In the praise of the familiar …
like the same worn chair
that’s shaped
my body, the same
smooth cup that soothes
cracked lips, the same
old view through
the same stained window
of birds in the bird-bath
fighting for crumbs. It’s
wonderful knowing
what to expect, the way
night follows day
no matter what. I thrill
to the clatter
of what’s done and dusted
presenting itself
as eternally fresh.
Age
These are the years
of the lone park bench,
of empty harbours
and sunken ships. And yet
there’s a spaciousness
to this abandon
that keeps
insisting
it’s a sort of love. So
why should I fear
such a rich aloneness
when I’ve spent lifetime
creating it for myself?
Now there can only be love poems
Now there can only be
love poems. All
those angry words
will, in the end,
have to let go
and live where only love
can live. Its got
something to do
with passing time
and earth’s deep silences
and your shy smile,
and everything we did
or didn’t do. But now
there can only be
love poems. There’s
no time for anything else.
©Peter Bland, from Voodoo (Steele Roberts, 2018)
Peter Bland recently sent me his two latest poetry collections from Steele Roberts – Voodoo and The Happy Garden: New & Selected Poems for Children – and told me to use them anyway I liked on my blogs. In his letter, Peter was concerned about the visibility of poetry in bookshops and review space. The NZ Book Council’s 2018 book reading survey suggests we are definitely reading poetry but I wonder if we are buying it to the same degree? Our National Poetry Day suggests we have myriad poetry communities doing all manner of things with an explosion of small presses and journals matching the output of the university presses dedicated to poetry. Yet as much as I try, it is a real challenge keeping a finger on our local poetry pulse. Often a publication escapes my attention because I just don’t know of its existence.
So I am delighted to celebrate the arrival of two books from Peter Bland, one of our poetry elders.
I posted a poem from the children’s collection on Poetry Box (he is one of our best children’s poets) but I was hard pressed to pick just one from Voodoo. I wanted to post the whole book! The poems in the new collection exhibit the species of reflective state that often appears in old age and that produces fertile and thought-provoking poetry. Peter pares everything back to the essential detail, an idea that lingers, a mood that governs an image, a recollection, a pulsating thing. Peter has gifted us numerous much-loved poetry collections – this one is also a real treasure. The world slows down as you read, to the vital moment, the person and place that matters.
Steele Roberts page
Peter Bland talks to Karyn Hay about his two new collections
NZ Book council author page