Tag: A Tingling Catch

How To Buy My Books: Anarya’s Secret, Transported, Voyagers, And More

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Welcome! Since I’m between blog posts at the moment, here are details about how to buy some of my books. You’ll find my recent posts listed on the left-hand side of this blog.

You can find details of all these books at my Amazon.com author page.

You’ll also find my work in these recent anthologies:

You can buy books by Tim Jones online!

Out Of It No Longer Out Of Print

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In November 2010, I blogged about Michael O’Leary’s cricket novel Out of It in the context of NZ cricket poetry anthology A Tingling Catch.

At the time, I said that Out Of It was out of print. The good news is that now it’s available from Amazon as a Kindle ebook. You can find out more about it, and about Michael’s many other books, at Michael O’Leary’s new site – and Mark Pirie has a comprehensive new site as well.

While we’re on the topic of new sites, check out my new Amazon.com author page – there will be a UK version along in due course.

You can buy books by Tim Jones online!

Tuesday Poem: Baxter Between the Wickets, by Michael O’Leary

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Tim says: This week, I’ve chosen an anthologised poem that is also part of a novel. Confused? You won’t be…

A Tingling Catch

“Baxter Between the Wickets” is one of several poems by Michael O’Leary in the excellent anthology A Tingling Catch: A Century of New Zealand Cricket Poems 1864-2009, edited by Mark Pirie, which was launched at the Long Room of the Basin Reserve, the test cricket ground in Wellington, on Sunday. I had the great pleasure of reading my poem Swing at the launch.

I was going to spend some time telling you how good A Tingling Catch is – starting with this cover painting of the Basin Reserve by Jocelyn Galsworthy, who, I think it’s safe to say, is the world’s leading cricket artist, and continuing with the selection of poems (mine, of course, modestly excluded!).

But now I don’t have to say how good it is, because Graham Beattie has done so admirably on Beattie’s Book Blog.

Out of It

So let’s move on to the book from which this poem is extracted. Out of It (Earl of Seacliff Art Workshop, 1987) is presently out of print, but Michael is planning to reprint it in 2011 – and if you can’t wait till then, the entire text of the novel is available online. I read Out of It recently, and enjoyed it very much.

The frame of this novel-with-poems is a cricket match at Eden Park between the “Out of It XI” and New Zealand. The two XIs are:

NEW ZEALAND OUT OF IT

1) Dipak Patel Jimi Hendrix

2) Ken Rutherford Monk Lewis

3) John Wright (V.C.) Te Rauparaha (C)

4) Martin Crowe Oscar Wilde

5) Jeff Crowe Jim Morrison

6) Jeremy Coney (C) Alfred Jarry

7) Richard Hadlee Janice Joplin

8) Ian Smith Bob Marley (V.C.)

9) John Bracewell Herman Goering

10) Lance Cairns Lord Byron

11) Ewen Chatfield James Joyce

12TH MEN

12) Martin Sneddon James K. Baxter

Baxter, then, is on the field as a runner for an injured Jim Morrison, and “Baxter Between the Wickets” represents his thoughts as he is called through for three runs by Te Rauparaha, the “Out of It XI” captain. Michael tells me that the “Colin” of the poem is Colin Durning, an old friend of both James K. Baxter and Michael O’Leary.

Baxter Between the Wickets

Morrison hit Chatfield down to deep cover and sent Hemi, grey-hair, grey-beard flying like sails, off for a run. The chief ran like the wind so that Baxter, who was obviously the least fit of the two, was stretched to the limit but made it home for three runs.

“Ha Ha! I bet that got the old cogs in the wheels turning, John. I thought the old guru of the New Jerusalem was struggling a bit there.”

“Yes Dennis, but he made it and his thinking must be matching his physical triumph at this moment.”

Man! He has called me again
From that place inside me – the unworthy

Servant! He called me three times
When I, in my mortal dung heap mind

Would have settled for one
And all the lice in my beard jumped out

For fear of this terrible century’s (looming) speed
Who will torment me now, at night

Who will remind me of Him –
And sin! Which this mad old devil

Commits with every eyelid bat, every thought
Kei te Rangitira o te ngati porangi, ahau –

I stand at the end of the crease Colin
Knowing He only wants what He knows I can do

This poem, and the text which immediately precedes it, is taken with permission from Michael O’Leary’s 1987 novel Out of It.

Finally, this poem also ties back to my post from early October responding to Scott Baxter’s query about the influence of James K. Baxter on New Zealand poetry. Here, that influence is alive and well, if not incredibly happy at having been called through for more than a single!

You can check out all of the Tuesday Poems at the Tuesday Poem Blog.

You can buy books by Tim Jones online!

That Tingling Feeling

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How To Order A Tingling Catch

I had hoped to do a full past about A Tingling Catch, the newly-published anthology of New Zealand cricket poems edited by Mark Pirie, but time has slipped away. I still hope to write that post next week, but in the meantime, I can let you know that A Tingling Catch is an excellent collection which libraries and cricket fans alike should make sure they have.

A Tingling Catch has its own blog, and Mark has now put up a post on How Do I Order A Tingling Catch? It’s worth checking out.

Helen Lowe’s Aus/NZ F&SF Author Series

To celebrate the Aus/NZ publication of her new novel The Heir of Night, Helen Lowe asked a number of Australian and New Zealand fantasy and science fiction authors (plus Julie Czerneda, a Canadian author with strong Aus/NZ connections) to contribute to a series of guest posts on her blog on why they love fantasy and/or SF.

The series as a whole makes fascinating reading. My own contribution, on J. G. Ballard, Kim Stanley Robinson and pitching a tent in the wide space between, was picked up and republished on the big US blog io9, which was a nice bonus for both Helen and myself.

You can buy books by Tim Jones online!

Tuesday Poem: Swing

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Swing

I’m left arm over
I’m the new red ball
I’m the prodding by the batsman
at the green and sweating pitch.

I’m two slips and a gully
I’m a short square leg
I’m the keeper standing back
and the umpire’s call of “Play”.

I’m the short strides then the long
the rock back and the gather
I’m the front foot thudding down
as the ball departs my hand.

I’m the seam proudly upright
I’m the late movement in
I’m the bat that is nowhere
as the ball hits the pad.

I’m the turn to the umpire
the scream of an appeal
I’m the slowly rising finger
and the batsman’s long walk back.

I’m the hugs I barely feel
as I focus on the moment
when for one ball I decoded
the mysteries of swing.

Tim says: “Swing” is my contribution to the new anthology ‘A Tingling Catch’: A Century of NZ Cricket Poems 1864-2009, edited by Mark Pirie (HeadworX, 2010). I’ve read the anthology, and it’s very good.

Technical note: Before the physics majors who haunt these poetry blogs start commenting on it: yes, I realise the ball won’t swing if the seam is precisely upright, as claimed in Stanza 4, and that the seam should be slanted slightly to the right if the bowler wants to create inswing, and to the left if the bowler wants to create outswing, unless the ball is roughed up enough to reverse-swing, in which case those directions should be reversed. But that would have taken a lot of extra stanzas to explain. What am I, a coaching manual?

Check out all the Tuesday Poems on the Tuesday Poem blog.

You can buy books by Tim Jones online!

Status Report! Status Report!

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Unless I’m spruiking a new book, this blog sails along in parallel to my writing, sometimes close but never together.

So it feels like time to give an update on what’s been happening with my writing, and what’s coming up.

The Immediate Past

I started this year aiming to finish two manuscripts: my third poetry collection and my second novel. I’ve met one of those two goals: my third poetry collection, the one I’m calling “Men Briefly Explained”, has now been completed and sent out to its first port of call (I hope it’s the final port of call, but it is never wise to get one’s hopes up too far in such matters.)

The novel isn’t quite so far along: I have put it through several revisions, and I have some more revision tasks to do before sending out to those who have kindly agreed to be first readers for me – of which more later.

A lot of what normally qualifies as my writing time in the second half of last year was taken up with doing promotional work for Voyagers: Science Fiction Poetry from New Zealand, the anthology co-edited by Mark Pirie and myself. The work – notably the book tour organised by Voyagers’ publisher Interactive Press – paid off: Voyagers has sold well for an anthology of its type, and it made the Listener “100 Best Books of the Year” list for 2009.

This year, my writing time has indeed been taken up with writing – OK, when I haven’t been distracting myself with Twitter – but I did have a very enjoyable change of scene with two visits to Newlands College over the past couple of weeks. The first was to present the prizes in a Poetry Day poetry competition I’d judged, and the second, with the financial assistance of Creative New Zealand, was a full-day Writers In Schools Programme visit arranged through the New Zealand Book Council.

I’ve been on the books of the Writers in Schools programme for a while, and had even done some school visits outside that programme, but this was my first “official” school visit. I spent the whole day at the school, running mini-workshops and giving talks. And, despite a nagging cold which necessitated the frequent intake of Strepsils, I had a really good time. The teachers were friendly, the students were interested, and if given the chance, I’d love to do it all over again.

The Foreseeable Future

My main writing focus for the rest of the year will be to get the novel manuscript to the point where I can send it to those kind souls who have volunteered as first readers – at least one of whom has been waiting for an unconscionably long time now! Right now, I’m on the last few chapters of the third full revision. After that, I need to:

  • take all those pesky square brackets which say things like [check this] and [add para here] and replace them with things that a reader might want to read. (Or maybe I should just leave these square brackets in and “crowdsource” the answers? What would Jane Austen do?)
  • do a “dialogue run”, in which I’ll go through each character’s dialogue in turn and say it out loud to check that it sounds like them and not like me.
  • and read the whole thing through once more for luck.

Also, maybe I should finally give the novel a title. I’m given to understand this can be terribly effective.

Once that’s done and out to the readers, I’ll be able to turn my attention to the short story ideas that have been bouncing around in my head for a while now, waiting for their turn. I haven’t written many short stories since Transported was published, and it’s high time I did.

There’s also Au Contraire to look forward to at the end of next week, with its full hand of literary events including the launch of short story anthology A Foreign Country; the October launch of New Zealand cricket poetry anthology ‘A Tingling Catch’; and a poetry reading I’ll say more about soon. It should be a good few months.

You can buy books by Tim Jones online!