Captivated by the Boring with Hera Lindsay Bird
Sally Ward (she/her)
I spoke to Hera Lindsay Bird on the phone as she was walking around quiet Auckland streets. She has a project that’s been released on May 10 as part of a series by Going West Writers Festival called Different Out Loud, which is themed around the word “coastal”.’ It features the work of 5 poets: Murray Edmond, Serie Barford, Allen Curnow, Ursula Grace, and Hera.
Hera Lindsay Bird is a big-dog New Zealand poet, best known for her self-titled collection of poems first published by VUW Press in 2016. You might have seen her sitting artfully in a bright yellow rain jacket on the cover. She also has been heralded by the UK Poet Laureate, Carol Ann Duffy, as “the most arresting and original new young poet”, which is pretty cool.
Image: Hera Lindsay Bird’s self tiled book
Hera described the project for Different Out Loud as like a “music video for poetry”. She “really enjoyed working with Luke McPake”, who directed the video. The two are friends. I got the impression that coming up with a concept to visually represent poetry was a bit of a challenge.
“The trouble with only having words was that we thought it would be really distracting to have a constant montage of unrelated pictures”, Hera explained.
“When I was talking about the idea with Luke, [he said] ‘yeah I wanna make something that’s really visually boring’, and I was like ‘yeah make it boring!’ I mean, I hope it’s not boring. But there’s no point having a music video without the powerful violin chorus or whatever music does to take the edge off a visual product like that.”
So it seems the solution was to not overdo the visual elements, and lean into the boring as an intentional part of the storytelling.
“Luke came up with the idea of something that would have a really slow pay off like a poem. The music video was designed to suit the poem in that way.”
Hera cited her “favourite U.S. poet”, Mark Ladner, describing his work as “endurance poetry”.
“I’m [...] into the boring in poetry as well, like, all of my favourite poems are 10 pages long and you get to a point in the poem where you’re like I’m so bored by this poem, and then it can rescue itself by the last couple of pages.”
The end result is an animated video: “a long shot of the sun going down in a video game style.”
This was influenced by animated films, especially the work of Miyazaki: “[...] you know like you can see the texture of the grass and the trees and the ocean and the wind is weirdly so mesmerizing and captivating, which is a little bit of what we were talking about. Like how something that’s ostensibly boring can have this hypnotic effect when you stare at it. I could look out a train window for 12 years straight and forget to blink.”
She’s “rehabilitated” an old poem for the project, and is not writing much poetry at the moment, except for one-offs.
“I’m using this time when nothing is really going on to do fiction. I think it’s hard to write fiction when you’re having a really hard time. Switch to poetry in crisis, move back to fiction in time of boredom.”
“I don’t really write new poems anymore because when it is all autobiographical [...] like my life is so fucking boring at the moment [...] I want to write in different genres. I’m saving my next poetry collection for when I’m like 50 and going through a really gruelling divorce or something.”
Hera was overseas but returned to NZ due to COVID. She’s working in the children’s section of a bookstore in Auckland. She has been a children’s bookseller for 10 years, a job she “really enjoys”. You can hear the excitement in her voice when talks about recommending books to kids, and helping them find something they might like.
She says books about dragons instantly sell a million copies, and a graphic adaptation of Yuval Noah Harari’s Sapiens is doing really well in sales. She added that there’s a lot of cool science writing available for a younger audience.
“In popular science you really don’t need to change it that much from and adults reading level to a childrens reading level becuase children are pretty fucking smart.”
I asked if Hera was conscious of her audience when she writes, and if she imagines an audience.
“They are probably just people like me”, she said. “You write for the kind of reader you are, so it’s hard to tell whether you’re writing for yourself or whether you’re writing for someone who has exactly the same tastes as you.”
While not focusing as much on poetry, Hera is writing a children’s book and thinks that she’s “maybe [...] more hyper-aware of reader than I have been before.”
“I would hate to write a kids book with an idea of what children like or don’t like, and then underestimate what people are interested in or capable of understanding.”
Hera’s poem for the Different Out Loud series is out on May 10 and will available to view on the Going West Writers Festival website.
*A correction has been made to this article post publication. The video will be released on May 10 (not May 3 as originally stated). Apologies for any confusion.