The Ice Shelf: An Eco-Comedy Read online

  I lick my finger and shuffle through the manuscript. In no time at all, I have cut out several sections in which the baby boomer S prostitutes herself to a white guy with a sense of entitlement the size of Belgium. I’m sorry to say, Reader, you will never get to read about the antics of Mr Monkey. Future Turnbull research fellows will cringe when they learn about this. I screw the rejects into the tiniest ball I can (thinking of landfill), which is actually not so tiny; about the size of a tennis ball. When I flush it down the toilet, the bowl makes heavy weather of it at first. I picture, rather cartoonishly, a bulge travelling the length of the disposal system, and I feel remorseful about the amount of water I’m using, but it is all for a good cause. After this, the most substantial of my edits so far, the manuscript feels much lighter and more pared-down. And so do I.

  Back in the foyer, I decide my fridge is more or less okay where it is outside the bathroom. Bracing myself for the congratulations that are to ensue, I go in to the Awards.

  In the jostle of the Kōwhai Reception Room, I literally rub shoulders with arts luminaries and rich corporate types as I secure a glass of fairly-disgusting-but-any-port-in-a-storm red. The literati are knocking back wine like there’s no tomorrow, and an edge of hysteria comes off them like dry ice. I swallow as many vol-au-vents as I can while the tray passes, since I haven’t eaten in a while, and begin to cruise among angular haircuts and commonplace objects pinned to lapels.

  In my initial circumnavigation of the room, I spy quite a few people I know, not all of whom I want to talk to. Tree Murphy, for instance, sails unsteadily past pretending not to see me, but I have ignored her first. Her fiancé of the fluttering eyelashes trails in her phenomenal wake. I can tell he is tipsy by his brief beery glance. I have a big thank you apropos those two individuals later in these Acknowledgements. I also avoid Didi Musgrove like the plague, whose ministrations at Arts New Zealand I have already mentioned. I have to go past the drinks table again in my efforts (strenuous) to avoid the president of Feather, the professional writers’ society that I am an Associate Member of. You’ll note I said ‘Associate Member’, not ‘Full Member’, and there’s quite a story attached to that, and this seems as good a time as any to offer my deepest thanks to Feather. I will divert from the Kōwhai Reception Room for a few moments.

  *

  The truth is that after my first book came out, Feather and I, despite my enormous admiration for the work they do, had a bit of a run-in. Feather maintained that because Utter and Terrible Destruction was under a certain number of pages, which we will say arbitrarily is fifty, and it *is* arbitrary, I couldn’t become a Full Member of the society. (I have to add here that every time the term ‘Full Member’ was mentioned, I would visualise a huge, throbbing, veiny red cock. ‘Associate Member’ conjured something smaller and more rubbery. I suppose this is due to my creative nature, and I’m sorry if it is at all off-putting. I certainly don’t intend it to be. I hope readers will, when they come across the terms ‘Associate Member’ and ‘Full Member’ in relation to Feather, be able to put these images right out of their minds.) To continue: because my book was under fifty pages, I must remain an Associate Member of Feather. Some people would be flattened by this summary denouncement, but not me. I’m made of sterner stuff. In fact, I’m all the stronger for the slight.

  I would like to take the opportunity here to thank the person at Feather with whom I had a protracted email exchange after my book came out, a certain Don Willard whose own slim volumes of poetry you might’ve seen on the shelf in a bookshop, or if you blinked you might have missed them. There’s a reason, of course, that Don Willard knows to insert lots of white space in his poems so that his books come out at fifty pages or more. As Membership Secretary of Feather, he is party to privileged information about the minimum-page rule and, as an insider-trader, he is the Martha Stewart of the literary world.

  At this point I am having a little reverie that involves me going about discussing literature with people which goes something like: Have you read Such and Such? It’s a brilliant book. / How long is it? / Well, it’s forty-nine pages long. / Ah, it’s not a book then, so no, I haven’t read it. / What about this one? (I poke an apparently unidentifiable object under the other person’s nose.) / What? / This. / What? / This, this book! / I can’t see anything. / It’s a book with forty-nine pages. / No, sorry, I can’t see any book there.

  In my emails to Mr Willard I pointed out that my prose pieces were tightly constructed; the lines went right to the other side of the page using all the white space apart from the margin; that is, they were justified. I argued that my crots contained more words that strings and strings of long poems did. I could’ve constructed my prose so it straggled down the page like McCahon waterfalls, like worms, like saliva, like a man peeing, and my book would’ve ended up with as many pages as Remembrance of Things Past. Mr Willard did not agree on any of the numbered points in my email and got quite defensive. In the end, Mr Willard—who signed himself Mr Willard all through, that’s why I’m calling him that, and I think it reveals volumes, albeit slim ones, about his personality—had the last word which proves that for all their Up The Writer rhetoric, Feather are really fascists. I was economically disadvantaged by their hegemonic stance. Mr Willard should read Animal Farm and rethink Feather’s ‘fifty pages good, forty-nine pages bad’ policy.

  No sooner had I avoided Don Willard in the seething Kōwhai Reception Room than I had to hide again quickly at the drinks table because who should I almost bump into but Eve White, the administrator for the Authors’ Fund. If I hadn’t suffered enough in recollecting the forty-nine-page saga, another chapter of it was about to come rushing back, this time involving hard cash. The Authors’ Fund is the body that collects monies for authors for library holdings in recompense for people who are too mingy to buy your book. There were fifty copies of my book in libraries throughout New Zealand—it’s true I did donate a few of them—and, by rights, I should’ve had $119 per year for those fifty copies. The fact that my book doesn’t have a spine has nothing to do with it. But oh no, because Utter and Terrible Destruction has only forty-nine pages, it wasn’t eligible. I won’t regale you with the months of haggling that went on, with threats of lawyers on both sides, although they actually had a lawyer. Anyway, it’s not worth raking over the coals. Some things are just petty, and the Authors’ Fund But Only Some Authors needs to learn that.

  All the same, because I’m a glass-half-full kind of person (I might add, the glasses of wine they served at the awards ceremony were not anywhere near half full which is why I kept having to go back to the bar), I’m grateful for these spirited back-and-forth argle-bargles which served only to sharpen my resolve as a writer.

  Who should I need to avoid next in the Kōwhai Room, but Dame Bev Hollis, who will be known to many, at least in New Zealand which narrows it down somewhat, and when we cut out the people who don’t read novels and who don’t read New Zealand novels, this is hardly someone you can buy a mask of and dress up as at Halloween. However, Dame Bev is a juggernaut in some quarters, and there could not be an awards ceremony without her. Here I need to reveal that I am actually a fond acquaintance of Dame Bev. In a small country like New Zealand, everyone knows everyone in the literary community; in fact you are probably related to them and, if not, you’ve probably been married to them at some point. The truth is that even if you have absolutely nothing in common with a person, even if they happen to be, say, old and stuck up and not very talented, just getting noticed by sitting on arts boards, you will know that person quite well.

  I have a heartfelt thank you to make to Dame Bev and will break off from my account of the awards ceremony here to do just that. The reason for my thanks is that Dame Bev wrote a review of Utter and Terrible Destruction, even though it doesn’t have a spine; this is the only review of my book to date and, as such, an important contribution to the culture surrounding the book. To be reviewed by Dame Bev is, on the surface, quite a coup. The review appeared o
n page 26 of the Dominion Post on 22 April 2010. Why a person already so successful as to have been awarded a dameship for services to literature would still write reviews for almost no money is curious. It may be because a dameship is actually not successful in monetary or global or real terms. But I’m fortunate that Dame Bev continues her hobby. If it hadn’t been for her review, my writing life would’ve been entirely different. Not everyone gets advice from a master, but I was lucky enough to, and I quote: ‘One wonders who Redmond thinks she is writing for—perhaps herself? In any case, the rather trashy and self-centred diatribe that is Utter and Terrible Destruction left this reader out in the cold.’ I took Dame Bev’s piece of searching critical analysis very seriously indeed. If not for the acutely observed insights, I might’ve gone on for years writing self-centred diatribes and not giving a toss whether people wanted to read them or not. Thank you so much, Dame Bev!

  But I think where I most benefitted from Dame Bev’s razor-sharp assessment was in the area of *trashy*. This is quite a laying down of the gauntlet. I’m completely in favour of reviewers who don’t flinch, who engage in robust discourse rather than heaping praise about in a generalised and namby-pamby fashion. So I was only too pleased to be singled out by Dame Bev as deserving of the descriptor *trashy*. It has always been my policy to take criticism on the chin. I’m not one of these people who reacts to excoriation by making ad hominem attacks on their detractors. And so I pondered at length the nature of trash. Luckily, rubbish is a topic I am fairly familiar with, as you will have gathered in these Acknowledgements. Therefore I thought deeply about the implications of meta-sustainability for literature—where thinking becomes books, which become newspaper reviews, which break down and go into the atmosphere unseen like radio frequencies but there all the same to be picked up by writers with their antennae always on the alert. If not for Dame Bev’s wise comments, I might never have done the critical thinking around a philosophy on rubbish as it pertains to writing; I might have continued to lure people to the misfortune of reading my work, a.k.a. rubbish, without the necessary new growth. My heartfelt thanks to Dame Bev. And now I’d like to share a colourful incident that occurred when I encountered her at a writers’ festival at Borich Winery in the Wairarapa in June 2010.

  Again, we are so fortunate in New Zealand that great writers—and I mean truly great, like Dame Bev—aren’t too high and mighty to frequent insy writers’ festivals such as the Borich. I’m sure Dame Bev could’ve been hobnobbing at Hay-on-Wye, the Edinburgh Festival or the Frankfurt Book Fair with other writers of her enormous stature, but no, she said a heartfelt Yes to the microscopic Borich Winery Readers and Writers Festival and appeared on several panels for a modest fee after throwing a tantrum (so the story goes) of only twice what the other panellists were paid.

  The festival occurred close on the heels of the day the review of Utter and Terrible Destruction appeared in the Dominion Post, which was good timing. What are festivals for if not to facilitate vibrant discussion about our literature/s?

  I was part of the Borich Winery Fringe Festival, and here, I must add my thanks to the organiser of the Borich, namely Nick Hope, for scheduling me to appear not in the festival proper but in the Fringe with a line-up of barely published, emerging and not the slightest bit emerged, indeed, submerged, writers. I have to say, when I heard I was to be a participant in the Fringe, I pictured myself as a ratty thread lying alongside other ratty threads at the edge of a beautiful, richly patterned Persian rug. Although this vision of myself may seem rather abject, I’m grateful for the insight it has brought me. If I’d been featured on a panel alongside writers of my true rank—that is, emerged, having had a book published by a publisher albeit without a spine—I would never have stood among grassroots writers who are of the people, at the coalface, and surely that’s what writing is all about.

  However, I have to confess that before I realised what a privilege it was to be fringe rather than rug, I was a little miffed. To get through the ordeal, I vacuumed up a quick line of coke in Mandy’s bathroom (I was flatting with her during that period), and by the time I got off the bus at the winery, I was feeling much better.

  The sky was purplish dark even though it was only four o’clock in the afternoon. From the festival noticeboard outside the long pink adobe-style buildings, I saw that the Fringe reading was to take place in the Summer Garden in the direction of the arrow. As I promenaded along the deep, elegantly pillared terrace, making for the outermost reaches of the winery, a crack of lightning rent the air and the patter of rain started up. I left the cover of the verandah and headed into the open to join the kick-ass crew in the garden, a grassy square dotted with pretty shrubs on the edge of the vineyard. It was indeed raining, rather heavily now, but we Fringe people didn’t mind, and neither it seemed did the five or six audience members who’d had the foresight to bring golf umbrellas. From the makeshift podium we had a majestic view of the grapevines, glazed with rain, striping down into the misty valley. The organisers had got rid of the microphone because of the danger of death by electrocution, and with the size of the audience, it didn’t matter, in fact it added to the intimacy. The natural tones of the human voice raised against a torrent is a truly wonderful sound.

  Through the windows of the Pūkeko Ballroom we could make out, illuminated in the tinkling light of chandeliers, a sea of grey-coiffed people seated on plush chairs with gilt edges, an expanse of red carpet at their feet. They nursed glasses of wine and tittered occasionally in response to something one of the emerged writers said. From our position in the Summer Garden, it all looked very jolly. How glad I was that I was on the right side of the fence, ontologically, for a writer.

  In the garden a poet with a grey ponytail and John Lennon glasses showed us his shaped poems which were getting rather pulpy in the rain. They were about the universe. Someone held a red-and-white golf umbrella over his head, and plaits of water cascaded about his feet. He ploughed on, and one had to admire his self-belief. I looked for his name on the chalkboard but it had washed off in a pretty trickle of pink and aqua. My own name had met with the same fate, but I didn’t mind; in fact I found it fitting that ‘Janice Redmond’ had transubstantiated into a purple sludge that bulged slightly over the lower wooden edge of the blackboard. Consider the opposite: to have one’s name splashed across a shiny printed programme, clutched in the liver-spotted fist of a retired festival subscriber, is to live cuddled in the lap of the bourgeoisie. My sincere gratitude to Nick Hope for leaving me outside society, where one must reside if one is to be an artist.

  After the grey-ponytailed poet, another submerged writer, this one wrapped in back from head to foot, explained how there was no meaning in poetry. I missed the last bit due to a sizzle of lightning and, three hippapotomi later (I counted), a rumble of thunder. Nevertheless, raindrops sprayed from the hands of six people clapping. The poet told us how her poems had come into being, why they looked the way they did on the page (or had, before the storm), and what they represented: the universe. I began to wonder if I’d missed some vital information about the theme of the event. My crots were not about the universe. As the woman in black began reading, I concocted a little speech in my head which would reframe my reading within the universe. By this time I was drenched and cold and I was thankful that the universe poems were short, such as ‘I / de / con / struct / my / self’. They weren’t the best poems I’d ever heard, but the audience clapped wetly, cheered, and even stamped their feet in the mud. I brushed the brown splatters off my calves in preparation for my turn on the stage.

  When I began, it was starkly obvious that I should’ve been in the Pūkeko Ballroom performing for the people sitting in plush chairs under the sparkle of the chandeliers. But I didn’t mind, I really didn’t. The six people in the audience—four at this point because it was very wet and relatives tended to peel off once their loved ones had read—clapped appreciatively as I read several crots from Utter and Terrible Destruction.

  As I’ve alrea
dy discussed, art finds itself in extraordinary circumstances. I would like to thank the fringe-dwellers of the Borich Festival for the important lesson they taught me as I stood by and witnessed their tenacity, their good humour in the face of, well, being dreadful and as a result facing out-and-out rejection. The lesson is, keep going, even if you’re absolutely hopeless. Never give up. How fortunate I was not to be with the chosen ones in the Pūkeko Ballroom, where I’m positive such a determined attitude would not have been possible. Thank you, Nick Hope, for relegating me to the Fringe; thank you, thank you.

  When I finished, there was no one left in the garden. I’d been carried away with my crots but had noticed one or two audience members ducking inside during my performance. I don’t blame them in the least—the rain was torrential. I’d probably walk away from hearing some interesting literature if I were being soaked to the skin. But I must admit, the Summer Garden seemed like a wasteland, and I felt the teensiest bit downhearted as I picked my way through the mud to the big Spanish terrace. As I was drying off in the foyer, who should I see coming out of the plush roomful of laughter and forgetting but Dame Bev of the review. A quick thumbnail description of Dame Bev, here: eyebrows raised in self-important expectation; earthy suits in coarse brown wool shot through with red flecks (as if Dame Bev is a fence and sheep have rubbed up against her, leaving tufts of wool marked with the bright dye of the breeder); shoes high and clompy (yes, a little hoof-like, a little sheepish, so I’m not sure if she is fence or sheep, but why not both?); the shoes causing her to tip forwards, which brings us back to the eyebrows because, as if they are her career, she throws *everything into them*.

  When I told Dame Bev, there in the marble foyer, that it was very nice to see her, she pretended she didn’t know who I was—the eyebrows airborne, the cheeks elongating like a nineteenth-century parson—a droll pantomime, in view of fact that my photo appears on several websites, and that she had reviewed my book, FFS. Never mind, I’m sure I have a few foibles too. I got the ball rolling (by this time I’d wrung most of the water out of my hair) by telling Dame Bev that actually I knew quite a bit about rubbish. Once again, she pretended to look lost, but I stuck to my guns. As it happens, I’m reasonably clued-up on the topic of composting—what can go in and what can’t, the use of lime, the incredible stink—all information gathered during my time with Harry and Nico at the commune, although it never quite worked there. And, as you know, I also became well acquainted with the clandestine disposal of rubbish while living in town with Sorrell.