Two poems for the preservation of Thomson Gorge, Central Otago

I   Dunstan Daybook

The undescribed moth
The unrecorded native daisy
The unsung rowanberries
The unheeded bidibid
The unimpeded lacebark
The unrecognizable cushion-plant
     laid down on its gravel sofa
The unapologetic Spaniards
The unsuspecting blue tussock
    browsing the false dawn
The unrelenting South Copper Tussock
The unassuming Woolyhead
    Hence to me, Molly Gray,
                               Low creatures of the Thomson Gorge Road!

II.   Rise & Shine Gully

There is a dancer in the gully. In Cromwell-broom and hard-tussock, in blue wheat grass. In the unrehearsed choreography of falling rock, shadow of passing bird, cloud drift. Switch off the hydrometer and rock-hammer, the stamper and pounder. Quiet the hydraulic shovel and excavator. Allow us this zig-zag stream, its curvaceous body, our handknit, our matagouri. And Mount Aspiring an otherworldly tent pitched on the horizon. There is a dancer in the gully, and the first synchronized bulbs of rumoured spring. And this her last dance. Everything disguised as every other thing: elusive lizard skin, bejewelled rockface, speargrass. The blue thread of our crooked stream. The earth on its axis. There is a dancer in Rise and Shine Gully, and humanity adrift on its own star.

 Gregory O’Brien

A brief note on poetics and politics

Poetry can be political, but politics is rarely poetic. These days, on the national as well as the world stage, spoken and written language has been reduced, denigrated and dragged through the mud. Luxon. Bishop. Shane Jones. Seymour. A sign of the times, maybe: this assault on language has been accompanied by a cold-blooded, hard-hearted approach to life in the broader human sphere and in relation to the natural world beyond. –

In recent months, photographer Bruce Foster and I have been completing a commissioned book about Central Otago (Tailings, Ugly Hill Press, forthcoming in 2026). Our many-facetted view of the region has now had to accommodate the advent of the Santana Mining Corporation’s plans to destroy a truly remarkable location in Central Otago. Bruce and I have both lived in that region and, like the local people, we know what there is to lose.

Central Otago is not a ‘mineral reserve’ (Shane Jones’s monstrous phrase), it is our collective body and our soul.

There is no up-side to mining. You only need to look around you. I have spent time every year since the 1980s in the Waihi district. Gold-mining has wrecked that town.  The place never boomed, the population never thrived, as we were told it was going to. Occasionally entire houses collapse into sink-holes left by previous mining misadventures. When you stand at the edge of the open cast mine and stare down into it, you don’t see hundreds of happy, well-paid, skilled workers—you find yourself staring into The Void. No one is there. There might be two or three oversized vehicles groaning beneath the weight of earth piled into them. Waihi lost its soul. It’s the same story wherever you find a gold mine. The town of Palmerston, the nearest ‘centre’ to the gigantic, open cast mine at Macraes in Otago, has gone backwards or, at best, weirdly sideways.

At the present time, it is hard to think about ‘poetics’ as distinct from the rest of life. In this era when the powers-that-be are intent on replacing ‘education’ with ‘training’, and we are expected to put all else aside in the interests of Unregulated Progress—the ‘Fast Track’ / ‘Quick Buck’ / ‘Drill Baby Drill’ mentality that stalks the corridors of power and is poisoning our public life. As Henry David Thoreau once wrote: ‘A few are riding, but the rest are run over.’

 Gregory O’Brien

Gregory O’Brien’s recent books are House and Contents (AUP, 2022) and Don Binney–Flight Path (AUP, 2023). Recent activities have been focussed on the wider Pacific region (he is currently working on a book of poetry and art with John Pule) and Central Otago. Last year Gregory was made an Honorary Geographer by the New Zealand Geographic Society. A short film of Greg reading ‘Thomson Gorge Road Song’ (text published on Poetry Shelf last month) can be viewed here:

Also filmed in Thomson Gorge, October 2025, the ‘dancer in valley’ can be seen in situ here:

Thanks to Bruce Foster for shooting both videos. Acknowledgements also to Sue Healey, Richard Harvey and Jen Bornholdt.