The MagazIne OF The New ZealanD POETry SOCIETY ISBN 1178-3931 JANUARY 2013 aTe Hungafine Tito Ruri o Aotearoa line Contents 1 207 pieces of Licorice, or how to publish your first e book Charmaine Thomson NEW ZEALAND POETRY SOCIETY 2 From the National Coordinator Laurice Gilbert Te Hunga Tito Ruri o Aotearoa 3 About our contributors 3 A Warm Welcome To: New ZealanD POETry SOCIETY 3 Congratulations PO BOX 5283 LAMBTON Quay 4 Noticeboard WellIngTON 6145 5 Competitions and Submissions 7 Regional Report PATROns 8 haikai café Kirsten Cliff Dame Fiona Kidman 8 Reviews: JAAM #29 Vaughan Rapatahana Vincent O’Sullivan 10 Selected poems Bill Manhire Mary Cresswell PRESIDENT / NATIONAL COORDINATOR 11 Working in the Cracks Between Jenny Argante Vaughan Rapatahana Laurice Gilbert 12 Flaubert’s Drum Sugu Pillay Rangi Faith 13 Night’s Glass Table Karen Zelas Rangi Faith EMAIL: [email protected] 14 The Cheese and Onion Sandwich and other New Zealand Icons Vivienne www.poetrysociety.org.nz Plumb Jenny Clay 15 The Bengal Engine’s Mango Afterglow Geoff Cochrane Natasha Dennerstein 16 American Life in Poetry Ted Kooser, US Poet Laureate 2004-2006 16 Notes from the Net WELLINGTON MEETINGS 18 Members’ Poems: David Clarke, Susan Howard, Robin Fry Poetry @ The Thistle Inn 3 Mulgrave St, Wellington Central Starts at 7.30pm with open mic. Monday 18th February: 207 pieces of Licorice, or how to publish your Guest Poet: Colin Patterson first e book Monday 18th March: Charmaine Thomson Guest Poet: TBA Having sat and listened to other poets at NZPS talk about their publications, I thought it was time to have the experience of self publishing an e-book. I did this partly to discover more about the publishing process, partly to be the proud owner of a shiny, new ISBN or two and partly to test how many readers would download a free e-book. I tested the waters with Amazon and Lulu.com and decided that the expense of working through those channels outweighed the return on investment for an unknown writer. So I chose www.smashwords.com because it is a free e- publishing service with two substantial distribution approaches. The standard catalogue reaches over 4 million readers through iPhone, Aldikoo (an e-reading app for Google Android and Word Player). If your e-book meets the premium catalogue standard, Smashwords will distribute it through iBookstores, Barnes and Noble, Sony, Kobo, WH Smith (UK) and many more US outlets. 1 / © New Zealand Poetry Society / JANUARY 2013 / EDITOR: LAURICE GILBERT / [email protected] I liked the fact that you can download the e-book in multiple formats, e.g. PDF, Kindle, Epub etc and add links to your website, blog, Youtube account, Facebook, Twitter, Googleplus and many other media channels. The critical thing I learned is the value of hiring a designer. I leveraged my networks to find a graphic designer who had already delivered multiple e-books. My graphic designer, Anne Johnston, sourced the art work, did all the formatting (Smashwords has a 72 page style and formatting guide!) and hyperlinking magic required. Absolutely worth the money. Do not try this at home unless you are either a designer or a web ninja. The conventions about hyperlinks and bookmarking were not explained clearly in the style guide until very late in the piece. This was a little frustrating because it meant that my designer had to redo nearly all of the links and formatting. The submission portal (the interestingly named “meat grinder”) kept corrupting the links back to the table of contents. Anne and I had a huge amount of fun selecting the artwork. There are many cool stock photography and graphic websites where you can download images for a nominal sum. We used www.Dreamstime.com for the cover image. I wanted something abstract so that the book would look interesting on a tablet screen and not date. I also wanted something that would reflect the nature of the poems i.e. contemporary forms. Anne merged a few images to make the final cover. To add a bit of interest between the sections of poems, we bought images from www.youworkforthem.com. The hardest part was getting a decent author shot. In the end, the author shot that worked was when I was not looking at the camera, and leaning on a piano, which represents a lot of the subject matter that I write about. I hired a photographer for the author shot. We got the shot in less than one hour. I thought about the actual size of the author image on screen and would recommend a head and shoulders shot (unless you are a model). I was very lucky to secure some testimonials from both Doug Poole, Editor of the Blackmail Press, and Laurice Gilbert, National Coordinator for the NZ Poetry Society. This was quite a tactical move because I was highly aware that I was an unknown author and having some quotes from credible editors might encourage readers to download the book/purchase the print version. Getting an ISBN for both the e-book and the print version was straightforward. You simply download the forms from the National Library website, pay your money, and the nice librarian sends you the numbers within a few weeks. My designer uploaded the book via the submission portal. It took about three weeks for formatting checks by Smashwords. You can always re-edit and re-submit your e-book. We found that some of the links back to the contents page did not work in some formats and this has meant more tinkering with the links. The PDF version downloads fastest and looks the best on screen. Overall, I think Smashwords is a great channel for a first book. As a free publishing service it has a lot of merits, including a significant US and UK distribution reach. If you want to view the e-book Licorice please go to https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/151670 The print version is available for sale for $15 (printed on demand by Printstop) by emailing the author at [email protected] From the National Coordinator Laurice Gilbert First of all, best wishes for the holiday season to everyone, whatever your choice of celebration (we look forward to Eskimo Pie Day in our family). This issue comes to you between chapters of the novel I am writing for NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month), the annual challenge that sees thousands of people all over the world attempting to write a 50,000 word novel in the 30 days of November. I did it again for the first time since 2006, when I lost the last 30,000 words in the Great Computer Crash. I’ve learned a lot about backing up my work since then. Sharing my progress on Facebook, I was delighted to discover another member was doing the same thing. Did any one else give it a go in the secrecy of their own PC, laptop or iPad? I found it a very liberating experience - it loosened up all those tightly bound adverbs and adjectives I banish from my poetry, as well as giving me the opportunity to expand at great length (more words!) on my opinions, prejudices and hobby horses. Great fun all round. The other Good Thing I managed to fit into November was Vivienne Plumb’s poetry workshop (though I haven’t yet done it at the time of writing). Workshops are great value when it comes to getting inspiration and ideas for approaching the craft of writing from another angle - the facilitator’s. I confess the poem I managed to have selected for this year’s competition was one I wrote after reading Viv’s collection, Nefarious. As I was reading it I found myself thinking, “I can do that”, and wrote a poem nothing like anything Viv would write, but a poem from a different place in my own skills repertoire. That’s the real value of workshops, I think - they bring out latent poems that might not otherwise see the light of day. Vivienne, a past President of the NZPS, has been Writer in Residence at the Randell Cottage in Wellington for six months, and will be returning to Auckland at the end of her residency. If she offers you the benefit of her experience once 2 / © New Zealand Poetry Society / JANUARY 2013 / EDITOR: LAURICE GILBERT / [email protected] back in Auckland, take it. As is traditional (at least I’ve tried to make it so) there are a lot of reviews in this issue of the magazine. I hope you will find something of interest to persuade you to buy a poetry book (or two) for someone - anyone - for Christmas. The e-book business is great (see our Feature Article), and gives us a sense of access that we haven’t had before, but I’m still Luddite enough to carry a real book in my bag for when I’m in a bank queue, on the bus, or waiting for the dentist. I want the print publishing business to thrive for a bit longer yet. Best wishes for a productive and poetic 2013. About our contributors Jenny Clay was runner-up in the 2012 IWW Kathleen Grattan Prize for her sequence of poems on Chagall. Outside of poetry she is working on a biography of James Tannock Mackelvie. Kirsten Cliff lives in Matamata and blogs at: http://kirstencliffwrites.blogspot.com/ Natasha Dennerstein is a Melbourne-born writer who lives in Wellington. She completed her MA at the IIML at Victoria University in 2011.