To celebrate the inclusion of Root Leaf Flower fruit by Bill Nelson (Te Herenga Waka University Press, 2023) on the Ockham NZ Book Award Poetry short list, I am reposting a reading Bill did for Poetry Shelf from his collection, the review I wrote, and an excerpt from the book. The book continues to haunt and move and delight me. The awards will be announced at an Auckland Writers Festival Event on May 15th.

The poem excerpt

The agent. A slim grey suit, his ankles showing,
white shirt, neatly parted hair,
I specialise in niche properties, he says.
Don’t worry too much about the garden,
people like a project. He flicks his hand,
without looking, toward the fields. The soil
is what people are here for. Put that
out front. He presses a card
firmly into my hand.

Last week she heard her husband on the phone dismissing the
carer, and she rolled her eyes. Don’t tell me you’re not happy, he
said, you called her a bitch and an f’ing c-word, I can’t deal with that
anymore, but she liked doing that, screaming and swearing, it
felt good, but she could see that he felt bad so that he had to
let the carer go, and now he felt bad that he felt good when
she was gone, as if he enjoyed the pain, the struggle, an old
hermit with a sick wife, holed up, locked in, and now after
dinner he reads her the paper, avoiding the stories about road
deaths and child violence, and when he accidentally starts to
read one about a baby tortured by its parents, her whole body
curls up, he notices and puts the paper aside, How about we go

for a walk to the top paddock, he says, she doesn’t answer and he
lifts her quietly into the wheelchair, her head lolls to the side,
she is getting lighter all the time, she can feel that too, how
he seems able to lift her with less effort, like with every step
she takes closer to death he’s getting stronger, younger, here in
the top paddock, where the soil is hidden by weeds, where she
remembers all the work she did, the aching and the dirt and
falling into a deep sleep after, waking renewed and fertile, and
now, the field overgrown, magnificent, luscious weeds reaching
for the sky, fuelled by beautiful soil.

The roller door slaps loudly against the stops
and I fumble for the light switch. Neon tubes
flicker and then catch, and there it is,
squat and industrial, green mudguards, green wheels,
green engine cover, KUBOTA embossed proudly
on the side. Smaller than I remember.
At eight years old, climbing it, struggling
to reach the first step, pulling the levers, pushing pedals,
buttons, dials, no idea what they did.
I search old boxes of mechanic’s tools, heavy and worn,
rifle through a cupboard, a box of pamphlets.
Manuals. One for the tractor, a couple for classic cars.
I flip past the safety warnings, the specifications,
straight to ‘Getting Started’. The brake pedals,
one for the left wheels, one for the right,
clutch and gears, throttle lever, speed-lock lever,
emergency brake, others to operate the attachments,
and lastly how to slide the seat forward.
The keys in the ignition. I wiggle the gear lever

turn the key – preheat – start.
Nothing, no whine, no stutter.
A page on jump-starting.
I nose the car into the garage and open the engine cover.
I connect the leads and leave the car running.
I turn the key, again, nothing. The manual, nothing.
I get out my phone and start typing, tractors for noobs,
tractors for beginners, Kubota tractor won’t start,
and finally, Kubota B6100 won’t start,
tractorbynet.com, eight pages of replies.
The clutch pedal needs to be pressed. I try again,
the engine turns, a slow raspy bark, over and over,
and finally, a chug of life, but then a splutter, a spit,
a fading hiss, and then it dies.

Bill Nelson, excerpt from Root Leaf Flower fruit

Bill Nelson, Root Leaf Flower Fruit, Te Herenga Waka University Press, 2023

The reading

Excerpt from Root Leaf Flower Fruit

The review

On reading a poetry collection or verse novel: first pick up the book and savour the title. Secondly, if you want to chart your own routes and sidetracks, read the blurb when you have finished the book. Maybe even reviews. Maybe even this review. That way reading becomes open and surprising travel. If you are reading Bill Nelson’s new verse novel, Root Leaf Flower Fruit, you will need to rotate the book to read the title, and that head spin is the perfect start to an affecting and inspiring read.

Such a tactile sensation as I begin reading – muddy and gritty and foaming – so mysterious with a ‘foreboding’ storm rolling in, with ‘no memory of what happened’. Pace and rhythm, this is what I jot down first. The way Bill deftly pulls you into the rhythm of the line, and how as you move along the currents, whether sweet or sour, it offers all manner of uplift, from the physicality of the poetry, to the cadence of music, to the tang of confession, to the anchor of everyday detail, to the shimmer of the gap.

This is poetry that builds a bridge between the land and family, the seasonal cyclic movement of both inhabited land and its inhabitants. Plough and spade and harvest. Feet in the earth. Compost and windbreaks. Hands planting seeds. A grandson returns to his grandmother’s farm to tidy up the house and land for auction as she is now in a rest home, his partner and children back home. The title triggers the calendar as gardening almanac, and we move into the idea of land as inhalation and exhalation, the acts of care and arranging, trimming and planting, along with the almanac ascension and waning of self.

This is also poetry as eulogy, the grandson is slowly unraveling a prismatic portrait of his grandmother. I want to talk about this extraordinary woman with you but I don’t want to spoil the unfolding portrait, your open road travel. Ah. But this is the woman who cared for her body as she cared for the land, so lovingly, so nourishingly. This is the woman who learned the value of lightness and lift. This is the woman who listens to what is not right. Ah, this is the woman who has taken up residency in my heart. This is the meeting of poetry and story, story and bloom.

This too is poetry as recognition of self. The grandson is recovering – ah I am agonising over what to tell you – but here is the gap, the impulse behind the narrative jumpcuts – he is recovering from a brain injury, fingertips barely grasping the accident. Floating, drifting, dreaming, aching.

Root Leaf Flower Fruit draws us deep into the heart of experience, fracturing and continuous, observational and reflective, imagined and lived, utterly refreshing the page of being human. It has a wow ending, the layered impact endures, and I wanted to start reading it again, instantly. Importantly for me, this sublime book, exquisitely crafted, fertilised with profound love and connection, is giving me routes back into my own writing. This is a book I simply must read again. Thank you.

Paula Green, September 2023

Bill Nelson is the author of Root Leaf Flower Fruit (2023) and Memorandum of Understanding (2016). His poems have appeared in Best New Zealand Poems, Sport, Landfall, Hue & Cry, Shenandoah, The Spinoff, Minarets and The 4th Floor, as well as in dance performances and art galleries and on billstickers. In 2009 he won the Biggs Family Prize in Poetry from the International Institute of Modern Letters, and he is a founding editor of Up Country: A Journal for the NZ Outdoors. He lives in Te Whanganui-a-tara Wellington with his partner, two children and his dog, Callimachus Bruce.

Te Herenga Waka University Press page