An island

If a man was an island,
I’d walk his spine and pick his heart –
a black black blackberry in a field.
The trees would stitch his trousers.
The rain would nibble at his skin all night
and water would catch in his beard.
I’d cut the shape of his hip bones with a spade
and let the whir of insects get inside my ears.

 

Rata Gordon

The publication of A Vase and a Vast Sea, edited by Jenny Nimon (Escalator Press), is both a sad and glad occasion. The collection marks the end of 15 years of the Whitireia Creative Writing Programme and its online journal 4th Floor. A number of much-loved writers have been though the programme (Hera Lindsay Bird, Tusiata Avia and Alison Wong), while editors of the journal include Mandy Hager, Lynn Jenner, Renee, Lynn Davidson, Hinemoana Baker, Jackson Nieuwland.

Pip Adam has written a foreword to the anthology, stepping off from the title, to acknowledge the the things we can hold (blackberries, scissors) and things we can’t (loss, joy). She suggests ‘the collection is always awake with a focus-pull between the close and the huge’. And indeed it is.

A Vase and a Vast Sea offers poetry and prose from the journal’s history. As Jane Arthur states on the back of the book: ‘It quivers with life – a fitting memorial slab to a vibrant, unpredictable and inventive creative writing programme.’

I have been dipping and delving into this keepsake over the past few weeks, and three poets in particular have kept me returning. They each have two poems selected and each offers a deft interplay of the intimate and the large. Perhaps I am loving the poems as musical compositions, with contemplative undertones, physical markers, in an exquisite marriage that pulls me back, and makes me keen for new collections.

I began this small review with the poem that opens the anthology, Rata Gordon’s exquisite poem, ‘An island’, but her second one, ‘I find slaters’, is equally magnificent. I recently reviewed and loved her debut collection, Second Person. Rata is a poet to watch. This from ‘I find slaters’:

If I write about trees

I have to write about everything –

 

blue cheese and pink grapefruit.

A small gold bell ringing over moss.

Politicians’ billboards discarded on the side of

the road.

Bill Nelson is the second poet whose ability to surprise and keep it real is a poetry drawcard. This from ‘What the sea knows’:

Even though she believes

the world is not an oyster,

she knows it has a crust,

an incredulous centre.

Bill’s second poem, ‘Describing home’, is a heart poem. Read this poem and you can feel the similes and the jumpcuts, and way home is a beloved person, and home stretches to include heartbreak. And how you see a beloved person in everything at hand. Put this poem tablet on your tongue and it will fizz all day.

Those old trees touching the grass

are all the people who take the risk we took.

Lynn Davidson’s two poems have also worked poetry magic. You get ideas and you get real life, and you get effervescence in the zone between. This opening stanza from ‘Pearls’:

The physicist says the world

is not a world

of things, it is

a world of happenings.

More a kiss than a stone.

Lynn’s second poem, ‘A hillside of houses leaves’, is equally alluring. It’s a cascade of personifying surprise down the page. Here are the first lines:

Steeped in old weather the wooden houses

remember their bird-selves and unfold

barely jointed wings.

Alison Glenny’s ‘Notes for a biography’ is also a poetry treat. Ah, enter the terrain of her poem and you will want to set up camp.

Invited to describe her childhood, she confessed to

being haunted by the images of a dead bird and a

mandolin.

So many treats in this anthology, writers you will be familiar with, and perhaps like me, writers you will not. I will leave you with this enduring image from Cushla Managh’s terrific grandmother poem. I want to track down more of her writing.

We eat mutton off blue willow plates

and wash the dishes with Sunlight soap,

play Scrabble, fighting over the words.

I sleep in a bed that holds my shape.

I have been musing on how things hold our shape, and wondering if when we write or read a poem it holds our shape. How we nestle into some poems, and then, at some later date, nestle back in again.

About the authors

A Vase and a Vast Sea features much-loved New Zealand poets and authors connected to Whitireia’s Creative Writing Programme:

Renée, Donna Banicevich-Gera, Bronwyn Bryant, Lynn Davidson, Natasha Dennerstein, Romesh Dissanayake, Nicola Easthope, Barbara Else, Helen Vivienne Fletcher, Anahera Gildea, Carolyn Gillum, Alison Glenny, Rata Gordon, Rob Hack, Trish Harris, John Haxton, Adrienne Jansen, Kristina Jensen, Marion Jones, Tim Jones, Rachel Kleinsman, Cushla Managh, Lucy Marsden, Tracie McBride, Kathy McVey, Fiona Mitford, Margaret Moores, Bill Nelson, Ralph Proops, Maggie Rainey-Smith, Tina Regtien, Miriam Sagan, Lorraine Singh, Tracey Sullivan and Charmaine Thomson.

Foreword by Pip Adam.

The final Pegasus Poetry reading of 2020

Oh the times we’ve had this year! Remember the cancellations? Remember the Zooms? Remember the porn bombs? Oh Pegasus Poetry, you gloriously, valiantly homespun beast you!

We wrap up this year with three of the best:

Lynn Davidson: fresh out of iso and raring to go!
Helen Rickerby: recent Ockham NZ Book Awards poetry winner
Charlotte Simmonds, author of the astonishing The World’s Fastest Flower

Pegasus Books, Left Bank, Cuba Mall
Friday 27 November
Starts at 6.30pm

Last night I watched the live stream of The Prime Minister’s Awards for Literature Achievement hosted by John Campbell. I flicked it on for a quick glance before reading my book, but stayed until the end. I loved the warm celebration of books and writing.

The recipients:

Sir Tīmoti Kāretu (non-fiction)
Jenny Bornholdt (poetry)
Tessa Duder (fiction)

The roving conversation was a delight. And yes! poetry does not stick to the truth or, as Jenny said, poems form their own truths. Jenny read ‘In the garden’, a poem from her first collection, This Big Face (Victoria University Press, 1988). Here are the opening lines:

In the garden

the bulbs run riot

root systems

go all over the place

 

Jenny then read ‘Something is Everywhere’ from her latest collection, Lost and Somewhere Else (Victoria University Press, 2019). She told us she wrote this poem for her father-in-law, after he had told her ‘something is everywhere’, as she sat by his bed in his final days. It is jewel of a poem. A lightning rod of poem, and to hear her read it aloud is even better. It is worth tuning in just for this poem. Here are the opening lines:

Asparagus everywhere

in the garden, like eggs

laid by wayward hens.

The river, too, is

everywhere, rising up

I have long been a fan of Jenny’s poetry and the anthologies she has worked on. So warm congratulations – and an invitation to you to take a listen. It is rather special.

Listen on Facebook

Listen on YouTube

Glenn Colquhoun is a Horowhenua-based GP and poet. His terrific debut The art of walking upright won the Jessie Mackay Best First Book of Poetry Award at the 2000 Montana New Zealand Book Awards. Three years later Playing God won both the Poetry Award and Readers’ Choice Award. Reading his new collection Letters to Young People underlines the way poetry and medicine are significant parts of Colquhoun’s life. Poetry feeds his medical practice and the medical practice feeds his poetry.

Letters to Young People speaks to the youth he works with at the Horowhenua Health Service, yet these are also poems to self. The blurb states: “Gathered together [the poems] represent the inventory of one doctor’s consultations taken home, responses to those moments he might have woken in the night and wished he had said things better.” Colquhoun responds to the hopes, fears, doubts, and physical and emotional challenges presented to him. He also listens and speaks back to himself. He offers reassurance and comfort, and he offers his own frailties and strengths.

Full review at Ketebooks online here

The 2021 Kāpiti Writers’ Retreat

26 – 28 February 2021

Waikanae, New Zealand

Immerse yourself in writing and conversation this summer. There’s something for everyone–whether you’re new to writing, an established writer, or somewhere in-between.

The Kāpiti Writers’ Retreat is happening from 26 -28 February 2021 on the beautiful Kāpiti Coast north of Wellington. This three-day gathering for writers that encompasses intensive morning workshops, lively discussions and space to write, relax and engage with topics critical to your work.

Writers Practice is delighted to host leading New Zealand writers – Brannavan Gnanalingam, Cassie Hart, Helen Lehndorf, M. Darusha Wehm, Pip Adam, Rob Hack and Rose Lu – at the 2021 Kāpiti Writers’ Retreat. Each writer will teach morning workshops: in fiction, poetry, essay, world building and editing. In the afternoons, they will lead discussions on topics pertinent to craft and literature in Aotearoa.

You’ll find community, encouragement, and a safe place in which to take artistic risks.

Find out more here

road trip with the feminists

rage at mapgirl for being in Imperial

ignore her directions at the lights

the fastest way out of Christchurch

is/ is not \ is just through / fuck it 

mapgirl’s right 

stop for coffee \ wash out the keepcup

stand in line for a soy flat white

order cheese rolls / a rhubarb muffin

ginger slice \ it’s nearly lunch / it’s

roughly time

the baby blue nail varnish stuck

behind the seat \ the car fills up

with local rags / napkins \ op shop

treasures ticked off the manifestation list

it’s the trick

of attraction / at least one of the feminists

has a hangover that another drink

will fix \ the plains go on as long / long

long as the conversation \ ranging

outside, the rain

the wipers don’t have the right speed set

slow / the screen splotches opaque \quick

sweep / \ / \ / crank the tunes

no rhythm is for keeps but we’ll always

have the road

Liz Breslin

“Her-storical” sequence of poems wins national award

Liz Breslin from Wanaka has been announced as the 2020 winner of the Kathleen Grattan Prize for a Sequence of Poems, in a prize-giving ceremony on Auckland’s North Shore.

The competition is organised annually by writing group, International Writers Workshop (also known as IWW.)

Breslin has won the $1,000 prize for her sequence of poems, entitled: “In bed with the feminists.”

The competition was judged by 2019’s award winner, well-known Auckland poet, writer and lecturer at Auckland University of Technology, Siobhan Harvey.

Harvey read two of the poems from Breslin’s sequence at the award ceremony.

On receiving her award Breslin said: “I was so surprised and delighted to get the call to say I’m this year’s winner. I worked on these poems during a period on my own in lockdown, so it’s really affirming to see them recognised outside my head and my house.”

Harvey judged the competition commended Breslin’s winning entry… “for its unapologetic voice, clear vision and assured awareness.”

Harvey continued: “The her-storical narratives and creativity make this a compelling lyrical analysis of feminism both in the contemporary age and in the past.”

The runner-up was announced as Sophia Wilson from Dunedin for her sequence of poems titled “Attempting to Land.” In judging Wilson’s piece, Harvey described the sequence as “a stunningly beautiful ode to migration.”

The Kathleen Grattan Prize for a Sequence of Poems competition has been run by IWW for twelve years and Breslin joins a list of winners including Siobhan Harvey, Maris O’Rourke and Michael Giacon.

In addition to the prize given to Breslin, IWW presented awards to the winners of its other 2020 writing competitions. The breadth of competitions the writing group organises is very wide as evidenced by awards for Crime Writing, Flash Fiction and Play writing.

At the conclusion of the formal prize giving, the winning play – “Text or Subtext” written by Auckland member John Leyland – was performed by members of the group.

About the Prize

The Kathleen Grattan Prize for a Sequence of Poems has been made possible by a bequest from the Jocelyn Grattan Charitable Trust. It was a specific request of the late Jocelyn Grattan that her mother be recognised through an annual competition in recognition of her love for poetry and that the competition be for a sequence or cycle of poems with no limit on the length of the poems.

This is the eleventh year IWW has had the honour of organising the Prize.

Previous winners are Siobhan Harvey (2019), Heather Bauchop (2018), Janet Newman (2017), Michael Giacon (2016) Maris O’Rourke (2015), Julie Ryan (2014), Belinda Diepenheim (2013), James Norcliffe (2012), Jillian Sullivan (2011) Janet Charman and Rosetta Allan (joint winners 2010) and Alice Hooton (2009).

The Kathleen Grattan Prize for a Sequence of Poems is sometimes referred to as the ‘Little Grattan’ as the Jocelyn Grattan Charitable Trust also funds the biennial Kathleen Grattan Award, run by Landfall / Otago University Press.