I have been thinking a lot about the place of poetry in global catastrophe and the incomprehensible leadership in Aotearoa. How do we write? Read? Do we need comfort or challenge or both? This week Stacey Teague.

A poem for winter and a poem for summer

The middle

What name do I want to name my life?

It’s almost January.

I go for a walk.

To look for evidence that things are getting better.

And I see it.

In the blackberries that line the path.

Remove the bitterness.

It’s like summer in the city.

I read your poem on the lawn.

We lie down to avoid death/wind.

If you want to use the whole body.

Jump into the sea without fear.

Sleep: Stay in the air.

Inside, my flatmates are very happy.

I try to drown it out with disturbing pop music.

What do I need to summon you into my life.

I once loved a woman who loved me.

But look how it plays out.

I can use my whole body.

You send me a photo of yourself pointing at the moon.

With a big grin and I heart react it.

The sky is still smeared pink in the middle.

london / winter 

i escape the wind and light pollution
taking my gloves off with my teeth
as i descend into marble arch

i can feel the thames
moving through me
most days

getting off the train
i want to kiss
the streets of victoria & you

drunk and tired
we take the night bus
in the wrong direction

middle of the night
heavy rain
heavy body

i watch my friends
dance around a kitchen
somewhere in hackney

we ignore the weather
stay in bed listening to beyonce
on the shortest day of the year

staring out a window
with you
expecting snow

5 Questions

Has the local and global situation affected what or how or when you write poetry?

There is no part of life that is untouched by what is happening in our local politics, in the genocide in Gaza and all the other atrocities and injustice that we witness daily. We carry it with us. Truth be told I haven’t written a poem for a good while. Though I feel something gathering. Sometimes it is important to let others be heard, to step back and listen for a while.

Does place matter to you at the moment? An object, an attachment, a loss, an experience? A sense of home?

Place is very important to me. People are the most important, but place is a close second. Every day I choose to be where I am. I need to be outside, to be physically present in the world I inhabit. It reminds me I’m alive. Home is in Aotearoa, where my parents and grandparents were born, where my tūpuna walked, and I can’t imagine being anywhere else anymore.

Are there books or poems that have struck a chord in the past year? That you turn to for comfort or uplift, challenge or distraction.

I have enjoyed Birdspeak by Arihia Latham, Saga by Hannah Mettner, Talia by Isla Huia. I’m always going back to The Glass Essay by Anne Carson, forever. I love the Marys for comfort: Mary Oliver and Mary Ruefle (specifically her poem ‘A Morning Person’.

What particularly matters to you in your poetry and in the poetry of others, whether using ear, eye, heart, mind – and/or anything ranging from the abstract and the absent to the physical and the present?

What I tend to cling to in other people’s poetry is a sense of being let in to someone’s inner world, all I need is a glimpse into it. A quick open and shut.

Is there a word or idea, like a talisman, that you hold close at the moment. For me, it is the word connection.

Right now it is ‘healing is not linear’, which is also a reminder to be kind to oneself.

Stacey Teague (Ngāti Maniapoto/Ngāpuhi) is a poet and teacher living in Te Whanganui-a-Tara. She is a publisher and editor at Tender Press. Her second poetry collection Plastic was published by Te Herenga Waka University Press in March 2024.