New Zealand Writers
HOWARD, David
Poetry itself is treated as a form of prayer, both sacred and profane.
HOWARD, David (1959 - ) is a poet and founding editor of Takahe, a small literary magazine which has been the first to publish many well-known New Zealand writers. He describes his writing as 'gnarled, metaphysical poety which fosters rather than forbids tenderness.'Reviewing Howard's first collection, In the First Place (1991), Kendrick Smithyman writes of '[a] sense of shock, and uncommon astonishment at the extraordinary poise which is part and parcel of these usually quite short pieces.' The volume features photographs by Paul Swadel.
David Eggleton writes of Howard's second collection, Holding Company (1995): 'Poetry itself is treated as a form of prayer, both sacred and profane, but rife with little idiosyncracies, sudden switches of pace, tone and meaning so as to create an ambiguous haze, almost at times an erotic reverie...'
A third volume Shebang: Collected Poems 1980 - 2000, was published in 2000. In The NZ Listener, Kapka Kassabova writes that 'Howard's greatest lyrical power is in apprehending the elusive. His is a poetry of the vanishing, of the shifting elsewhere, of loss lurking within the moment...the cerebral blends with the visceral with a brilliant lightness of touch.' Harriet Zinnes of the The Denver Quarterly (USA) comments, '...the forthright zing of the lines and indeed his intellectual rigor...have a kind of contemporary lyricism, that is, a lyricism that avoids excess but yet exudes tenderness and desire even as it questions their endurance, even their power. '
As the author of poems described as 'technically dazzling' and teeming with 'glittering figures of speech', it is perhaps fitting that Howard has worked as a pyrotechnic and special effects supervisor for acts including Metallica and Janet Jackson.
(KC.)
Updated Information
David Howard was a finalist in Ireland's Davoren Hanna Poetry Competition in 2001.
An online exhibition 'Why: Art about the attack on the World Trade Center & the Pentagon' includes work by New Zealand poet David Howard. You can visit the project at www.whyproject.org
'How to Occupy Our Selves' (2003) is a collaboration between David Howard and photographer, Fiona Pardington. Fiona Pardington was Artist in Residence at Auckland Unitec in 2001 and currently lectures in Sculpture at Elam, School of Fine Art, University of Auckland.
David Howard is currently the editor of the New Zealand section of an Australasian issue of Fusebox, the New York based zine supported by Rattapallax Press.
The debut issue of Fusebox included a feature on poetry from Prague & Budapest, Ireland, Romania, and poetry from Robert Creeley. The latest issue can be viewed at: http://www.rattapallax.com/fusebox.htm
Rattapallax Press works closely with the United Nations and UNESCO in programming events around the world for World Poetry Day. In 2002 the press organized readings on twenty mountaintops for the UN's Year of the Mountain. The magazine has published work from leading contemporary poets like Billy Collins, Marilyn Hacker, Lou Reed, Abbas Kiarostami, and Breyten Breytenbach.
In 2003 Howards' long dramatic poem, 'The Carrion Flower', was set to music by the distinguished Czech composer, Marta Jirackova. The collaboration was part of a body of work made possible by a 2002 Creative New Zealand project grant which Howard received to develop pieces based in Eastern Europe.
The Word Went Round was published by Otago University Press in 2006. It features a range of powerful historical poems.
Howard had a poem included in Shards of Silver (Steele Roberts, 2006), a book investigating the interplay between photography and poetry.
Writers in Schools
David Howard is avalable to speak to high schools students as part of the Writers in Schools programme. He is also happy to run workshops by prior arrangement.
KAPAIKIDS AUTHORS PICTURES AND INFORMATION
Some Questions for David Howard
Where do you live?
At Purakanui, in a purpose-built tin shed which has two studios attached. Set on the one-acre site for a Victorian rural school, our house overlooks farmland and the blue screen of the South Pacific, onto which I can project my fantasies.
What books do you read?
The books I read are as mixed as the sweets I eat; some authors are fizzy like sherbet while others are dark as licorice. I enjoy authors who lived many centuries ago because they show me that the core of writing is empathy - an ability to stand in someone else's shoes and see the world through their eyes. This is important because I believe that evil is only possible when people lack empathy, so I regard acts of the imagination as inherently moral. The books I ponder over are often about the nature of the imagination and the way it conditions our behaviour; these books are by authors with wonderful names - Plotinus, Dionysius the Aeropagite, Julian of Norwich, Fulke Greville.
Who is your favourite author?
Robert Grosseteste, who was born in the village of Stow Langtoft (what a great name!) in Suffolk, England, around 1170 and died on 9 October 1253. Believing that ‘All created things are mirrors which reflect the Creator’ he asked questions like why do stars twinkle? What is the cause of thunder? Why is the earth covered with water? My preferred work by him is ‘Hexaemeron (On the Six Days of Creation)’, which was probably completed around 1235 – it’s so long ago that no one knows for sure.
I like the idea that someone who woke up to the beauty of the world over seven hundred years ago can still wake me up to it; it is as if I can smell cherry blossom or hear the rain more clearly after reading Grosseteste.
How do you think up your ideas?
I trust in language the way a snowboarder trusts in his (or her) snowboard, by letting it direct me; so, even if I decide when and how to execute turns, I still have to attend to my materials if I’m not to lose balance. The most important thing in writing is not a ‘thing’ at all – you cannot measure it like a piece of wood or a stone – and that is to have faith. Writing is about spirit.
What is the best thing about being an author?
Writing drives off boredom as surely as a high wind removes polluted air from the city.
Some Questions for Primary Schools
What sort of pets do you have?
Because I travel a lot I don’t have any pets – it would be unfair to leave them behind, scratching at the window. One day I want to share a lighthouse with a pirate’s parrot.
What is your favourite colour?
Blue, the blue of the sea and the sky; the blue of a beautiful girl’s eyes; the blue of a candle that spits its wax just before going out.
What is your favourite food?
Shepherd’s Pie because, when frost is on the ground and all the windows in your house are steamed up so you can draw on them, the pie fills your stomach with summer. Soon you are warm all over.
Do you have favourite movie?
’Mirror’ by the Russian director Andrei Tarkovsky; it has a scene where a woman rinses her hair in the farmyard while, behind her, a barn burns. I like this surprising combination of water and fire.
Do you play any games?
Blind Man’s Buff because you never know what you’ll find, which is how it is with writing: words take you somewhere unexpected.
What is the most fun thing about being an author?
You get to stay in bed on rainy days and, on windy days, while the trees bow and scrape the ground, you can fly kites so high they almost rub the bellies of clouds.
How do you make books?
I use words to glue ideas together.
Where do you go for your holidays?
I go to the Otago Peninsula near Dunedin, where hundreds of birds make me want to grow wings; I also go to Leipzig in Germany, which is a medieval town that pricks the sky with steeples. J.S. Bach composed most of his music there, music which I adored as a boy – his harpsichord pieces still feel like sun-warmed water trickling across my skin.
What was the naughtiest thing you ever did at school?
I nailed another pupil’s desk shut. He was a bully who threatened other children so I didn’t feel guilty (well, only a little).
Some Questions for Secondary Schools
How did you get started?
I was bored and tried to find a way not to be. Writing was my way and I learnt to write by reading others. It is always more important to listen than to talk.
Who inspired you when you were getting started?
I read the French poet, Rimbaud, and was amazed by his lines: "One evening I seated Beauty on my knees. And I found her bitter. And I cursed her" [from ‘A Season in Hell’ translated by Louise Varese].
What advice would you give to an aspiring writer?
To read and to travel widely; both activities make you aware that there are many ways of viewing your self, the world, and whatever’s beyond the world.
Is it difficult to make a living writing in New Zealand?
Yes, so I don’t try; instead I make a living by executing firework displays. Instead of using a pen on paper I write with light on the night sky.
What were you like as a teenager?
Because I was frightened that I knew nothing I behaved as if I knew everything. I was even more arrogant and smug than the elders I despised. My adult life has been about falling hard in order to get up again, humbled but strengthened. I think that the process of making a poem is not so different from this.
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