Said Sheree

This story of love and literary funding appears in Transported.

Sheree and Miranda met at a party. Each left with the other on her mind.

Several weeks later, the Mexican Ambassador, a keen patron of the arts, held a reception. Miranda, ranked as a Tier Two poet for funding purposes, saw Sheree across the room. Miranda made a beeline for her – only to realise that Sheree was with a group of Tier Ones. Embarrassed, Miranda backed away.

That would have been that; but, a little to the north and far beneath their feet, Gaia shifted in her sleep. Poets and patrons alike rushed for doorways and crush-proof spaces. Sheree and Miranda found themselves pressed together against an antimacassar. Their mutual awkwardness was obliterated by fear. “You’re beautiful,” said Sheree. Miranda, plain and tall, was swept away.

Heads were counted once the tremor passed and the tumult subsided. Miranda and Sheree were missing. Separately, from Sheree’s bed, they phoned in their excuses.

Miranda went home. “I haven’t seen you for days,” her flatmate remarked. It wasn’t much of a flat, not really, and the flatmate held the lease.

“You can move in with me,” said Sheree.

Having lugged the last of her boxes up Sheree’s steps, Miranda went out on the deck. The harbour view, which she had admired since the first night she spent there, now felt like hers. The weather was grey and cold. Far below, hardy ants, gloved and muffled, scurried to and fro on the beach.

Between Miranda’s job and Sheree’s funding, they had enough to pay the rent, and a little left over. They each had time to write. Sheree wrote in the morning, after Miranda had left for work, and spent the afternoon completing grant applications and working on a project to deliver sonnets by mobile phone. Some platform-specific issues were still to be resolved.

Miranda wrote on Saturday afternoons, while Sheree played hockey.

They had other interests in common. They both collected earthenware. They both loved tramping. In summer, they joined a party heading south to Nelson Lakes. They were the only writers. It was bliss.

They dealt with literary functions by arriving separately and avoiding each other, though they exchanged sly glances when they thought no one was looking.

It worked for a while. But, inevitably, word got around. A small independent publisher agreed to bring out Miranda’s first collection. “I want to be with you at the launch,” said Sheree. “I’m not going to pretend.”

The publisher had hired a church hall. A few bankable names came along. When Miranda read, Sheree stood in the front row. When Miranda signed, Sheree sat next to her. “You must be so proud of her,” someone told Sheree.

Sheree’s third collection was launched at Unity. Sheree dragged Miranda along. That didn’t go so well. Miranda hung back, feeling like a fraud. Sheree talked with her friends and cast irritated glances Miranda’s way.

Miranda retreated to the outer shelves, looking at a bound edition of Ursula Bethell. Blanche Baughan was reassuringly close at hand.

Sheree forgave her. They forgave each other. They got drunk. They compared royalty statements. “It’s more about grants and residencies,” explained Sheree.

In the autumn, Miranda was up for reclassification. Without the support of a university press, Miranda had no realistic hope of moving up to Tier One, but she was still disappointed when the envelope came.

“Never mind,” said Sheree. “I love you anyway.”

Sheree’s status was secure for two more years.

Miranda came home from work a few weeks later to find Sheree bouncing off the walls. “Look at this!” she said.

It was an invitation from the Northern festival circuit: Nuuk and Norilsk, Vorkuta, Longyearbyen. Four weeks north of the Arctic Circle, reading, writing, workshopping. And watching out for polar bears – they could kill you. “I’m to be preceded by a man with a rifle,” said Sheree.

New Zealand literature had never before been represented so far north. It was a feather in everyone’s cap.

“I’ll miss you so much,” said Miranda. She clung to Sheree, tenderly, fiercely.

Sheree bought Miranda a video-enabled phone before she left. Four weeks of Sheree – blond hair poking out of her fur-lined hood – cavorting with new friends, silhouetted against snow, standing next to oil drums full of burning blubber to keep warm.

Nuuk, the capital of Greenland, was surprisingly cosmopolitan. Norilsk was one giant chemical dump. In Vorkuta, Sheree won the V. I. Morozov Prize for Best Recital of an Individual Work, for her declamatory piece in the style of Gregory Corso. The prize, thanks to a well-connected local businessman, was paid in US dollars. With the news, Sheree sent an air ticket. “I’m stopping over in the Caribbean on the way home to thaw out,” said Sheree. “See you in Basseterre!”

It took some nerve to ask, but Miranda’s boss was understanding. “I wish I could go with you,” Miranda’s boss said, and Miranda realised, suddenly, that she meant it.

Basseterre! Miranda had never heard of it. Palms shaded the beach, the locals talked about cricket, and once they had circumnavigated the island of St Kitts, there was nothing to do but eat, drink, sleep, and make love. Sheree kept Miranda entertained with tales from the frozen North. Longyearbyen had been the wildest of the lot. “Those Norwegians!” said Sheree. They were crazy up there. So were the bears.

They came home to the wind and the rain. Sheree set to work completing her fourth collection and editing podcasts from the festivals. She had secured funding for a G5 workstation, her latest pride and joy. Miranda had three poems published in Takahe and two more accepted by JAAM. She read at the Angus Inn. It was a wet night in the Hutt Valley, and some of the locals stayed away. Her collection, which was now heavily discounted, sold three copies. Not bad, considering. She was given a voucher for petrol, though she had conscientiously taken the train.

Sheree’s poem about their week together in the Caribbean is justly famous and much-anthologised.

Miranda’s boss gave her a promotion. Miranda and Sheree joined a soccer team. Sheree was the centre-forward. Miranda was a holding midfielder.

Delivering sonnets by mobile phone had not been a complete success, but the project hit the jackpot with haiku. Haiku were back, said Sheree.

People grow and change. It’s nothing to be ashamed of. A new funding category, Tier Four, was introduced. In consequence, Tier Two poets became eligible to be mentors, and Miranda took on a mentee. She was young, tiny, a wounded bird. Her name was Caroline. She lived in Johnsonville.

Nothing might have come of it, had Sheree’s success at Vorkuta not been noticed in high places. It took a public-private partnership, with a mixture of tagged funding, corporate sponsorship in three bands, and matching Government contributions, but at last the deal could be announced. Sheree would be New Zealand’s first poet in space! She would carry leading New Zealand brands to low earth orbit, and return with a three-book deal.

It was on for young and old. Sheree became public property, meeting the Prime Minister, appearing on Takatapui and Kiwifruit. In months, in weeks, in days, she was off to Star City to train for her mission.

“I love you,” she told Miranda, from the airport, from Moscow, from Star City. Photos: Sheree in a centrifuge, her compact body whirling round. Sheree hanging weightless in the hydrolab. The two cosmonauts who would be flying her to the International Space Station, Valentina and Vsevolod. Their brave little Soyuz spacecraft. I love you, Miranda, said Sheree.

Miranda’s mentee was promising but needy. Miranda allowed herself to engage in conduct that was inappropriate to the mentor-mentee relationship and breached the terms of her contract with the funding agency. She reproached herself late at night, as she watched Caroline sleeping.

Sheree appeared on BBC World, CNN, and Al Arabiya.

Miranda kept writing. A second published collection would be something. Not everyone made it that far.

Live streaming video of the launch, with Russian-language commentary, was available. Using high-speed broadband on Sheree’s G5, Miranda was able to hear the countdown, see the rocket on the launch pad, watch it vault upwards into space.

Sheree made contact. Docking had been successful, and she was aboard the space station. Three months to do nothing but write, and sleep, and float. (And help around the place; tidiness was especially important in space.) Every 92 minutes, she would pass overhead.

The mentoring period finished. Caroline could now be revealed as Miranda’s girlfriend. She had dependency issues, but that meant she was usually home.

Miranda broke the news to Sheree by scheduled uplink. Sheree did not respond immediately. One orbit passed, two. Then Sheree said she was sad, but not surprised. Also, two nights ago, she and Valentina …

Miranda had three poems published in Bravado. Sport and Landfall regretted to inform. Trout did not reply.

As a result of Miranda’s excellent mentoring, Caroline was reclassified to Tier Three. She sold a poem to North & South. You’re going places, girl, thought Miranda.

Caroline had an empty room and a double bed. Miranda decided she was going places too. She moved her boxes out of Sheree’s house, down the steps, and off to Johnsonville. She promised Sheree that she’d continue to water her plants. Sheree had already asked Miranda and Caroline to come for dinner the first weekend after she got home from Russia. I want to be your best friend, said Sheree.

When the last lot of boxes was safely in Caroline’s van, Miranda returned to stand on the balcony for one last look across the harbour. Oh, she would miss the view! On the promenade below, hardy ants rode skateboards, walked dogs, and ate products containing dairy, gluten, and traces of nuts.

Above, the stars shone steadily. Among them was Sheree. Miranda could see her clearly. She was looking out of a porthole, smiling fondly down.

Transported Interview Podcast Available

My ten minute interview with Ruth Todd of Plains FM in Christchurch is now available online as a podcast. It can be played online or downloaded as an MP3 file.

Ruth and I talk about:

  • my short story collection Transported
    (which you can buy online through Fishpond or New Zealand Books Abroad, among others, or in person at an increasing range of bookstores)
  • why some ideas turn into poems and others into short stories
  • the benefits of diversity in a short story collection
  • my disastrous attempt to impress a woman [you know who you are!] with my Russian accent when it turned out that her boyfriend spoke the language fluently
  • the educational benefits of the Intermediate Section of the Invercargill Public Library
  • being the child of assisted immigrants
  • writing a short story about literary funding (come in, “Said Sheree”)
  • acceptance and rejection from both the writer’s and the editor’s point of view
  • The Frank O’Connor Award longlisting for Transported.

The interview was a lot of fun to take part in. I hope you enjoy listening to it.

Jhumpa Lahiri Wins the Frank O’Connor International Short Story Award

There was a brouhaha in New Zealand recently about the judges in the Montana Book Awards issuing a shortlist of four contenders for the fiction category, rather than the expected five. Now the judges of the 2008 Frank O’Connor International Short Story Award, for which my short story collection Transported (which you can buy online through Fishpond or New Zealand Books Abroad, or in person at an increasing range of bookshops) was longlisted, have gone one better: they have decided to dispense with the shortlist entirely and award the prize to Jhumpa Lahiri for her collection Unaccustomed Earth. This means that five other writers are denied the opportunity of their books appearing on the shortlist, with the consequent publicity and potential sales this would bring.

The arguments for and against this move are pretty much the same as for the Montana. On the one hand, the judges are appointed to make their decision based on their experience, and that decision should respected; on the other, getting shortlisted for awards can be a lifeline for less well-known authors – this is certainly the case for the Montanas. But, having said that the decision on the Montanas should be left to the judges, I have to be consistent and say that it’s their call here as well. If Unaccustomed Earth was so much better than the competition, then it’s only fair it should win.

But there’s one point on which I do take issue with the judges: according to the Guardian, they said that

With a unanimous winner at this early stage we decided it would be a sham to compose a shortlist and put five other writers through unnecessary stress and suspense.

I have to say, judges: you could have put me through the stress and suspense of being on the shortlist, and I wouldn’t have complained one bit. I would have been very grateful!

Nice Photo … Shame about the Review

After the very positive review by Jessica Le Bas in the Nelson Mail, and several good ones in other papers, most lately the Timaru Herald, Transported has had its first bad review, by Steve Walker in the Listener.

Mind you, it wasn’t all bad. He said good things about “Rat Up a Drainpipe”, “The Wadestown Shore” and “The New Neighbours”, but he seemed to struggle with the shorter stories, and the less realistic stories — and as for the shorter and less realistic stories, they were right out.

Well, there’ s a name for this aspect of what I write : it’s called interstitial fiction, and it’s something I’ll be posting more about in future. It’s not everybody’s cup of tea, but I hope it will be yours.

(Incidentally, Chris Else had an entertaining reaction to a bad review by Steve Walker of one of his books — see the third article down.)

The Listener review is headed by a jumbo-sized version of my author photo. This pleases me, not for egotistical reasons, but because a recent interview with photographer Miriam Berkley points up the importance of author photos in a crowded book market. There’s some wonderful author photos accompanying that interview, and it’s well worth reading.

Sonali Mukherji, who took my author photo, is an excellent photographer. She took the photo at the Kelburn Croquet Club, next to Victoria University, on a brilliantly sunny day last year. The sun was reflecting off my glasses, so she insisted I take them off: that also took years off my apparent age! It’s a bit like The Picture of Dorian Gray; I can grow steadily more decrepit, while my photo continues to twinkle at the world.

No Oil

I’ve posted here previously about our dependence on oil, and how to start addressing it. There’s a story in Transported, “Homestay”, which touches on the same theme — though, being fiction, it also includes people with wings flying around rural Southland, which I don’t actually expect to be a prominent feature of post-Peak Oil scenarios.

Here’s my one attempt, so far, to tackle the topic in poetry. “No Oil” was first published in Southern Ocean Review (together with “Replicant”), and is included in All Blacks’ Kitchen Gardens.

No Oil

Bad news from the north
and the queues growing longer.
Late winter, I remember,
when the shipments ceased.

There was still oil for some
which showed
where power intersected with need:
Agriculture.
The rich.
Ministerial limousines.

The rest of us walking,
riding bikes, taking trains,
living
as our grandparents had:
valuing land
for what it can grow.

A Great Leap Forwards
in reverse
our faith now
in the wisdom of the old.

The world to the north
turns to poison
a battle
of each against all.

Here we cling on
in the ruins of a false economy
doing to others
being done unto
looking back with angry eyes
on a century of waste.

(If the “shipments from the north” ceased right now, we could meet about 2/3 of New Zealand’s present oil demand from domestic production — but that’s unusually high at the moment because of the exploitation of the Tui field, and there’s no guarantee that production levels will stay this high for long.)

Where You Can Buy Transported

Online: You can buy Transported from a number of online booksellers, including Fishpond, Whitcoulls and New Zealand Books Abroad (which I recommend for overseas customers). A quick Google search will turn up others.

In person: You can buy Transported from the bookshops listed below. I’m sure there are others – if you find Transported in a bookshop not listed here, please let me know by an email to senjmito@gmail.com. If you go to a bookshop that doesn’t have Transported in stock, please encourage them to (re-)order it.

Whitcoulls

The following Whitcoulls stores should stock Transported: Bennetts Pier, Auckland Domestic Airport Terminal [signed copies available], Bennetts on Broadway, Botany Downs, Cashel Street, Centerplace, Chartwell, Corner [not actually sure where this is!], Courtenay Place, Dunedin (George Street), Dunedin (Meridian Centre), Galleria, Henderson, Invercargill, Lambton Quay, Milford, Mt Maunganui, Nelson, New Lynn, New Plymouth, Northlands, Plaza Palmerston, Queensgate (Lower Hutt), Riccarton, St Lukes, Taupo, Wellington Domestic Airport Terminal [signed copies available], Whangarei

Other Bookshops

Auckland: Unity, Borders, Time Out, Daniel’s.

Rotorua: McLeods

New Plymouth: Wadsworths

Wellington: Unity [signed copies available], Dymocks [signed copies available], Parsons, Borders, Johnsonville Paper Plus

Nelson: Page & Blackmore

Christchurch: Borders, Madras Cafe Books, Arts Centre Bookshop

Dunedin: University Bookshop

… plus other Paper Plus outlets throughout the country.

Happy hunting!

Frank O’Connor Transported to Montana

A few bits and pieces that relate to earlier posts:

Frank O’Connor Award: In addition to the interviews with New Zealand award longlistees Elizabeth Smither and Tim Jones, an interview with Witi Ihimaera about his longlisted short story collection Ask The Posts of the House is now up at The Good Books Guide.

Transported: I’ve now seen reviews from Craccum (Auckland University student newspaper), the Chronicle (Wanganui and Horowhenua) and the Nelson Mail. All have been positive. Jessica Le Bas, in the Nelson Mail, had some very nice things to say:

I read Jones’s first story, Rat Up a Drainpipe, and couldn’t put it down. I laughed out loud, and felt unusually good. It was fast paced and full of quirky incidents. When it ended I wanted more.

Typical of Jones, Transported crosses genres. There’s science fiction, comedy and satire, and even a few tales involving global warming. The Wadestone [sic] Shore has Pete rowing around a drowned Wellington foreshore between high-rise buildings, trawling for treasures. The seat of government has moved to Taupo. You have to laugh, but should we?

Jones’s bag of literary tricks is witty and refreshingly humorous. He’s not new to the literary scene, but with Transported, his second short story collection, he will not linger in the background again. Bring it on, Tim Jones!

That’s both very flattering, and a better summary of the book than any I’ve been able to come up with. Thank you, Jessica!

Montana Book Awards: Something of a furore has erupted over the fact that four, rather than the specified five, fiction titles have been shortlisted for the Montana Book Awards. Graham Beattie had a real go at the topic in his blog, and much fulmination has ensued.

I’m not in the camp that is treating this as a major scandal. Of course, I might feel differently if Transported had been among the books in contention (as it will be, perhaps, in 2009); but I think that the judging of literary awards is a subjective thing, a matter at least as much of the judges’ preference as of objective literary merit – if one allows the existence of such a thing.

Therefore, once the judges have been selected, they need to be left to get on with it. As long as their decisions are honestly arrived at – as I’m sure they were in this case – then there isn’t much point in second-guessing them.

Transported, not Transporter!

The things you never think of … quite a few people seem to think my new book is called “Transporter” rather than “Transported”. This post is to make it clear to everyone (including Google) that the title is Transported, and that it isn’t a tie-in novel to the movie starring Jason Statham. There are slightly more explosions and car chases in Transporter than Transported.

In other news, the shortlists for the Montana Book Awards have been announced. It’s good to see Johanna Aitchison’s A Long Girl Ago included in the poetry category, and Mary McCallum’s The Blue in the fiction category.

Author Interviews at The Good Books Guide

Eric Forbes, who edits Quill magazine in Malaysia and blogs about books on The Good Books Guide, has made it his mission to interview (together with Tan May Lee) all the authors longlisted for the 2008 Frank O’Connor International Short Story Award. As part of that series, his interviews with me about Transported and with Elizabeth Smither about The Girl Who Proposed have now been posted on the site.

All the authors have been asked the same questions – the similarities and differences in their answers are fascinating!

One of the unexpected bonuses of this longlisting process for me is the opportunity to find out about so many fine short story writers throughout the world.

In other news: thanks to the New Zealand Book Council, you can Read at Work. It looks like an ordinary work PowerPoint – but look closer, and it’s literature!

Transported: 0 days to go – Enough Already / On National Radio Sunday 8 June

Enough already! Transported has been published. It will be in bookshops – Whitcoulls, Borders, Unity, Dymocks, Paper Plus, Parsons, and others – shortly, if it isn’t already. You can buy it online from New Zealand Books Abroad (who, despite their name, also sell books within New Zealand) or Fishpond.

I’m going to finish sorting out the running order of JAAM 26 and catch up on housework. Then it will be back to working on my novel, and blogging about what really matters: Buffy Anne Summers, for example.

So, enjoy the silence.

Or not: following a day on which I twice darkened the doors of Radio New Zealand House, I will appearing twice on National Radio on Sunday 8 June! From 10.05 to about 10.30am, I’m taking part in the Sunday Group on Chris Laidlaw’s morning show. We’ll be discussing Peak Oil and the future of world oil supplies.

Then, some time between 2 and 2.30pm (all being well), I will wear another hat, appearing on “The Arts on Sunday” to discuss Transported with Lynn Freeman. Emily Perkins will be on the show as well.

Shortly after these shows, podcasts will be available, and I’ll add links to them here.

UPDATE: A podcast of the Sunday Group discussion hasn’t been made available, but the Transported interview is available in MP3 format (a two-minute excerpt from the book plus a seven-minute discussion).

FURTHER UPDATE: The Sunday Group discussion on Peak Oil and the future of oil supplies is now also available as a podcast in MP3 format (12.5MB, about 35 minutes).