In Joanna Preston's poem Chronicle of the year 793, the arrival of Vikings of Lindisfarne is mistaken for a flock of birds. Photo / 123rf
Medieval myth and story tumble into focus for the Ockham's poetry winner, from Viking raids to the underworld. Elsewhere, author Fifi Colston discusses cold water bathing and being a World of Wearable Arts finalist 27 times. Happy reading.
Tumble by Joanna Preston (Otago University Press, $28). Reviewed by Sophie van Waardenberg. A longer version of this review will appear on anzliterature.com.
Joanna Preston was the poetry winner at this week's Ockham NZ Book Awards for her second collection, Tumble. The Canterbury-based poet's work is anchored in ancient and medieval myth and story: here, these elements weave into the events and language of more recent histories. The collection's poems navigate the death of Aeschylus, a journey to the underworld and Viking raids, as well as the 2011 Christchurch earthquakes and the public persona of Margaret Thatcher.
The collection hops between countries and eras, childhood and adulthood, and into and out of voices comedic and tragic, calm and tumultuous. Sometimes the poems fail to measure up to the richness of their primary texts, and a few of them do not quite overcome the staleness of a received story.
Still, there are some moments of ruthlessness and breathlessness. In Chronicle of the year 793, the sound of a Viking arrival on Lindisfarne is mistaken for a flock of birds: "So many birds! Yet afterwards / not one feather was found / to name them. / And now again! Strange, / how their wingbeats sound / like oars."
At many points in this collection, the natural world is given agency. In Classical Gas, the "hydrangeas / reached out and caught me"; in The cold, darkening, flocks of starlings "anchor night / with their feet". Even the lifeless remains of creatures have power. In Criccieth, "the bleached hide and scattered bones / of a long-dead sheep / warned against straying".
Tumble, unsurprisingly, has movement at its heart. Many of the poems pivot on moments of physical tumult. In Lost, the speaker's spouse has gone missing in the mountains: "The stone weight of cold / punched the windows in / and swept you off the road." The poem Atalanta is tied to the world of ancient mythology, but in its final lines, the titular girl can break out of the already told story: "But for now she is running. The tingle / of sweat meeting cold air, / the exhilaration, / as though she could outrun her life."
Preston's strengths in craft and story marry her skill for tonal acrobatics in one of Tumble's longest poems, Lucifer in Las Vegas. The tumble here is, of course, this devil's fall from heaven, and his time in Las Vegas is punctuated by deft one-liners and poetic sleights of hand. Its rhythm punches the dark comedy home: "Once, I lived / by passion's flame, / but I learned / cold blood / is better."
It's a conceit that could easily be kitsch, hollow, or monotonous — or all three — but Preston avoids that with her five-part structure that winds from Lucifer's fall to his gambling empire rising from the desert, ending with bitter desperation: "At night, look down / from space and Vegas is / the brightest thing on this world. / Look down, damn you, and see."
The poem is among the best here and makes even more sense alongside the book's epigraph, a quote from Terry Pratchett: "All tribal myths are true, for a given value of 'true'." The bombastic and subversive elements of Pratchett's Discworld novels and his collaboration with Neil Gaiman on Good Omens can serve as another tonal layer, an additional sounding board for a reader throughout this collection.
Tumble often bears the airiness of a soft-spoken speaker, the dust and familiarity of fable, and the charm of natural beauty. But it's a collection shot through with fleeting moments of bitterness, fear, irony and anger, and it's at this intersection of the lovely and the dangerous that Preston's poetic craft and ambition is at its height.
What are you most proud of with Masher?
I'm delighted with so many things about it: that I wrote it over a month, that I got a publishing contract, that I worked with a fantastic team on it, that the cover has embossing and over glossing! But really, I think the biggest thing is that everyone who read it in its first drafts laughed out loud. I also made an actual glove puppet of Masher (the glove puppet) in lockdown and I am very proud of him, he will be visiting many schools with me.
Are school visits as much fun as they sound?
I love school visits and I have missed them so much over Covid. The kids are totally gorgeous, every single one of them, and we have lots of laughter and keen engagement.
The funniest visit for different reasons was when I turned up at a primary school and there was no one to meet me, so I made my way to the library. The librarian seemed quite surprised that I wanted to set up there and asked if that was usually the case. I assured her it was and started taking out my books. The penny dropped and all was explained at morning tea time over coffee and sausage rolls when the visiting health nurse (there to do a head lice inspection) said she'd never been met with a pōwhiri at the school gates before and smiling eager students willing to carry her bags. I guess all middle-aged women look the same to 10-year-olds; she offered to trade jobs.
You have been a World of Wearable Arts finalist 27 times. Which of your creations was the most challenging?
Every piece of mine has an emotional challenge and deep story attached to it, but the most exhausting one had to be Lady Curiosity, inspired by Rachael King's brilliant novel Magpie Hall. It's all very well to have a great idea but sometimes the execution can have you tearing your hair out. It was an engineering nightmare. I glued entire parts upside down late at night only to have to rip them out the next day. Transferred images didn't stick, varnish didn't dry. The packaging up of it to send to Nelson for judging had me lying in a heap on the floor. But she did me proud by winning prizes and then going on tour around the world for five years in international exhibitions. So I forgive her everything.
Of your creative pursuits – illustrating, writing, costuming and prop-making – which is dearest to you?
Choose? How can I choose? They are all connected! My first love was all of those things – as a child I wrote, I drew and I made things. Drawing got me the biggest compliments and an illustration career earlier in my life; time and practice gave me technical skills in costuming and props. But writing is a tough one, you put your words out there for everyone to judge. There are so many knock-backs – for every novel published there are at least three you have written that are dear to your heart. For every picture book published there are a dozen manuscripts rejected. It's easy to get discouraged, you have to be very thick-skinned to be a writer but I don't know any who are, we all take it very personally. I can paint and draw my way out of rejection though, so I'm lucky.
You are a cold water bather. People swear by this – what does it do for you?
I am one of those mad converts. I used to listen to them on RNZ talking about it and thinking to myself, "Yeah right, like I'd get in the water if it wasn't midsummer and waaaay up north, or Rarotonga even." But here I am in Wellington, still bathing in May, the water is 15C and dropping. I've been doing this since December and haven't stopped. There's a group I belong to who meet two mornings a week before work in Seatoun and I dip locally at Hataitai Beach on other days. We go whatever the weather, in togs, non-wetsuit. This Covid era has left a lot of people feeling quite powerless over their lives for one reason or another and, I tell you, wading into cold water and dipping in up to your neck and treading water just out of reach of the sandy bottom gives you a feeling of power over yourself like nothing else. Your arms start to warm up, you laugh in the choppy waves or sigh with the beauty of calm water, you give thanks to Tangaroa. I get out, wrap up warm and pour coffee from my Thermos and smile from ear to ear all the way home.
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