Ichthyosaurus

1

It nudges its long snout
through the dappled curtains of time.

In a green light its teeth shine;
they are sharpened emeralds 

wanting, waiting and momentarily  
there is no longer snatch gob and grab –

there is only the soft rise and fall,  
the even breath of a sleeping ocean.

2

There was a perfect arch 
from hill to shining hill,
the dark water between.

There was the smell of morning
coffee, a warm cup and toast
to ward off the autumn chill.

There is not one centimetre 
of human history in the
kilometres of its eyes.

It would have sensed
your uneven breath as 
you waited, warm and naked,

and as your rainbow body
arched with love, it would
have burst through the surface

of the ocean, its jaws stretched
beyond lex talionis, beyond reason,
streaming with saltwater, with lust.

James Norcliffe
from Shadow Play, Proverse Press, 2011

Note

Over a dozen years ago, Vaughan Rapatahana prodded me to enter a manuscript for the Proverse Prize. Vaughan had entered the competition the previous year and had been a finalist and subsequently published by Proverse Press. His title was Home, Away, Elsewhere and Vaughan, an old friend and colleague from Brunei days, asked me to provide an introduction, which I was very happy to do. Proverse is a Hong Kong publisher run by expatriate New Zealander Gillian Bickley and her husband Verner Bickley. Apart from Vaughan they published the late Laura Solomon, another prize winner.

Accordingly, I submitted my ms Shadow Play which was a finalist and subsequently published by the press in 2011. I am very fond of this book, which, I feel, contains some of my best work. Perhaps, in retrospect, publishing a collection in Hong Kong wasn’t the best strategic move as the book had only minimal distribution in New Zealand and very few if any reviews here. 

I’ve chosen the poem ‘Ichthyosaurus’, originally published in Landfall. According to Richard Peabody of Gargoyle Magazine, who was one of a number who provided an encomium for the book, “(this) great poem exposes the slinky sinister undertow at work”. I imagine that is so. Many of the poems are layered and built on anxiety. We live near the sea, the sea where aeons ago the ichthyosaurus ruled. The imagined creature is pretty scary and not a bad – if over the top – simulacrum of our modern anxieties.

James Norcliffe is an award-winning writer of poetry and fiction and an editor. His eleventh collection of poetry Letter to ‘Oumuamua was published this year by Otago University Press. he has written many novels for young people and his novel for adults The Frog Prince was published last year by Penguin Random House. In 2022 he was awarded the Prime Minister’s Award for Literary Achievement for Poetry and this year was awarded the Margaret Mahy Medal.

Favourite poems is a series where poets pick a favourite poem from their own backlist and write a note to go with it.