Megan's Dynamite won the John O'Connor First Book Award (a biennial prize for the best debut manuscript of a South Island poet). The award is named after Sudden Valley Press's co-founder John O'Connor, and it's awarded in collaboration with The Canterbury Poets’ Collective.
The cool photo on the cover is by Kieran Haymes from Photosynthesis who worked with Megan last year on the project Poetic Synthesis. Photosynthesis and the Canterbury Poets’ Collective combined the strengths of their communities by pairing photographers and poets to make novel complementary work.
Dynamite was launched at the WEA on Gloucester Street on National Poetry Day (Friday 28 August), with a full moon, and whānau, friends, and poets. Dynamite is also the title of the last poem of the book. This poem kicks off with the killer opening line:
"In Hornby everyone is doing their best".
Poet Lee Fraser praised the non-finger pointy nature of Megan's poems, the sense of "let's muddle through together" and the five-star descriptions.
This was an event bringing together the poetry community integral to Megan's practice. Guest starring at the launch as well as Lee, were other Canterbury Poets' Collective members Erik Kennedy, Gail Zing, and Marisa Cappetta, as well as Jeni Curtis from Sudden Valley Press. They read poems from the other shortlisted poets who couldn't be there (Andrea Ewing and runner up Michelle Elvy) and also read poems from Megan, and one or two of their own.
(left to right Erik Kennedy, Lee Fraser, and Jeni Curtis)
- Erik read his poem Double Saw Final at the Canterbury A&P Show
- Jeni Curtis counterpointed her poems rich in classical mythology allusions with Megan's, both ones with a focus on hair
- Lee's poems shared a focus on the domestic detail, a "how to load a dishwasher" poem and a Dishwasher Duet counterpointed with Megan's Like a Foil in the Microwave
Other poems by Megan we enjoyed:
- January 1980 (my hair, 1)
- Argos in St Albans, 1935
- Dynamite
- Salt circle (You can read Dynamite and Salt Circle in takahē)
Some commentary on Dynamite by judge Fiona Farrell:
"The collection opens with a poem, ‘Like foil in a microwave’, in which Fiona found “image piled upon image of deliberate domesticity: a sink full of greasy worries. Beyond the window, starlings warble ‘like three river pebbles inside a tumble dryer’. The lonely awareness of failure climaxes with the ‘the high white little lightning’ of foil sparking in a microwave. The context then shifts focus from the closeup of ‘the sticky here and now’ to the widest angle of the ‘curving far hemisphere, axial and turning out of sight.’ The personal becomes global within an instant. There’s range in this, and grim comedy, and truth, and surprise. Here’s something new, I thought. Here’s someone I’d like to read.”
Fiona relished the sense of place in Megan's work:
“Not just its sense of location in Ōtautahi Christchurch, and not just in the city, but in suburban specifics of North New Brighton, St Albans, the city’s coast, its streets, the Hornby PAK’nSAVE. And bordering the city, the Port Hills, and the quakes that stirred it all. Clayton sees these places in their fine detail. And deeper yet, penetrates to the underlying truths of the city’s geology, wetlands, rivers and winds, and the operations of time on this landscape. This is an impressive collection, and a most worthy winner of Sudden Valley Press’s award commemorating one of the city’s most passionate poets, the late, great John O’Connor.”
We are all looking forward to Megan's second book Dynamite 2: Back to the Dynamite.
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