Poetry Shelf has felt touch and go this week, as my energy jar slips to tablespoons, with a few early morning appointments, leaving in the pitch dark, watching the light lift in patches, catching sight of the early runners, dog walkers, paddle boarders, swimmers, the traffic at treacle crawl, the rhythm of slow a steady heartbeat. But Poetry Shelf is necessary travel, and it wouldn’t function without your glorious and thoughtful contributions. In the post this week, I was delighted to get Robert Sullivan’s new collection, Hopurangi -Songcatcher (AUP, AUP New Poets 10 ed Anne Kennedy (AUP), Mythos ed Cadence Chung (Wai-te-ata Press) and Madeleine’s Slavick’s Town (The Cuba Press). I was also delighted to see the number of poets appearing in AWF Streetside | Britomart events.

Links to the weekly posts

Monday: Jack Ross poem

Tuesday: Megan Kitching Ockham Book Award shortlist feature

Wednesday: Stacey Teague review
Miriam Sharland book launch (May 9th)

Thursday: Poetry Shelf on ANZAC Day

Friday: List poems and a homage to Frances Hodgkins
Majella Cullinane book launch (May 23)

Saturday: AWF Streetside – Britomart events with poet poetry link

A poem

Some days I turn from the new books on my desk to the expanse of poetry on the wall shelves. I reach in a choose a book by an author I love, pick a single poem, and then linger between and beyond and within the lines; it is physical, it is elevation, it is the heart beating faster. This week it was Cilla McQueen’s ‘City Notes’ from poeta: selected and new poems (Otago University Press, 2018).

City Notes

How much does the city weigh?
The earth beneath it shudders.

Thunderstorm kicking around.
They go on making concrete.

Rain’s over – sun, cloud, wet air –
magpies, sparrows, parrots: expats.

The land is under concrete, lest it rise.
What lies beneath this leafy foreign park?

Inside the whispering fall of a Japanese
maple, I spy an Australian lorikeet.

A baby runs full-tilt across the scene.
Rangitoto appears remote.

Oh Lord, so remote, it seems
of a different timescale.

Cilla McQueen

Poet, teacher and artist CILLA McQUEEN has published 15 collections, three of which have won the New Zealand Book Award for Poetry. Her most recent work is Poeta: selected and new poems (Otago University Press 2018). She has also published a poetic memoir, In a Slant Light (Otago UP, 2016). In 2008 Cilla received an Hon. Litt.D. from the University of Otago, and was the New Zealand National Library Poet Laureate 2009–11. In 2010 she received the Prime Minister’s Award for Literary Achievement in Poetry. Cilla lives and works in the southern port of Motupohue, Bluff.

A musing

I ponder the word ‘weight’ after my sojourn with Cilla’s ‘City Notes’. Musing, dreaming, puzzling. I am wondering how a poem bears weight, delivers weight, dodges weight, describes weight. I am wondering if, along with my current craving for light, weight can also be a source of reward rather than burden. Whether substance and seriousness are as alluring as space and luminosity. My drift-thoughts form a fascinating knot, light and weight become inseparable. A poem might hold a serious thought and then radiate light, a poem might privilege light, but embed weight deep within. Not either or, but a series of conjunctions. Ah. A poem might navigate the weight of the world and in doing so signpost vital rays of hope.

Paula Green