.
Un-scrunch face from pained look.
Wait for water to settle. Open eyes.
Wait for flash. Come back up.

That was just my side of the bargain. There was a tall man with a camera hovering above me, monitoring my face and the water and a dozen other variables that photographers are aware of that I never even knew existed. His head works in a way that I can’t even comprehend.

The final result was this wonderful series. I’m about 2/3 of the way down. “Sam”. That’s me. I’m a siren!

The man in the first photo is my boyfriend, the photographer. He’s the other half of the creative womb that is my household. Our bathroom became a studio, as did other people’s. He put a hell of a lot of time and energy into this series, and I think he’s come up with something moving and provocative.

0

Blog at WordPress.com.

Up ↑