Monthly Archives: April 2020

Poetry Shelf connections: Murray Edmond’s ‘East Coast Waves’

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East Coast Waves

 

Someone practicing a violin

who hasn’t practiced in a while,

a bike that has not been ridden

for a year or more

squeaks like that violin,

couples wonder who that person is

alongside whom they each walk,

facial muscles straining to relax

after 15 East Coast waves

performed rapid-fire,

at the dairy door

the lonesome existentialist

is writing words with water

on the concrete pavement stones,

while the pigeons in the phoenix palm

have eyes only for each other

 

Murray Edmond

 

 

Murray Edmond lives in Glen Eden, West Auckland. His latest book, Back Before You Know, includes two narrative poems, ‘The Ballad of Jonas Bones’ and ‘ The Fancier Pigeon’ (Compound Press, 2019).

Compound Press page

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Poetry Shelf connections: Mere Taito’s ‘Coloured’

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Mere Taito is a Rotuman Islander poet and flash fiction writer living in Hamilton with her partner Neil and nephew Lapuke. She is the author of the illustrated chapbook of poetry titled, The Light and Dark in Our Stuff.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Poetry Shelf connections: my phone a NZ bookshop project

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Before we moved into Level 4 lockdown, I decided I would phone a NZ bookshop each week and get them to recommend a book and I would pick one to get sent out to me.

I didn’t get very far as bookshops had to close! But the day before lockdown I phoned Time Out Bookstore in Mt Eden and spoke to Kiran Dass. I so appreciated Kiran talking when the shop was packed with people stocking up on books.

I have saved the parcel until today because I wanted to hear that my big children’s poetry anthology I have been working on is ok. And it is! So I am very happy. And now I have my treat!

The books seem entirely perfect to be reading now.

In the middle of night recently I heard Rebecca Priestly in conversation with Kim Hill on RNZ National about her new book, Fifteen Million Years in Antarctica (VUP), and it was breathtaking. It was a podcast of their session at the VERB Wellington Writer’s Festival.  I can’t wait to read this book. I can’t seem to find a link to the podcast – will add if I do!

Kiran recommended Olivia Laing’s The Lonely City (Allen & Unwin). Very excited about this book.

 

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Like many bookshops, Time Out will start doing online orders from next week when we move into Level 3.

This is a time to go gently on ourselves, for some it is a time to read, and for some it is not, and that is ok.

Some of us are in positions to support small businesses again, and I plan to resume my support of independent NZ bookshops.

Here is the latest advice from Time Out:

 

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Poetry Shelf connections: Tusiata Avia reads ‘Massacre’

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Tusiata Avia reads ‘Massacre’

The poem and audio appear in Best NZ Poems 2019.

 

 

Tusiata Avia is a poet, performer and writer. She has published three books of poetry, a chapbook, three children’s books and is included in over 100 anthologies, journals and online publications. Tusiata has held a number of writers’ residencies and awards, including the CNZ Fulbright Pacific Writer’s Fellowship at University of Hawai’i and the Janet Frame Literary Trust Award.  Known for her dynamic performance style, she wrote and then performed Wild Dogs Under My Skirt as a one-woman show (2002-2009). In 2016 it became a multi award-winning play for 6 women, directed by Anapela Polata’ivao. In January 2020 Wild Dogs Under My Skirt made its American debut, Off-Broadway.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Poetry Shelf connections: Bernadette Hall’s ‘the landscape of longing’

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the landscape of longing

in memory of Gerry Melling, poet and architect 1947-2012

 

 

I shall explain herein the arrangement and symmetry

of private buildings from the position of the heavens in respect of the earth,

the inclination of the zodiac and from the sun’s course

 

just the cold left now like a smooth glove on the top of my hand

though the joint between my fingers is still warm

 

an object under the eye will appear very different  from the same object in an open space       

                                                      

think of the shell as part of the architectural setting, a shallow canopy

over the Madonna who, with her child, has been gathering raspberries

             

the injury which nature would effect is evaded by means of art

 

take, for example, the more tensile forms of tiny fish that dart,

a little more weighted with their body mass,

more straightforwardly down, slewing side to side like footballers

shaping new subtleties of line to distract the eye

 

it is the part of a skilful (wo)man  to consider the nature of the place, 

the purpose of the building and the beauty of it

                   

think of the falcon and the falconer,

of words in circular and ovoid shapes like the seventy-one

cervical vertebrae that held up the neck of the plesiosaur

think of Beethoven’s Quartet No. 15 in A minor

think of the Sky Box overlooking the West Bank in Wellington

think of Gerry and Geoff and Celeste and all the other beautiful people

 

 

Bernadette Hall

 

italicised text taken from the writings of the Roman architect, Vitruvius 80-15BC

 

 

Bernadette says:  Here is my lockdown poem. Some of the lines have been floating around for a while. I’ve long wanted to write something for Gerry. How good that this week Geoff Cochrane and Celeste should join him.  I’ve no idea who Celeste is. She appears in one of Geoff’s poems. She sounds beautiful. All I can say is, here’s to love and friendship, they are timeless. And thank you to all who are working to keep us all safe.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Poetry Shelf Connections: Harriet Allen celebrates The Night of All Souls by Philippa Swan

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The Night of All Souls by Philippa Swan,

 

Although April is rather a challenging month for its release, I’m very proud to be publishing this novel.

It is a Tardis of a book, for within its covers are various intriguing stories, a modern novella with an unusual love-hate triangle, a visit to the afterlife, biographical details of Edith Wharton, including the revelation of a secret love affair and indeed walk-on parts for Edith and a number of her circle, a tour through the gardens Edith wrote about and visited in Italy and created in America and France, plus snippets from Wharton’s own novels, poetry and memoir, and a whole lot more besides – all of which is integrated into a wonderfully upbeat and enthralling novel.

Philippa is indeed a literary Dr Who, taking us through time and space. We watch the young Edith in a rowing boat, waiting for a marriage proposal that never comes, we visit the Mount, the mansion she went on to build in Massachusetts, we drive with her, Henry James and a dashing rogue through the snowy countryside, we travel to modern-day Hyères in the south of France, and we are flies on the wall of a seedy hotel room in London.

When I used to picture Edith Wharton, I’d think of an amalgam of Gillian Anderson playing Lily Bart in the film of The House of Mirth, the wonderfully pompous characters that people Wharton’s novels and often deliver the acerbic and hilarious one-liners that would give Jane Austen a run for her money, and the photographs of Wharton that generally capture very grand settings and clothes but so often a rather wistful expression that has always made me wonder what the real woman was like. Thanks to The Night of All Souls, I now reckon I know her rather well. She’s come alive again in this novel and is someone I’m very reluctant to say goodbye to.

In fact, everyone who worked on this novel expressed reluctance at having to pass it on – we all wanted to stay in these multiple worlds, getting to know this fascinating woman. You can sample a chapter here

and look out for the Penguin Facebook page for Philippa’s launch speech and her daughter reading an extract.

You can access a copy through numerous online channels

 

Marsden Books in Karori was going to launch The Night of All Souls, so a big shout-out to them. As soon as bookshops open again, you can of course also purchase physical copies, and I urge you to do so as it is well worth making the acquaintance of Edith Wharton.

 

Harriet Allan, Fiction Publisher

 

 

 

Poetry Shelf Connections: my Herald poem

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Very happy the Herald will be posting a poem of mine for awhile. I am not sure if they are poems. They need a new word. Lockdown writings. Maybe it is a nocturnal diary. They arrive in the middle of the night and spin in my head during the day and then hit paper. Karyn Hay talked about writing in her contribution to the comfort reading list I posted on Friday 17th April. I so identified with it. There is no model at work here. There are different urgencies and stasis, multiple ways of connecting. But I do feel an urgent need to write before the sun comes up. Some of us are writing and some of us aren’t, some of us are reading and some of us aren’t, some of us are baking bread and some of us aren’t, and I think the last thing we need is pressure to do anything that does not aid our well being.

My poem has lost all the spacing between sections and I don’t care. I do care that after almost giving up hope the cress and the spinach have poked through the earth. And peas. And something else, the rain washed my writing away. Now I wait for other little miracles as I do what I can.

Thanks Herald !

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Poetry Shelf connections: Benita H. Kape’s ‘Purgatory Doesn’t Say Do I Stop Or Do I Go’

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an extract from

Purgatory Doesn’t Say Do I Stop OR DO I Go

(after ‘The Entrance to Purgatory’

by Ian Lonie)

 

Purgatory begins slowly, slowly.

We watch and wait for information

There is Purgatory One:

Then Purgatory Two.

And Spain was Purgatory Three.

Oh Purgatory, Purgatory we

cannot believe this.

Now here from behind a

desk as far as we thought

we could be (but there is

no escape).

Like a wartime announcement

Purgatory within the borders of our

own hills and valleys and cities;

streets and parks, the beaches,

the theatres, the meeting places.

 

Benita H. Kape

 

You can read the whole poem at The Gisborne Herald

 

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Benita H. Kape is Gisborne (Tairawhiti) poet with an interest in Haiku. As well as The Gisborne Herald my work has appeared in NZ Poetry ‘a fine line’: Kokaho, a NZ Haiku and short form journal, and in online websites including NZEPC: OBAN 06 and FUGACITY 05; Also Simply Haiku (a Haiku Journal). In 2003 I was invited by American academic William J Higginson to participate in a Kasen Renku, “On The Road To Basra” protesting the Iraq war. Again with haiku in 2002 I was awarded an honourable mention in Manichi Daily News a long running Japanese newspaper. My work has also appeared in Manifesto Aotearoa: 101 Political Poems and again in USA in Whitmanthology: On Loss and Grief. A short story appeared in New Women’s Fiction 3.
In truth, a purgatory of sorts began for my family and myself in April last year when my second daughter was diagnosed with meningitis. We lost her twice but she fought so strongly and came back to us; deaf in one ear, and with amputations to parts of some fingers and toes, she still suffers pain and some scarring but remains so uncomplaining and her same sweet self.
As Sandra came out of two weeks of comma and delirium I was admitted to hospital for a stent. A second small stent was found at the time and successfully dealt to but while doing the larger stent the inserting wires broke, not once but twice, necessitating a 4 hour emergency operation. At one time Sandra and I were in the same hospital ward.
One continues to write poetry even in such times. I included here the first poem I wrote when I returned home; Blue Moon.

 

Blue Moon

There are reasons singing is good for you.
I sing because it makes me feel good.

This is a story about
an ultra-sound; ordered
due to some post-op complication.

I went into the ultra-sound singing Blue Moon.
Don’t ask me why.

Halfway thru the ultra-sound
I thought why am I doing this
so I ceased singing at such
a strange time.

And then a voice; from where
I couldn’t say; not above, so
it wasn’t God. (And I wasn’t
that far gone though I sure
could have been – long story.)

The voice said “Don’t stop;
we were enjoying that.” (Truth being;
so was I, both the effort and sound.)

So I went back to the ward singing.

Now I read that singing
is good for the heart.

I’ll keep singing:
not the cure
but a remarkable tool.

Benita H. Kape (c) 12.6.2019

Poetry Shelf connections: The Possibilities Project

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The Possibilities Project

11 – 30 April 2020

Join us as we collect Possibilities!

In Wisława Szymborska’s poem ‘Possibilities’, translated from Polish by Stanisław Barańczak and Claire Cavanagh, the winner of the 1996 Nobel Prize in Literature writes about what she prefers – as an individual and in the world. Our own Liz Breslin wrote a poem in response while on a Cities of Literature residency in Kraków. We invite you now to listen to these poems and write yours from home, to add to Dunedin UNESCO City of Literature’s permanent record of our preferences, our possibilities, our world.

If you’d like to ‘workshop’ your poem with Liz by email on its way to completion, let us know. Please send queries and your completed poems to CityofLiterature@dcc.govt.nz as a Word file/pdf and an audio/video file (such as a recording from a mobile phone). If you’d like somebody else to record your poem, we can arrange that too. The invitation is open to all ages, and poems are welcome any time before 30 April 2020. Your poem may be proudly published during that time on the City of Literature website and social media. We want to read, hear, see and share all the possibilities!

 

 

Go here for more details and to listen to the poems