JANIS FREEGARD: KING OF THE FOREST

WELLINGTON WRITER JANIS FREEGARD is doing something that is both a stupendous achievement and a likely New Zealand first. She’s publishing a poetry collection and a novel on the same day in May, with two different publishers in two cities. The poetry is The Glass Rooster with Auckland University Press, and the novel is The year of falling with new Wellington publisher Mākaro Press.

This makes Janis Freegard one of those unusual literary hybrids: the novelist/poet – or is it the poet/novelist? Whatever she is, she’s following in the footsteps of such luminaries as Vincent O’Sullivan, Anne Kennedy, Fiona Kidman, C K Stead and Fiona Farrell. And anyone who’s read her work to date won’t be surprised.

Freegard won the Katherine Mansfield Award for short fiction in 2001 and the following year received a Creative New Zealand writing grant. She has published poetry and fiction in magazines and anthologies in New Zealand and overseas, including the recent bestseller: Essential New Zealand Poems: Facing the Empty Page. Freegard held the inaugural Ema Saikō Poetry Fellowship in the Wairarapa, and is a long-time participant in the online Tuesday Poem. Freegard co-authored one poetry collection with AUP before launching one of her own, and then in 2013, her poems The Continuing Adventures of Alice Spider were picked up by US publisher Anomalous.

So how’s it been readying two such different books for publication? ‘It’s been an adventure,’ says Freegard. ‘I feel as though I’ve been building two (quite different) houses at the same time. A rambling suburban villa and an island eco-dwelling perhaps? I’ve always written both fiction and poetry, and now the planets have aligned and both books are emerging together. I feel incredibly lucky.’

Janis Freegard’s poems intrigue readers with the audacious connections they make – in her first collection the connections were with science and animals, and now The Glass Rooster examines places inhabited by humans and other creatures – not just natural ecosystems like deserts or the alpine zone, but cities and outer space.

The year of falling starts in a place close to home for Freegard: Brooklyn, Wellington – and the moves to the streets of Iceland via Tākaka. It’s the story of Selina who finds porcelain dolls turning up on her doorstep at the same time as she embarks on an ill-judged affair with a celebrity TV chef. After that, things start crashing around her, until her sister Smith turns up, but even she might be too late …

Freegard says both genres require a lot of work, but while poetry is ‘a dreaming kind of work’; the novel requires something more sustained. ‘I think of there being a continuum between two types of writing,’ she says, ‘mermaid writing and policeman writing. Mermaid writing is more fluid, more lyrical, drawing on the subconscious, the realm of dreams.  Policeman writing is prosaic – getting your characters from A to B, describing what happened and how people look.

‘I think the best writing draws on both, but poetry is generally more in the mermaid zone, where the sounds and shapes of the writing are important, where you’re trying to evoke an emotion rather than describe it. Fiction needs to plant itself further into the policeman zone. You can do it in a lyrical way, but you need to tell people what happens next. I think you use different parts of your brain for each.’

Mary McCallum of Mākaro Press says The year of falling was the novel they were waiting for. ‘We were only one year old and had published poetry, non-fiction and young adult books but no novel yet. I'd liked Janis’s poetry for a long time, but then she offered us a novel manuscript, which was totally unexpected.  We loved it. We couldn't believe our luck.’ McCallum was delighted to learn AUP was bringing out Freegard’s poetry collection around the same time her novel was to be released. It didn’t take long to agree to combine their launch dates: 18 May.  

AUP is pleased to be publishing The Glass Rooster at the same time as The year of falling. ‘We’re proud of Janis’s second poetry collection,’ says marketing manager Margaret Samuels. ‘We always knew Janis was multi-talented, and it’s nice to have that confirmed out in the world.’

You don’t need to look far in The year of falling to find an extract that expresses the lot of the divided literary persona:

I am two people now. I have split. One of us will be seeing Caroline's fiance later this evening. The other is smiling politely. He is a square of dark chocolate, my morning espresso, a Kahlua cocktail on a Friday night. He is muscle, sinew, heart, blood. Pump and beat and flow. He makes me spin.

The AUP website on the other hand has a quote from The Glass Rooster that evokes something altogether different: a confident sense of unity and singularity.

I am not made of concrete, no. I am not made of sand.
Nor of light, nor air, nor the sound that rain makes
as it splashes on the upturned leaves of my forest home.  
Have you seen my feathers? How the colours glint 
in the dappled light. Have you heard my call? Oh I am king
of all I see. Hear me, hear me. This tree, mine. This whole
forest, mine.

Which is as good a description of a poet/novelist with two excellent books launching the same day as anything else you’ll get. Nothing for Janis Freegard to do now but crow.

The Glass Rooster (AUP) www.press.auckland.ac.nz

ISBN 9781869408336, $24.99

The year of falling  (Mākaro Press)  www.makaropress.co.nz

ISBN 9780994106575  $35