My Mother’s Voice

December 2007

My mother’s voice
crackled and deepened
on the tape recorder.

She spoke to me only
yesterday, but already the effort
to speak across such great

distance,
from her twenties
to me in my thirties

stretched the tape
like the whirr of
static ghosts.

Transcribing her disembodied
words how I want
her here to hold
my body to her breast.

Ingrid Horrocks
from Mapping the Distance, Te Herenga Waka University Press, 2010

Over the coming months, the Monday Poem spot will include poetry that has stuck to me over time, poems that I’ve loved for all kinds of reasons.

Poetry is of such vital comfort at the moment. It might be the way the musicality of words strikes the ear or the subject matter catches the heart. It might be intricate or economical in effect, or both. The first time I read Ingrid’s mother poem I did an inward gasp. It is utterly moving, haunting, in both musicality and content. It’s a poem to read, and read again, to enter the poetic clearings and linger, as is the arc and reach of Ingrid’s poetry. Ah, the poetry I love is so often absorption ahead of explanation, nourishment ahead of body skewing. I have been musing on how a sublime poem can carry you beyond words. Extraordinary.

Ingrid Horrocks is the 2024 Kaituhi Tarāwhare, Creative New Zealand Writer in Residence at the IIML. She is the author of two poetry books, Natsukashii (1999) and Mapping the Distance (2010). Her most recent book, Where We Swim (2021), is a blend of essay, memoir, travel, and lyric nature writing, and her first book of fiction, Nine Lives, is forth-coming with THWUP in 2025. Sometimes, she misses being a poet. Her wonderful mother is alive and well.