New book – Sing to Me of Home

 

Some exciting news: Sing to Me of Home is ready to join its companions as the final instalment in my 'Home’ trilogy!

I started work on the collection in 2023, trawling through all my published and recent work and corralling and ordering poems that said loudly enough they should be included. After The Cuba Press agreed to publish the book, the Whitireia Publishing course students came on board as part of the publishing and editing package. The process from that point was an enjoyable one – I had to account for what I had written to a group of diligent, thorough and curious sets of eyes that wanted explanations and answers and who suggested fitting changes and corrections. The work is the better for their mahi. 

Sing to Me of Home encompasses stories from all avenues of my life, not just from the last 25 years that I have been writing poetry. Those familiar with my work will find poems they know, as well as some poems not previously published. If you are new to my poems and are interested in social issues, the environment, and the politics that surround us, you may discover welcome perspectives and sometimes satirical takes on life matters. 

For those of you who are living in Wellington/able to make it to Wellington, it would be great to see you at the book launch on Thursday, October 29^th at 5:30pm, at Aurelia Books, 109 Willis St, Te Aro, Wellington. 

The launch will be hosted by Aurelia Books, with help from The Cuba Press and the Whitireia Publishing students. Poets Harry Ricketts, Dinah Hawken and Tim Jones will join me at the microphone to read a selection of my work and some of their own. All are welcome to attend – and there will be plenty of nibbles and drinks to go around!

Sing to Me of Home is available for preorder through the Aurelia Books website (https://aureliabooks.co.nz/products/sing-to-me-of-home) and can be picked up at the launch if you are there, or sent to you.

The book draws its title from the following poem in the book:

National anthem

Which song plays for me
when I am missing home?

The cry of triumph over tyranny?
A call for God to save a queen or king?
A rally to a bloody flag or banner?

No, none of these.
These are not the things
that sing to me of home.

But if you were to score these notes –

A paddock with a sentry cabbage tree,
the noise a kererū makes flying,
tree fern unfurling and unfurled.

And if you were to hum this tune –

Kōwhai painting the town yellow,
kōtare on a washing line,
the smell of wet mānuka.

And if you were to add this chorus –

Hills dress-uniformed in bush,
the morepork’s call at night,
kauri holding up the sky.

This is the hymn, the anthem,
the waiata of my home.

New book coming up

Home Base

If you have been visiting this now revamped site in the hope of a new post, then you have struck it lucky. For the last two years or more I have been putting together a new book - Home Base. It is a memoir of the three years I spent as a New Zealand Army Regular Force Cadet, living  in barracks at Waiōuru military camp. The work is a sequel to the highly rated No One Home (Mākaro Press, 2018), which records my early and somewhat chaotic boyhood, and ends at the point I board the Auckland to Wellington overnight express in early January 1964 on the way to my boy-soldier life. I was 15, which at the time, was the youngest age one could join the Army. 140 other recruits of a similar age entered camp at the same time.

The work provides a personal snap-shot of the years 1964 - 1966 and distils the essence of what life was generally like for each annual intake of teenage boys who flowed through the Regular Force Cadet School from 1948 - 1991. Like No One Home, Home Base uses more than text to portray memories of time, people and place. Employing a bricolage approach, the work tells its story through short prose, poems, photos, sketches, maps, diary excerpts, and images of contemporary artefacts, memorabilia, and documents.

Home Base chronologically unfolds my Cadet years, but is more thematically structured than No One Home. Themes include arrival, learning the ropes, kit and caboodle, daily routine, marching and parading, minders and carers, leave and time-out, and aspects of barrack life. Vivid and sometimes humorous vignettes are used to gradually lay bare my army home and its harsh physical and social environment. Ever present are the volcanoes that form Waiōuru’s backyard, with Ruapehu in particular writ large in the lives of the cadets. Also woven through the memoir’s narrative is the story of how my individual post-cadet future came to be shaped and secured through the interest and actions of an Army benefactor.

Home Base will appeal to those who read life-stories to learn about and be reminded of times before and to an audience who enjoys reading about the New Zealand Army's past. It will also interest those who have served (or who are still serving) in the military in some capacity. Rather than being solely an account of one person’s memories of a particular life-period, Home Base will pique the reader’s curiosity and attention through the variety of literary and graphic forms that it employs and by revealing the uniqueness of a place in New Zealand most people only experience while passing through it. 

The book is due for publication by The Cuba Press (Mary McCallum) in October 2021. Before then, I'll advise when and where book launches will be and post some more extracts.

 

Here is a taster from Home Base:

 

Parade states

 

We were marched on and marched off

We were marched in and marched out

We were dressed up and dressed down

We picked up our dressing and lost it again

We marched paces forward or paces back

We stood at ease and stood easy 

We stood to attention and stood around

We braced ourselves and paced ourselves

We numbered from the right but not the left

We were wheeled in and wheeled around

We marched in quick-time

We marched in slow-time

We double-marched

We halted

We formed up in columns of three

We moved to the right or left in threes

We got on parade and got off it

We changed step and marked time

We fell out and fell in

We gave eyes right and eyes left

We advanced in review order

We presented arms

We hurried up and waited

Photo: Aerial view overlooking Waiouru Military Camp and Mount Ruapehu. Burt, Gordon Onslow Hilbury, 1893-1968 : F. Alexander Turnbull Library, Wellington