Award-winning poet Anna Jackson is an associate professor in the School of English, Film, Theatre and Media Studies at Victoria University of Wellington. She has written eight collections of poetry and several works of nonfiction. Her latest release is Terrier, Worrier (Auckland University Press). She shares her many literary loves and inspirations, and admits to one skill she would like to have.
When were you happiest?
Listening to Elizabeth Knox and Francis Spufford talking about ghosts and the afterlife at a writers festival event in Wellington once.
What’s the best gift you’ve ever given?
Apart from Momo, my daughter’s cat, probably the Opposites and Cheating book I made for my friend Phoebe. She laughed at me once about all the things I define as cheating, and I laughed at her for her obsession with opposites (“What is the opposite of an umbrella?” Um, why?). So, I collected up every instance of anyone talking about cheating or opposites for a year and made a book. Do you want a copy? I posted a file on my website you can download.
What is your most treasured possession?
Do hens count as a possession? After my hens, it would be my friend Holly Aitchison’s portrait of the late Rufy, my very beloved and much missed cat.
What was the last book you read?
Checkout 19, by Claire-Louise Bennett, a book about reading but mostly just a book written by Claire-Louise Bennett, whose every sentence is a strange and wonderful event.
What is your favourite book?
A Long Way from Verona, by Jane Gardam, a book I have loved since I was 12.
Who are your favourite writers?
Well, I have read more of Diana Wynne Jones and Karl Ove Knausgaard than any other writer including Shakespeare. I love the wildest fantasies of Elizabeth Knox, Frances Hardinge, HG Parry, Whiti Hereaka and Susanna Clarke, and the farthest reaches of realism in books by Rachel Cusk, Helen Garner, Garth Greenwell, Elif Batuman and Rebecca K Reilly. Too many poets to list, but I have to say Catullus, whose poems I keep translating and retranslating over and over.
Who is your favourite character of fiction?
Jessica Vye, from A Long Way from Verona. She is so cross so much of the time.
What book do you recommend to others to read?
I mean, I recommend dozens of books to my students with every course I teach. But if I love you, I’m likely to have given you a copy of Misha Glouberman and Sheila Heti’s The Chairs Are Where the People Go, a book of things Misha has said to Sheila on subjects such as going to the gym and visiting your parents (once a week, he advises); Nine Girls, Stacy Gregg’s sad and funny YA novel about coming of age in Ngāruawāhia; Enter Ghost, by Isabella Hammad, an intricately detailed novel about sisters and a staging of Hamlet in the West Bank; The Chthonic Cycle, Una Cruickshank’s brilliant book of essays about everything; Rishi Dastidar’s A Hobby of Mine, a list of his hobbies, ranging from accepting all cookies on websites to saying yes to another negroni; or one of my favourite poetry collections, over under fed, by Amy Marguerite, or How to Live, by Helen Rickerby.
Do you have a quote you live by?
“I regret the mistakes I made in my 20s, though I am the same and would make them again. In fact, I wish I could make them again.” – Elisa Gabbert, The Self Unstable.
What is the artwork you could look at endlessly?
I have a painting on my wall by Megan Campbell with a horse standing in a field looking a little dreamy, a little expectant, as a fire burns down in the background, and the sun, not yet, or no longer, visible, casts an eerie light behind the trees. It makes me think of every horse in every poem about a horse, and every time of day that is between one moment and another.
What particular artistic talent would you like to have?
I don’t ever want to perform, so I don’t need to dance, act or sing. Even if I could play the piano, I’d probably only play when no one else was listening, but I still wish that I could. And if I could play the violin, I could play in a string quartet.
What is your favourite film?
Faces Places (Visages Villages), by Agnès Varda.
If a movie was made of your life, which song would be played over the end credits?
I don’t know. But I have a song for my husband, Simon. I think of him every time I play Don’t Do Anything, by Sam Phillips.
What has been your most enjoyable live theatre experience?
Probably the most transporting was The Bookbinder, a tiny little production by the Trick of the Light theatre company, in a little room at Arty Bees Books in Wellington. But also memorable was a production of Antigone, translated by Anne Carson, in London in 2015, with Juliette Binoche as Antigone, and a production of The Rover, by Aphra Behn, with Imogen Stubbs playing Hellena, in London in 1987.
What has been your most enjoyable live music experience?
Tiny Ruins, playing at the Begonia House in Wellington’s Botanic Gardens.
What are your favourite genres of music?
I love New Zealand’s singer-songwriters, Vera Ellen, Marianne Wren, Ebony Lamb, Reb Fountain, Nadia Reid, Tiny Ruins’ Hollie Fullbrook.
What is a favourite podcast?
Better off Read, Pip Adam’s interviews with writers, and Our Struggle, a podcast featuring readers struggling with Knausgaard’s My Struggle. I especially loved the Torrey Peters episode, “Vanguard of the Supplicants”.
What is a favourite YouTube video?
Claire-Louise Bennett talking to Karl Ove Knausgaard. I love the book, Pond, that she is talking about, and I love the way she reads it part way through the conversation. But most of all, I just love listening to her talking about what it is to be a person, to have a name (“useful, actually, for identifying yourself”), to live alone, to get bored, to, yes, make tea, go back and forth to the compost bin, quite often actually.
Also, Mary Ruefle’s 28 Short Lectures (beginning with, “Why all literary pursuits are useless”).
What is a favourite website:
Paula Green’s NZ Poetry Shelf. I love the interviews with poets, reviews, readings and poems posted on this site. I love Paula’s poetry, too, maybe especially her first collection, Cookhouse, and the later Making Lists for Frances Hodgkins, but all of them are miraculous. And a new collection is coming out soon.
Also, Starling magazine – the literary journal for young poets, where some of the most brilliant, innovative poetry in the world is being published here in Aotearoa.
Do you have a skill or ability that might surprise people?
No. I really have no talent for anything other than poetry.
