Thoughts

The Author Pics

2009

Share house in Brooklyn, Wellington.

Wry smile

slightly open window

poetic lean

baby face.

Photo credit: David Peters.

2013

A park in Wellington.

My favourite vintage dress

embracing the glasses

looking optimistically

out towards the future.

Photo credit: David Peters.

2016 & 2021

Melbourne backyard with compulsory brick wall.

Middle parting

best dress.

Photo credit: Richard Wise.

2017

Mapua, NZ.

Not intended to be an author photo, just a nice pic my mum took when I was visiting.

Red cardy was hers.

Photo credit: Jan Marsh.

2025

At our house.

World-weary smile

just one of many things

that needed

to be done that day.

Photo credit: Jason Strachan.

The Covers

Wit of the Staircase (Steele Roberts, 2009)

I still love this cover although I remember seeing it for the first time in print and thinking how grey it looked, my expectations having grown so huge I imagined my first published book would glow with an indefinable aura of absolute pride; sparkle with a sense of accomplishment. The cover image is a shadow of a tūī on a branch gently spotlit with pale floral wallpaper behind.

Tear Water Tea (Steele Roberts, 2013)

This one was painstakingly hand-drawn by David Peters and captures some of the images from the collection. The stubby pencil is a nod to the title reference – a story about all the sad little things that make Owl cry. Read it to your kids. The tradition of my name in serif caps begins here and I love the pale blue. This cover has been described as very feminine which seems fair and appropriate even if intended as a slight.

Lonesome When You Go (Mākaro Press, 2016)

A deviation from poetry and a deviation from my serify name. This cover was also designed by David Peters, initially as a little place holder as I eagerly promoted my novel but then commissioned by Mākaro Press. I love the amp and the title so much but my ego now wants my name in a larger font. The white background has been criticised as being a bit stark for the lively content but it’s intriguing, don’t you think?

Photos of the Sky (The Cuba Press, 2017)

This beautiful cover was hand-painted by Sarah Bolland of The Cuba Press after much pestering from me. I’m lucky to have had so much creative input into my covers given my inability to articulate my aesthetic desires. I changed the title of the collection a few times too which I’m sure is a publisher’s dream. The title is so beautifully scribed here which I think captures the floaty, heart-on-sleeve nature of the work inside.

Learning to love Blue (Record Press, 2021)

This is the one cover I would probably change and actually could given that it was my idea in the first place. The blue-scale is a nod to the album Blue by Joni Mitchell and the single object floating in space a link to its predecessor Lonesome When You Go, although it has been said that they don’t really look like a pair. I would crank up the font size on the title, but in real life it actually looks quite good. It has a soft matte finish which makes it nice to hold.

The Good Days (Both Sides Books, 2025)

100% my favourite cover. Designed and drawn by my talented husband with reference to our kids and lockdown days. The yellow is as yellow as yellow can be and the inside cover is too.

Just as my poetry reflects the time and self at each stage, so too do the covers as they become bolder and more sure of themselves, their booky arms open wide.

Stay tuned for my next post: The Profile Pictures!

The Magic

Spring, 2024

If I had looked at the forecast, I would have known there was a storm coming, but I could never have predicted its magic. At the end of the weekend, the sky crashing, flashing alight blue, pink, orange over and over. The closest thing to fireworks the four-year-old had ever seen. ‘Nature’s fireworks,’ I almost said, but decided to leave the noise-making to the world outside the darkened room for once, an inversion of the usual chaos of dinner and bedtime. We stood close, still, looking out to the west in astonishment at the intensity, the electricity of plain air.

The days leading up to the storm had been windy, sure, but not unbearable. Good laundry days, I called them. The onesies and tulle dresses billowed out then defied their own pegs. Tiny socks spread themselves about the garden, but at least it all dried. And a good laundry day is a good kite flying day.

We stuffed the nine-dollar Kmart kite into a pannier, rainbow tail flapping eagerly, and rode down to the reserve to set it free, let it tug us gently, let it let us tug it gently back.

The kids got bored long before I did —  ran to the playground with their dad — so I took the reins, allowing the kite to swoop and loop, watching it try to arc gracefully through the ground and falling short. Each crash my cue to wind the string up, haul it back in, but before I could pack it down completely the wind would grab it again and off it went, off I went letting out its lead with a click click click of the wrist. Our dance of pull and release. Every time: a crash, a gather, a gust, a yield.

At one point the wind blew hair across my face and when I cleared my view I thought the kite was a heart. Not the squashy bulging forms my daughter has learnt to draw on birthday cards, but a proper anatomically correct blood pumping organ. My own old blood pumper flying as free as one can when they’re tethered to the ground by the comforting weight of family, the constant calling of Mummy Mummy Mummy.

Or was it my own child pulling the cord to come, come but asking me to stay? Let out more string, it seemed to say, long enough to let me dance in the high air you’ll never reach but don’t let me go. Either way the kite remained at the mercy of my flicking wrist and the wind itself, until it was us — my kite-heart-child and I — co-conspirators putting the wind to task, daring it, forcing it to keep us aloft. The thunderstorm not yet visible on the horizon. The magic still to come.

The small one loves ducks so much we set off early and head to the creek

but we’ve never been to this creek before.
Rain wasn’t forecast and I tell that to the sky as it darkens and clouds and of course
pours all over us.

I keep checking the forecast and the sky and not quite understanding 
why the information doesn’t match
I’m cold and wet, but Finch loves the rain

I ask if he still wants to go see ducks
and of course he does, why wouldn’t he. We hide under trees wherever we can and he’s safe in the pram and mostly sheltered, but his little hands are freezing.

We see two ducks from under our tree by the side of the creek and I pull him from his pram and lift him to see and make sure the whole business was worth it
of course it was.

It’s always worth it when Finch has something new to talk about.
The rain gets worse before it eases, just like everything and I tell myself this
is an adventure, if you like rainbows you gotta put up with a bit of rain, but of course there are no rainbows

Just the rain followed by no more rain.

We head to a cafe and I get tea and he gets a marshmallow
and we share fruit toast and he smiles and laughs at everyone and I hold his cold hands
one by one in mine until they’ve thawed a bit and when it’s time to go he wants to go to a playground, so we do.

And how lovely to be so small but so in control of the day, the one day a fortnight we have together so of course I say yes to everything.

Like when we get home and he asks for pizza so I make him a little pizza for lunch
and he pulls the topping off slice after slice so he’s really just eating cheese and again
it’s all worth it.

Except at nap time he cries about having to get into his bed, even though he rolls around happily in there and then falls asleep for an hour and a half and it’s enough time for me
to sit in the sun because the sun’s really and truly out now 

and the washing probably will dry after all even though it got rained all over while we were out and I have enough time to do a bit of marking and check my emails and then write all this down. 

And maybe I don’t need a rainbow to reassure me every time, reassure me everything’s going to be fine
because of course, of course, of course it will be.

Debrief

Our eldest has just turned five, which marks half a decade of my partner and I discussing parenting every single day.

It started out as a sleep puzzle to solve. We would wake each morning and assess the quality of sleep, the night’s ups and downs and describe to each other the exact routine we went through at bedtime – how many pats did we give her, how loud was the shushing, how did you extract your arm slowly and gently enough not to wake her when you placed her in her bed and what gentle dance did you create to exit the room without setting off that one sneaky creaky floor board? 

Every morning we debriefed and every evening we tweaked the sleep dance accordingly. An art, a science, nothing left to chance and hope. We believe it worked and by 8 months old our very shouty, very sleep-resistant baby was sleeping 10 uninterrupted hours a night. I know this so precisely because it felt monumental at the time. One of our greatest achievements.

Five years later, we no longer talk about sleep — both the five year old and the two year old chat themselves to sleep and only wake in the morning when we open their curtains — but we still   debrief the day.

We discuss the things we were proud of and the things we were not so proud of, things we saw other parents doing and how impressive it was or strange it was, why we should try and do that in our family or why we would never. We think we parent very deliberately and it is often very tiring to talk about. 

But I’m aware our deliberate parenting style might look like quite the opposite from the outside. Instead of putting things in front of our kids and showing them how to use them, or jumping in when we overhear a voice getting raised or offering help before it’s asked for, we really want our kids to learn to figure things out on their own. Asking questions, rather than always providing answers. Over these intense five years we’ve realised that it’s okay if our kids get frustrated about something and that’s often where the best learning has happened. It’s okay if they express annoyance when something isn’t turning out the way they want it to – isn’t that so much of life?

This morning I helped the small one upstairs to where his sister is and closed the baby gate, explaining clearly that I’m going to have a shower now. The white noise of water calms my brain for a few minutes but when I turn it off Lotus is calling me. I pop my head around the door and ask what’s up. She’s upset because Finch is not listening to her, “I’m the boss of my body and I’m the boss of my room!” Okay, I’ll be there in a sec. 

By the time I dry off and wrap up and head up the stairs, calling out, ‘Are you okay, or do you need some help?’ Lotus has put some toys in Finch’s room for him and is looking him in the eye, calmly saying, ‘Next time can you just say yes or no instead of shouting at me?’ I help him get his diggers out of the cupboard and he asks her to play with him, ‘Yeah!’ she cries, ‘Yeah!’ he repeats. 

They have solved it without me and I couldn’t be more proud. What a gift for their learning and their relationship to sort these things out on their own. And what a gift for me to be given time to write while they happily play upstairs together – some complicated game with blankets and toys and nightlights and important bustling back and forth. I sit on the couch with my laptop and hear them singing happy birthday to a teddy.

Just as I’m really settling into a morning of me time and patting myself on the back for my excellent parenting skills, Lotus screams. Finch is ordered out of her room and when I get there I am too. There are big big tears and I take Finch away while Lotus screeches at the emptying room that she just needs time to herself. Humbled and wishing I had checked in on them sooner, I give Finch a cuddle and prepare snacks for them both. Maybe it’s time we all went for a walk. There’ll be lots to unpack at debrief time.

Summer rain

Our two week holiday ends with rain. Lotus calls it ‘mist rain’ the stubborn drizzly stuff that won’t be moving on until it has emptied the clouds entirely. No wind to push it along, or sun to sizzle it away. It’s been doing this for two days now and it makes me want to go to bed early. So I do. 

But rain highlights some of my best moments in the last two weeks: Jumping into the pool the night before Christmas once the kids are in bed, a gentle thunderstorm rolling past. A sprinkling of rain and a boom or two nearby. The sun goes down as I float lazily and a few bats flap overhead. I wonder if the thunder messes with their echolocation, confuses their navigation. For me it does the opposite and I feel grounded by this very Melbourne phenomenon of a summer thunderstorm. 

It rains all Christmas Day too, but on Boxing Day I strap Finch to the back of the bike and ride ride ride through park after park in the sunshine while he squeals and shouts. I turn briefly to see him pointing at it all, his whole body alert with amazement at trees and people and dogs and cars and just the details of the world really. It makes me laugh out loud. We’re chased back by a proper storm though – thick dark clouds wading through the sky, pushing their way towards home where the washing has already dried in the hot wind of morning. I pedal as fast as I can and I’m the one whooping now, laughing as the big ploppy drops start to fall and loudly reassuring the little guy that we’ll make in time, it’s my mission to get us back inside in time and I do. Buckets upon buckets of rain plummet down and we watch from the safety of the front porch.

There are warm days and cool days and days where nothing much happens, but we’re happy together and what at first felt like a daunting prospect: daycare closed and having to manage the big feelings and big energy of an almost four year old and a just turned one year old, turns to feelings of precious one on one time, making adventures of going to the supermarket together, building duplo towers and going to our favourite playgrounds.

In the last few days we have family visit, bundle ourselves into cars and drive to the museum where Finch again points at all of it with curiosity and astonishment, confusion and concern. There are dinosaur bones and bugs and giant crystals found within unassuming rocks. Lotus is fascinated by it all and I wonder if I’ve ever seen her so excited, engaged with everything, asking questions, pushing all the buttons. She’s wearing her gumboots so on the way to dinner, with our colourful umbrellas above, she finds the best puddles and stomps stomps stomps. Gutters run like rivers and her small hand is warm as she tugs me to the next big splash.

Today the sun is out. We’re up early and ready to go quicker than we ever have been. All of us on the bikes, but the ride to daycare is less than five minutes. Lotus is in the four year old kinder room now, meeting up with her friends and making new ones. Finch spends one hour getting used to the nursery where he will be three days a week. 

Last night in bed the drizzling rain reminded me of home, of other homes I’ve had where it rains depressingly often. The thought of these wonderful little people – loud and brave, curious and intense – going out into the world had me in mist tears, tears that won’t be moving on until they’ve emptied me out. But right now the sun is shining and we have stories to tell our friends.

An Interview with my Self-Publisher

After having four books published through small independent publishing houses in New Zealand I have just released my first self-published title. My experiences have all been positive, but have ranged widely from the quintessential bookstore book launch, to crowd funding, to author collaboration and carrying boxes of books home to sell myself.

I decided to self-publish Learning to love Blue as it’s the sequel to my debut YA novel Lonesome When You Go and was proving tricky to find a home for. I was also curious about the self-publishing process.

Thanks to some very supportive Facebook groups and an inheritance from my grandparents, I was able to figure out an approach that seemed, well, approachable. I chose to use Ingramspark’s print on demand service, and set up the imprint Record Press

I was interviewed by my self(publisher) over on Medium – have a read!

11 Tracks from Learning to Love Blue

1.

Taylor brings me a drink and then takes a guitar off someone mid-strum. He starts playing out a familiar riff – The Strokes’ ‘Someday’ and soon we’re all singing it together, tapping out accompanying beats. I wonder if it’s like this here every night.

2.

 Why didn’t I just go back to sleep and catch the tram to work in the morning like a civilised normal person? I’ve slept on couches before. I could have handled it. 

I start humming ‘Don’t Think Twice, It’s All Right’ to myself, walking along my own road, taking comfort in the ‘it’s all right’ part. It’s also the best song about moving on ever written.

3.

I’m humming, and it takes a few minutes to recognise the tune as one off Blue. The one about a flight, set to a frenetic beat that I tap out anxiously on the armrest. I watch the animation of the plane creeping to the edge of the Tasman Sea, closer towards Wellington. The familiar shape of New Zealand on the screen gives me a strange surge of patriotic comfort. 

4.

As I park my bike and lock it to the railing, I hear a busker outside the shopping centre. He’s playing The Smiths, ‘There Is a Light That Never Goes Out’– one of the darkest and yet most optimistic songs ever. I walk closer and realise that not only are the lyrics familiar, but the voice is too. It’s Taylor. 

5.

‘Bridge Over Troubled Water’ is blaring out of Lou’s room. She’s been playing Simon and Garfunkel all day and I have reached my absolute limit. 

I storm through her door.

She’s sitting cross-legged on her bed with her eyes closed and the most blissed-out expression on her face. Is she meditating? With this racket going on? She seems to sense my presence and holds up a hand to silence my not-yet-uttered protest. Then, as if conducting me, she moves her hand in a welcoming gesture, drawing me into the room and pointing to the seat next to her. There’s half a beat’s pause in the song and then the next verse starts, the crescendo rising again. There’s no use trying to speak, so I sit and close my eyes with Lou, let the song fill me. God, I hate Simon and Garfunkel.

6.

Lou flips through some CDs and puts one in her chunky old Sony stereo.

‘I love that you have a CD collection,’ I tell her, my voice calming.

‘I love CDs. They’re so old school. Listen to this.’ She hits play and something familiar, yet strange and synthy starts playing.

‘What is this? Is that an accordion?’ Drums burst out like controlled explosions.

‘This is “The Boy In the Bubble”, from Paul Simon’s Graceland. This is his best solo album.’

His choir boy voice has changed into something stronger, and there’s a sense of urgency and an optimism in the rising major shifts.

‘After he split with Art Garfunkel, his career was dwindling and he got very depressed, but then he had a stroke of genius in the mid-80s and wrote this album in South Africa. It’s my number one top favourite album of all time,’ Lou says.

I raise my eyebrows at her. ‘Really?’

7.

I pull out Blue. ‘Now this is one I’m still learning to love,’ I say as I slide the vinyl out of the sleeve and place it gently on the turntable. ‘Last year when my mum came to visit, she gave me this album. It’s her favourite. Dad must have said something about me liking records, but I was surprised she liked something so folky. She says it’s poetry.’ 

I set the needle down and ‘All I Want’ jangles out with the determined, sweet, melancholic first chords. 

8.

‘Too cheesy?’ I ask.

‘Just cheesy enough. Where is he? He should be throwing himself into your arms after that.’

I bend down to retrieve my scarf. ‘I don’t know.’

‘Ah,’ Caz’s tone changes.

‘What?’

‘It’s like a Pixies song,’ she says, nodding towards something behind me. 

I turn and there he is. Caz pats my shoulder and slips away.

He’s gorgeous, a dimply smile twinkling like the fairy lights. ‘Paige …’ he starts.

9.

I’m on the brink of pulling out of the Alanis tribute show when I turn up to work and Jagged Little Pill is playing.

‘Who put this on?’ I ask, before I even greet anyone.

‘It’s on random,’ Caz winks at me.

‘No it’s not. And this would never be on a Vinyl playlist anyway. It’s nowhere near Triple-J enough for us.’ It cheered me up a bit though. Caz starts singing along to the chorus of ‘You Learn’ rather melodramatically. I laugh and join in.

10.

I’m listening to Blue and tapping on my phone when Spike appears in my bedroom doorway.

‘Is this Joni Mitchell?’ He puts down his guitar case and lies next to me on my bed.

‘Yeah, ‘My Old Man’. One of my favourites.’

11.

We’re pretty messy and I don’t blame the passers-by for passing on by, but it’s so much fun. We run through our living room repertoire: Dylan, Nirvana, our Alanis song. I try the opening chords of Joni’s ‘All I Want’, but give up. That one’s going to need more practice. We sing our way through Ryan Adams’ ‘To Be Young’ – Spike loses it trying to do falsetto in the bridge and I get the lyrics all mixed up. 

Learning to Love Blue is available 31st July 2021

Masks

Before we took our masks off

we took them on and off

off when out and on when in…

 

before we took them off when out

we wore them all the time.

 

Who knows how fresh the air was

as we walked around the block

well-practised smise  

in case we encountered 

another half concealed self.

 

But before we wore them all the time

our masks weren’t even real

we carried them with us as 

a cliched metaphor, lazy 

description of the nuances

of human interactions

O, the masks we wear, they’d say

and you’d be too bored

to even roll your eyes.

 

Before it was a cliche though

it was probably quite a good metaphor.

Not brilliant, but apt enough 

to be used into a cliche we could hide

more subtle, smising thoughts behind.

“No mud, no Lotus”

Everything comes together in November. The sun comes out and the house stays warm through the night. Cases in Victoria descend to zero and remain there for days and then weeks. Trump loses. There are no euphemisms for this and no hyperbole too great. It feels like the embarrassed silence after months of heated shouting, like waking up from a terrible night’s sleep, grateful it’s morning. We become giddy with these glimmers of okayness. I feel like crying when we meet up with friends at the beach after hundreds of days of isolation and when we first go to a cafe for lunch, we make friends with every wide-eyed person there. We book a holiday out of town – a rebooking of a twice cancelled trip from July. Everything went pear-shaped around July.

In the beginning, I felt a strange camaraderie with the world. We made jokes about running out of toilet paper and people across continents would laugh. The mention of isolation boredom and work pyjamas had wide reaching ripples of knowing nods. Suddenly everyone in the world had something in common. Then jokes gave way to fear and anger and things got worse, of course, before they got any better. Or they briefly appeared to be better before they got much worse. 

Relief that 2020 is coming to an end is understandable, the need to draw a line under it – through it even – as we collectively agree it was nothing like we’d planned, but I feel a pang every time someone says what a terrible year it has been, even though I know it has been devastating for so many. In our family alone we lost a dear parent and attended the funeral by zoom, we had illness, we had disappointment and we mourned the absence of friends and family as we tried to show our new baby the joys of the world we brought her into. But 2020 is special to me. When I mention this to a friend in the park, gesturing grandly towards my baby, she says “No mud, no Lotus, right?” and I google the phrase later at home.

This was the year that started with Lotus’ birth, my mum here for ten days prior and ten days after and my brother making a hasty appearance just in time to meet her minutes after she emerged. It’s the year my dad delayed his flight to Nepal so he could meet his new grandchild and the year so many other beautiful babies – Lotus’ friends – were born into villageless isolation. 

It’s the year Lotus learnt to crawl. First her own invention, a kind of dry-land butterfly stroke – flopping and dragging her body around the house we moved into in August, then figuring out the more energy efficient version on hands and knees, squeals of delight as she became mobile. It’s the year she learnt to clap her hands, eliciting praise and excitement from her parents, looking at us in turn as she does it, knowing we’ll be delighted. The year she learnt to sleep the entire night, settle herself back again on waking or stand in her cot to call out she’s ready to get up. 2020 will always be the year Lotus started pointing at things she liked, things she wanted, things she recognised and things we asked her to. Every day she shows us the patterns of light on the walls from windows covered with trees or lace curtains. Her full cheeks rise into the biggest smile when she finds even the faintest impression of shadow and bright. There are rainbows in our living room in the afternoon and she will find them before anyone else can. In the mornings, she pulls books off her shelf and hands them to me one by one to read to her as she turns the pages, points at the illustrations and sometimes says “baby!” if there’s a baby on the page. It’s the year she made friends with babies. This year is the year Lotus first called me “Mumum” and her dad “Papa”, the year she started singing along as I play guitar and nodding her head to her favourite songs.

2020 was terrible, but I won’t cross it off. It’s the year we realised how lucky we are, never again taking simple things like going out for breakfast or having visitors for granted. We hunkered down through winter, solving sleep issues with only as many tears as it took to scramble from our bed to hers. We never had to figure out the logistics of how to get baby, pram, nappy bag to this thing or that thing. There were no things to try and get to. 

Soon, and I’m sure of this, we will be able to see our families again. My mum will come from New Zealand the moment she’s allowed, my dad will have to find his way back from Nepal and our newish little family will have planes to catch to see Lotus’ uncles, aunts, cousins and grandmas. We have lost people and there will be time again to grieve and process this. Somewhere in the midst of this chaotic year I turned 40, quietly and with a carefully planned glass of champagne. Everything falls slowly into place in November and this blurry and intense, forgettable year is the most memorable of my life.