Poet for stage and page Grace Iwashita-Taylor and director Ursula Grace combine their rich cultural traditions and disciplines of poetry and film to explore their deep connection to the ocean.
This is a stunning video – the movement between word and image, ocean and body sublime.
Watch here
We’re Nice to Each Other After the Trauma
Christchurch, after 15 March 2019
We’re nice to each other after the trauma.
It’s emotional labour spent in a good cause,
like signing a birthday card at work or volunteering
to clean a beach. In the geography of care
the grieving city is bright, busy, sensitive
to extraordinary needs, able to flex and soothe.
It’s one of a series of temporary truths,
a glimpse of something not quite representative
that we wish could stay once it’s there.
We wish we couldn’t see it disappearing
into routine, because we were desolately happy because
we were nice to each other after the trauma.
Erik Kennedy
Erik Kennedy is the author of There’s No Place Like the Internet in Springtime (Victoria University Press, 2018), and he is co-editing a book of climate change poetry from Aotearoa New Zealand and the Pacific forthcoming from Auckland University Press later in 2021. His poems, stories, and criticism have recently been published in places like FENCE, Hobart, Maudlin House, Poetry, Poetry Ireland Review, the TLS, and Western Humanities Review. Originally from New Jersey, he lives in Christchurch, New Zealand.
NZ Poetry Shelf 