New Music

I just spent the morning listening to Ghost Box vinyl.

In related music news, there's a new Café Kaput release by Jon Brooks - Dieter Rams Reconstructions which is available to download here. It's really great - as are all the labels releases.

There's also a new Belbury Poly album out called Belbury Tales which includes the piece "Summer Round".



That one is available from Ghost Box.

Submit!

Here are a couple of interesting projects which are currently open to submissions:

 Kari Larsen and Colette Newby are editing an anthology called The Fun Percent. Here are the details:

What have you been doing with this weird time? This liminal space where markets are shifting, jobs are scarce, and the issue of money/debt is omnipresent? How are you having fun?

Have you started a small press or an online magazine? Have you written a book? Have you made an online comic? Have you gotten totally obsessed with somebody's tumblr? Have you found a zoological garden obscured in the wilds of your mountain town? How do you seek joy? How do you have fun?

How are you taking advantage of the contemporary world for maximum enjoyment? Essays in the form of words (500 min.), video and art are welcome for consideration. Questions can be directed here on this post or to Kari.Lee.Larsen@Gmail.com, where submissions can go as well. The deadline is the last day of March. Please submit and please reblog!

Rachel Fenton is guest editing the March Edition of the Aotearoa Affair Blog Fest which is created to celebrate the Frankfurt Book Fair, where New Zealand is the guest of honour in 2012:

Monthly Blog Carnival

The first edition of the Aotearoa Affair 2012 will have the theme “CROSSINGS” and will go live by the end of Feburary. Thanks to all who sent contributions!

We are now inviting contributions for the second edition — again, the whole edition will be blog-based, with links leading to the single features. The guest editor for this edition is Rachel Fenton, the theme is: “PAST MYTHS, PRESENT LEGENDS”.

"In these pages we’re highlighting Kiwi and German writers in 2012 and creating a space for interested readers and bloggers to connect and share related posts. If you are a Kiwi or German living anywhere in the world, or if you are from somewhere else but have settled in New Zealand or Germany, we want to hear from you."

Submissions deadline: March 20th - what are you waiting for? Email submissions to:nzgermany2012 [AT] gmail [DOT] com

A woman in blue

Here's a post about something I have actually just written rather than something I hope to write, for a change. I have just been re-watching the film A Woman is A Woman - the result is a poem that I may find a home for at some point. I actually have a film inspired poem project circulating in my mind alongside the gothic influenced one I keep talking about - though funnily enough this single poem is longer already than all the material I have in the works for the other project thus far. I am really weird with poem lengths and what could and should go together to make chapbook drafts/longer projects. I suppose people with an MFA background find this way easier!

Juliette Hogan

While I'm at it, here are a few pictures from Juliette Hogan's latest lookbook too "Bittersweet Memories". Loving the leopard print fabric.

Charmaine Reveley

I love that a lot of local designers now have their winter lookbooks up online. Here are some pictures from Charmaine Reveley's new collection. She is definitely one of my favourite NZ designers.

Two Little Mermaids

I've been watching two adaptations of The Little Mermaid over the past couple of days, courtesy of You Tube. Mala Morska Vila (Czechoslovakia, 1976) and Rusalochka (Russia, 1976). They are both excellent films and I really recommend them.

Mala Morska Vila is dreamy and tragic, with beautiful costumes and a hauntingly beautiful soundtrack (which was reissued a couple of years back, though the film remains unavailable on a dvd with English subtitles). If you're a fan of Valerie and her Week of Wonders you'll love it.

Funnily enough it's actually the little mermaid in the Russian adaptation who is more of a Valerie-like character. She doesn't give up her voice for the prince, though she clearly loves him just as much as the mermaid in Mala Morska loves her prince.

I won't give away the ending, yet this humourous yet also haunting film does offer an unexpected alternative.

There's something Wicker Man or Valerie like in its focus on ritual and jousts and trying to burn witches at the stake which thankfully doesn't happen.

The princess is snarky, yet likeable in Rusalochka ("It's a cruel 13th century world we live in" she tells the mermaid). So is the witch which is refreshing.

Definitely an inspiring film.

Poetry

I'm a bit behind on blogging about various chapbooks I've been loving lately. Lots of chapbooks from Birds of Lace who have a reading period right now, Kate Durbin's E! Entertainment, chapbooks from Dancing Girl Press and many more. They are all so so great.

As for writing - I have revised a couple of the poems in We Speak Girl before the final MS is due. I also have two new poems I may add into it. I'm now working mainly on my gothic influenced project which is a different approach from We Speak Girl in that the poems are all on the same topic and none of them use collaged material from other sources. So it's a new and interesting writing challenge for me.

Julia Morison and Rodarte

I was flipping through the Julia Morison exhibiton catalogue A Loop Around a Loop this morning as she has a new exhibiton showing locally right now. I was thinking that it would be really interesting to make a comparison between the Material Evidence exhibit of Morison's which includes nine giant dresses hanging in the gallery and some of Rodarte's fashions.

Carlson

I love the 1940's look of these clothes from Carlson's upcoming winter range. I wish I could make it down to Dunedin for the ID fashion show there at the end of March. Tanya Carlson, Charmaine Reveley and Company of Strangers are some of the awesome designer's showing there. It's held in the city's Victorian railway station. Plus Dunedin is such a wonderful city.

Sensation again

Ann Radcliffe looked at paintings to gather inspiration for her texts - places she hadn't visited. I'm collecting a few gothic pictures from Tumblr and the internet in general, like the one above as inspiration.

I also started reading a couple of theory books relating to the gothic and sensation novels, thinking they might be useful for my project. I'm not so sure about a comment like this one from Lyn Pykett, though: "Equally problematic would be a feminist re-appropriation of women’s sensation fiction which would simply celebrate its focus on female emotions and sensations as a form of emotionally rich womanspeak articulating female power and feeling (…) or as a form of ecriture feminine which inscribes both the female body and a feminine subjectivity. This would be to risk re-inscribing essentialist notions of the feminine, and to replicate the gendered critical discourse of the nineteenth century through which sensation fiction was mediated” – Lyn Pykett, The “improper” feminine: the women’s sensation novel and the new woman writing.