Helen Lendorf

Interview 2012.

Sweet, so I guess I’ll just ask some questions and that’s it. Ok, that’s usually how interviews go aye.

Introduce yourself. But you already know me?..

I know, but you have to pretend you don’t. Ok, ah. Hi I’m Helen and I’m a writer, and I live in Palmerston North, and I really like Palmerston North. I do lots of other stuff too.

Why do you love Palmerston North? I love the big skies, I love the country side all around Palmerston North, I love the op-shops, premo op-shopping. I love that it’s a city but it’s a small enough scale that you can really make things happen if you want to.

That’s true. What other stuff do you do? I make stuff, I’m really into crafting. Like, I make clothes and softies and collages with vintage kids books and stuff, and I’m a really keen veggie gardener. I’m trying to turn my little urban section into a tiny urban farm. I’ve got four chickens and I’m tearing up all the bits of lawn and beds full of agapanthus and growing vegetables everywhere. I think once we loose petrol, which I think will happen pretty soon, um, there’s no point in dreaming of having a little patch in the county, you need to have a little patch in the city, where you can grow all your veggies and stuff, so I’m heading towards that now. Trying to be semi-self-sufficient in the city. 

Planning for the future, nice. Planning for the future, the pink*** oil future.

Why are you doing that? Well, I’m an environmentalist, and I am also really interested in urban futures and how communities are going to sustain themselves when things really change, like when we run out of petrol and we run out of, or water becomes really scarce. I’m really interested in how communities will collectively handle that through things like growing more stuff in the city, sharing more resources, and just organising themselves at a grass roots level. So, even though it’s a practical thing for me- gardening; it’s tied up with my political beliefs. 

Intense. Do many of those views come through in your writing? Yea, I think they do yea. There’s a lot of plants and politics in my writing. 

"There’s a lot of plants and politics in my writing."

You released a book last year? Yea, in December.

How’s that going? It’s going really well. We printed two hundred and fifty, which probably doesn’t sound like much but it’s pretty standard for a poetry book in New Zealand, because the poetry scene is pretty small, so the demand is small. So we’ve sold about two hundred and ten, so there’s only about forty left. So I’m pretty stoked because it’s only been about three or four months or something. 

Did you sell it independently? Published through SERAPH Press in Wellington, and my editor sells the book through the website, and I’ve also done a lot of pushing of the book myself, so I’ve got a stash of them and I sell them by word of mouth, and at readings and stuff. I take a little pile if I read somewhere and usually people will buy a couple after, which is really nice.

What are your plans with your writing and crafts and stuff? Where am I headed sort of thing?

Yea. Um, I’m writing another book, it’s called ‘The Shipwreck Expert’ and it’s exploring the metaphoric possibilities of shipwrecks. I’m interested in shipwrecks, yea, and not just literally but metaphorically. Like, I sort of had a big shipwreck in my life in my thirties, and in the form of a big event happening to me. So I’m sort of writing about shipwrecks in a literal way, because I found out that my great great grandfather who was a sailor, survived seventeen shipwrecks, which I found kind of fascinating. So he’s a shipwreck expert, and then I’m sort of carrying it through to modern day and talking about how we cope with the shipwrecks in our lives. So that’s what I’m working on at the moment. 

"I’m sort of carrying it through to modern day and talking about how we cope with the shipwrecks in our lives"

Seventeen is a lot of shipwrecks to survive. I know! He’s either really really lucky, or just really really good at surviving shipwrecks. He must’ve been a good swimmer. In terms of the craft stuff, sometimes I do craft fairs, like Alt Shift Craft, or Craft 2.0 but, mainly I make things for love and I always get quite stressed when I have to... like we were talking earlier about putting money to things you love...

It’s always tricky. Yea, so I don’t sort of have a plan to turn that into an empire or anything, I just sort of want to do it on a really low, fun level, and sometimes just for myself, and sometimes I sell a bit of stuff but no great plans for the future.

That’s cool. No pressure seems to mean greater work sometimes. I think that’s true, because once at a Craft 2.0 this fancy gift shop in Wellington really liked some owls I was making, little owls.

Oh I have one! Velvet Wings. Yea! She asked me to make some for her shop, and I was like ‘oh cool’, so I made ten or something, but when I delivered them to her she was like ‘oh, but these are all different to this one, like the fabrics are different and they’re slightly different shapes and stuff’ and I was like ‘yea....?’. So, she wasn’t very happy with them, and I just thought ‘man I am not a Chinese sweat shop’ you know. The joy for me is making each one look different and choosing different fabrics and stuff, and that’s why I don’t really want to push the crafts side of things, because I don’t want to just be like churning out heaps of the same thing, it’d kill me, because that’s really uncreative.

Did she take the owls in the end? Ah, no.

Rude. I know. It was all good, just meant I had heaps of owls for my next craft meet. I think you should tell the readers how we met. 

Ah yes, you were my teacher. Yea, that’s pretty weird aye. 

Kind of, but cool. It doesn’t feel weird now, but it would probably sound weird to other people. 

Yea, when you were my teacher, if you were to be like ‘see you when you interview me in bla bla years’ I’d be like ‘why would I be doing that, I’m not a weirdo, I’ll be rich and famous and retired by then’. Why did you stop teaching? With teaching, I really loved the students, but what I found hard was all the institutional stuff you have to represent when you’re a teacher. I have pretty left wing politics and pretty far out ideas and all my life I’ve found it hard to ever sort of behave myself in organisations unless they’re kind of aligned with my ideals, so. I just felt that too often what I really wanted to do with the students wasn’t able to happen because I had to follow lots of rules and stuff. Yea, and I just felt like I wasn’t being really honest with the students about what life was going to be like when they left school and stuff so yea.

One of my favourite things you did when you were my teacher was play us a Sleater Kinney track. They’re still one of my favourite bands. Me too, I adore them. 

What’s music’s role in your life? Oh huge, yea. Do you like Wild Flag? 

Yea. They just sound like Sleater Kinney though don’t they, exactly like Steater Kinney.

Yea. Have you watched Portlandia? Yea.

It’s hilarious aye. Yea. Oh, I totally love music. Usually I’ll listen to music when I’m making stuff, or writing. I can’t write in silence, I have to have really loud, abrasive music playing. It’s sort of like a... yea, if I sit in silence I get really nervous and can’t really do anything, but if I’ve got loud music playing then I kind of can get into it. Do you listen to music while you design?

I find it better to listen to podcasts, because I can tune out easier because it’s more like white noise to me, where as music I’m always listening and wishing I wrote it. Yea, you listen to it closely. But you don’t like working in silence either. Only if I have to do checking.

Yea. Anything else? Any wisdom? Ah shit no, I don’t know anything. That’s the beauty of it. 

What’ve you learned so far then? From what?

Life... Oh, I reckon, it’s really really important to follow your instincts and if you don’t feel in your gut that something’s right for you then it’s perfectly ok to walk away from it. I think we stay in situations that make us unhappy because of security or worrying about money or whatever, but security is a total illusion. The only thing that’s ever going to make you feel secure is when you are being true to yourself. Ah no you tricked me into saying something wise! I don’t know, I’m still trying to work it out. 

"The only thing that’s ever going to make you feel secure is when you are being true to yourself."

That’s what it’s all about I guess. You just keep trying to work it out and you die eventually.

So where can people see your stuff? Um, well I have a blog which is just my name .com make sure you spell it right!

I know, I’m really bad at spelling. And there’s links on my blog to the Serif***** site if people are interested in buying the book. Other than that I’m usually at the library if people want to say hi.

Your day job. My day job.

Sweet!