15 / honeysuckle, lavender, peony
A (sort of) teaser trailer. Or: Launch and Other Dates. Or: Ah, Heck—God—Time. Or: [a string of blushing cartoon hearts]
Kia ora! Happy Rāmere!
A bunch of you have just shown up in the past 56 hours, and I have no idea why. Hello! Welcome to the party! Love that you’re here! Love that shirt on you! Love that you’re fending for yourself! Love you love you love you!
Most pressingly, as the calendar goes:
Submissions for Starling Issue 15 close at midnight on October 10th. If you are a New Zealand writer under the age of 25, we want your poetry, prose, and all-points-in-between! Submission guidelines here 💛
Short Films will be with us THREE WEEKS FROM YESTERDAY! Goodness gracious! Ah, heck! You can preorder it here. There will be launches in Tāmaki Makaurau and in Te Whanganui-a-Tara (right before Verb!):1
October 27, 6pm at SOAP Dance Hall, 12 Beresford Square (AKL)
Featuring an introduction by Maddie Ballard, and a reading by Jackson McCarthy
November 1, 6pm at Enjoy Contemporary Art Space (WLG)
Featuring an introduction by Francis Cooke, and readings by Claudia Jardine and Sinead Overbye
Snippets from the time since I last dispatched a bouquet:
Rāmere, 16 September—
Today was my last day in the full-time job that I started back in February. Rina Sawayama’s new album is out, and the clouds are midway through their afternoon journey across the sky, making way for the sun and an otherwise empty, endless blue, and then covering over with bright grey again. Over and over and over. It’s a quiet afternoon for the day job. I’ve been having to clear all my files off the work computer.
In a week and a half, I’ve got a contract kicking off at an arts organisation—I’m sure I’ll end up telling you which one at some point, as is part and parcel of the thing—and I will be there just under eight months, which I’m excited about. The job itself will be exciting. I’m also looking forward to having my work be fully under the arts umbrella, and with the inherent precariousness of funding in these industries I intend to especially enjoy receiving a sustainable income from them while I can. With that said, there is a week and half in between today and the official beginning of that contract. And what a week and a half it will be!
Raāpa, 5 October—
And what a week and a half it was, actually. Three samesame but different events across two cities, with a Poetry Live slot and a dash between Tāmaki and Tauranga in the mix, too, and buses, and flights, and the start of aforementioned new job, and K’s birthday, and nothing ever quite ending. And, and, and.
But we’re out of it now. We’re out of it now and into a newsletter!
FLORET | FEATURETTE, vol. 1
Short Films is out in twenty days. Good heavens.
I know you know this. I plugged it right off the bat. I have to keep reminding myself, though, because I’ve been having the kind of month [read: four months] wherein it’s all I can do to keep hurtling through life, let alone be grounded in the excitement of it. (With that said, I just looked out my window at the Thursday evening sun, and the undeniable City, and turned back to my keyboard and realised I was Carrie Bradshawing, with my little newsletter. So. Cultural hallmarks get us through, in many ways.)2
And regardless of how I’ve been feeling—regardless of the string of tiny lapses that allowed the truth to slip from my mind—this is an exciting thing. If I could reach back through the palimpsest of my apartment and alert the Self I was a year ago, before any of this was even on the table, she’d effervesce! So. I wanted to get a little snazzy, in this last lead-up. Give you some teasers. A teaser trailer, even!3
Here is the first one, for you. Some Short Films Without Context. Five morsels. Five inspirations, perhaps. Five kisses for your face.4 Go mad, sleuths!!!5 Fly, you fools!!!
i.
ii.
iii.
iv.
v.
There is so much to hold—this week, and always. So much precarious hope on a bowstring. I hope someone’s making you laugh. Thanks for sitting and/or scrolling with me.
Back soon. A brilliant shared grin over our shoulders ’til then.
T
A footnote in two parts:
Buskin [Relative]
At this stage, I must be honest: I cannot fathom this book entering the world and being received by other people. Conceptually I am aware that there will be A Book, and that the contents of said book will be the very same spreads I have been occupied with and poring over, the results of drafts and back-and-forth with Ash and Stacey and Ya-Wen, and the source of so much joy and strange calm and satisfaction—but it truly exists beyond me. Like, death of the author, sure, but also in terms of the fact the book as others receive it is something that happens without me, and should happen without me, and I love this book and am happy with the product and at the same time I am setting up a birthday party for all my friends—and strangers—to enjoy, and in many ways it is my birthday, but as soon as I’m finished setting out plates I am leaving. Like watching the sun set behind a mountain range. So touched and forever unreachable. Which I suppose is how it should be, if I haven’t put a veil of melancholy over the whole thing. Teehee. Tongue-bearing emoji of choice.
(I think the real thing is that I’m so sure of a fundamental sameness: I can’t fathom ripples outward from this much-built-toward event; I can’t imagine my life, or anyone else’s, shifting. Perhaps nothing ever does shift. Perhaps everything is always shifting.)
At any rate, all this to say, I’d love to see some—or all—of you at these launches. I promise they’ll be good, even if I have my hands over my face throughout.
Sock [Undeniable]
Can we just take a moment and appreciate the list of introductory speakers and readers at these two events. Like, can we do that! Can we do that, please!
The line-ups of these evenings make me feel as though I’m heading down the boardwalk at Mount Maunganui, looking out at an ocean that glitters like sequins on a stage, en route to purchase a boysenberry frozen yoghurt from Copenhagen Cones. [Or, at the very least, to catch the smell of fresh waffle cones as I walk by the shop.] Say it with me, gang: Nothing could ever be wrong! Come hear these people speak and read!
I have never seen Sex and the City. I also don’t think I’d be a Carrie if I had—I’m probably a Miranda, although C told me the other day that she thought I would be a Charlotte, which broke me a little, based on what I have gleaned especially about And Just Like That… from Las Culturistas. But I also just took a quiz which both misnamed the show in the title of the quiz and was devised by someone who had also never seen it—which made me immediately fall in love with that whomever that person is—and said quiz told me I was a Samantha. Which, again, I categorically am not. Although the results did say:
just like mirandas you can have trouble with emotions, particularly vulnerability but ur blunt and determined mindset lends a helping hand to pushing thru these issues
So perhaps there is merit to it in that sense, at least. I was once told by a dear friend that I was “brash, but honest” (blunt, by proxy), and I don’t think even healthy modesty will allow me to deny that I’m determined. And I have been talking a lot to different people about vulnerability this week. Mostly about the fact that if you are tailoring when and how you are expressing vulnerability—if you are curating that vulnerability—you are, ding ding!, not being vulnerable. lol, tee, and also hee.
Another also, just re: SatC—K got a Samantha Jones cocktail when we went to The Library in Te Whanganui-a-Tara. I don’t know that they’re the Samantha of our friend group[s] either. But the drink was nice! We recommend The Library!
A teaser trailer! Oh my god! Discovering brand synergy in real time! Milking a concept! Is this a featurette or a teaser trailer?! Both! Both! Oh, I am clown emoji-ing out! I am beside myself with glee [cast version]!!! — Me Realising This in Real Time (2022, colourised)
Given by whomever. Probably not by me. By the world of Short Films. By those teeny tiny movies.
Or bring me down to Earth!!! Is it more radical to ignore me or to get into the spirit of things!!! (Who knows! Do whatever you want!) 🤠
P.S. It won’t let me footnote on the extract in question but my god Bid Me to Live still makes me LOSE! MY DAMN! MIND! [screams, well-supported, from diaphragm]