Rachel McAlpine’s new collection of poems will be published next year, and may be called Elsie’s Book of Strategies.
Poetry Shelf audio spot: Rachel McAlpine reads ‘When?’
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Category Archives: NZ poems
A conversation and poem from the Sarah Broom Poetry Prize Finalists: Jane Arthur
To check up on the state of your heart you must lie back
with your tits out so a warm-handed stranger-
technician can run a small device across your ribs
like a barcode scanner. She seems not to see your skin,
is only concerned with looking beneath it. You want to ask her,
What is it that makes me different
from others who’ve lain here, does my heart hide deeper
in my chest, do my nipples watch you cock-eyed, disturbingly,
am I more beautiful than 50% of others or.
On a black-and-white screen there’s something grainy
and pulsing, trapped in a wedge frame
like an embryo, unheard. This is your heart, twitching.
Watching it you can’t tell what from what, all you know is
the image is moving and you are alive. What a miracle
of existence, you now understand, to have a life inside you
and you want to clutch the technician and rejoice.
Now you can hear it, too, your heart—thumping, muffled,
like listening with your ear pressed up against a wall,
the white-noise hiss of the ocean trapped behind.
But that’s not ocean, not white noise,
it’s blood noise. That’s blood pumping through your heart
to your veins. You hear it through a wall
of veins, bones, fat, flesh, skin keeping all this life inside you
like one big intricate loving dam.
©Jane Arthur
If you were to map your poetry reading history, what books would act as key co-ordinates?
Formatively, I was a music-obsessed teen, so the liner notes of the angsty ’90s: Kristin Hersh, Tori Amos, R.E.M.. Patti Smith. Before that: the poems of Leonard Cohen and Pam Ayres. More recent inspirations: Jenny Bornholdt’s Miss New Zealand; Geoff Cochrane; Kim Addonizio’s What Is This Thing Called Love; Louise Glück’s Vita Nova; random editions of Sport; A Hole is to Dig by Ruth Krauss and illustrated by Maurice Sendak. Online poetry journals, including Sweet Mammalian, Starling, Turbine/Kapohau. The Poetry Foundation website. And most recently: essa ranapiri’s incredible Twitter thread of great NZ poems.
What do you want your poems to do?
I guess I want them to be intellectual exercises that end up appearing thoroughly non-intellectual. I want them to be approachable, definitely messy and imperfect, a bit funny but completely heartfelt without being gross? At least, that’s what I want them to “be”. What I want them to do is … reassure awkward readers that we’ve all been there and it’s cool, don’t worry about it.
Which poem in your selection particularly falls into place. Why?
“To check up on the state of your heart you must lie back” is one of those rare poems that burst out of me in one sitting (having been rolled around my brain for a day or so) and didn’t change significantly after that. An earlier version was published in Ika and two years later only a few words have changed. I wish I knew why some poems come out easily, it’s much more efficient. I am typically the world’s most painfully slow and fussy writer … more of a deleter.
There is no blueprint for writing poems. What might act as a poem trigger for you?
Standing in the shower. Brushing my teeth. Trying to write a different poem. Reading fiction. Going for a walk. Restless nights. Pretending to be someone else. Deadlines.
If you were reviewing your entry poems, what three words would characterise their allure?
Familiar, surprising, dorky
You are going to read together at the Auckland Writers Festival. If you could pick a dream team of poets to read – who would we see?
HRH Selina Tusitala Marsh as MC because I want her to be everywhere at all times. Some of the finest new, super-young poets like Tayi Tibble, Nina Powles and Freya Sadgrove – I’d ask the Starling eds to organize that bit. With interludes from Faith Wilson, Coco Solid, Hera Lindsay Bird, Chris Tse and Fleur Adcock. With a surprise VIP encore from Margaret Mahy during a round of whisky.
Jane Arthur was born in New Plymouth and lives in Wellington with her partner, baby and dogs. She has worked in the book industry for over 15 years as a bookseller and editor, and is a founder of the New Zealand children’s literature website The Sapling. She has a Master’s in Creative Writing from the IIML at Victoria University, where her supervisor was Cliff Fell, a 2017 Sarah Broom Poetry Prize finalist. She also has a Diploma in Publishing from Whitireia Polytech and a Master’s in English Literature from Auckland University. Her poems have appeared in journals including Sport, Turbine, Ika, and Sweet Mammalian.
The four finalists will read from their work at the Sarah Broom Poetry Prize event at the Auckland Writers Festival on Sunday 20 May, 3.15-4.15pm.
Sarah Broom Poetry Prize page.
A conversation and poem from the Sarah Broom Poetry Prize finalists: Stuart Airey
Horse on the Ice
at first horse and rider rode easily
it was cold and bright across the ice
the frozen lake
we can’t feed you all
you’ll have to go to New Zealand
the next ride was still clear
a little mist hugged the surface
perhaps joinery carpentry building
then a little icy fog formed on the brow
some sort of motorcycle racing
a fall at night and a broken wrist
permanently numb fingers on one hand
now the rider dismounted halfway across
knelt down to get a closer look
if you peered carefully there were fine cracks
a web of spidery blue veins
a small stone bridge in the Lake District
uncle Franks boat accelerating an arc
to test the waterskier
but not last week last month last year
the horse and rider snorted steam
riding faster the crack of hooves on ice
the sure clip of memory
its web of fissures and creaking pressures
he was sure we were sure i was sure
we were all nearly quite certain
it could take the weight
©Stuart Airey
If you were to map your poetry reading history, what books would act as key co-ordinates?
In primary school I loved Louis Untermeyer’s Golden Treasury of Poetry especially the limericks and ‘The Highwayman’. There’s a fair bit of a lull after that until my brother passed away and then I turned a lot to The Oxford Book of English Verse – particularly Thomas Hood’s ‘The Sea of Death’. A few years back I discovered the Bloodaxe ‘Staying Alive’ trilogy which opened up a whole new world of modern poems and poets, particularly shorter ones. (Poems that is). I started writing more seriously about this time. Favourite writers would be Carol Ann Duffy, Wislawa Szymborska, Stephen Dunn and especially Alden Nowlan – a Canadian genius and earthy, accessible poet.
What do you want your poems to do?
I think that first of all I write for myself. I have discovered that quite often the poem is telling me something about myself that I couldn’t get to another way – a sort of self-therapy I guess. If I’m writing about an idea or a feeling it’s a way of turning it over and looking at all the edges. Sometimes it’s the poem that tells me how I’m feeling. After that though I definitely enjoy sharing (mostly) the poem with others and seeing if it touches some vital part of being human. It’s a real kick when others find layers of meaning that I was unaware of or hadn’t really intended. Some are written just to be enjoyed, a bit of a laugh or even more visceral.
A few to provoke though this rarely raises much angst.
Which poem in your selection particularly falls into place. Why?
I find this quite a difficult question. As none of my poems have (yet!) been published I had quite a few to select from for the competition. I have submitted to a few journals and competitions, as yet unsuccessfully, so I found it really hard to gauge which poems I should put in – actually I think I got a little cavalier with the entry. I think ‘Mercury’ fell into place as the last to be picked as it’s one of the earliest poems I wrote and got excited about. I love the word Mercury so much I’ve written several poems all with that title but the one I’ve included is the original.
There is no blueprint for writing poems. What might act as a poem trigger for you?
I’ve found that poems come to me in quite different ways. Usually the best or at least easiest to write is when a first line comes out of the blue, closely followed by the last line. I’m not sure exactly what the prompt in these instances is, whether a scene or a feeling or just a thought. Perhaps a glimpse into someone’s life. Then there are poems that start with an idea or a feeling I want to convey. These are a little harder to write but if the idea or feeling is quite solid they carry through and if they don’t they often morph into something else. I love it when the poem ends with so much more than it started with. I have also written a few poems to a particular theme (one was borders) – these are usually a little slower to start but once momentum kicks in they get there. There’s a lot of polishing that goes on. It’s a real high when a poem is finished.
If you were reviewing your entry poems, what three words would characterise their allure?
So I think you mean if I could detach myself from the poems in a sort of impartial way? In that case variety, accessibility and aftertaste.
You are going to read together at the Auckland Writers Festival. If you could pick a dream team of poets to read – who would we see?
Carol Ann Duffy, Paul Muldoon, Carolyn Forche, Stephen Dunn, perhaps John Burnside. Would have loved to have heard John O’Donohue live but at least we have Youtube.
Stuart Airey graduated in Optometry from Auckland University in 1986 and has worked in this role for over 30 years. He also has a post-graduate Diploma in Theology from Laidlaw College. He is married with three children and lives in Hamilton. Apart from dabbling in short stories in high school Stuart began writing poetry more seriously after the Christchurch earthquake which resonated with personal loss in his family. Stuart has enjoyed performing some of his poetry in a series of dedicated evenings featuring a mix of drama, audio-visual, lighting and special effects. His poems are currently unpublished and he feels he is very much on the threshold of an unknown yet inspiring path.
The four finalists will read from their work at the Sarah Broom Poetry Prize event at the Auckland Writers Festival on Sunday 20 May, 3.15-4.15pm.
Sarah Broom Poetry Prize page.
Monday Poem: Jack Ross’s ‘My Uncle Tommy’
My Uncle Tommy
‘In the end they had to put him
in a home
Tommy had grown too heavy
for Dad to carry
Dad worried about it
till he went to visit
tried to hug him
Tommy didn’t know him
was not aware
of where they were
it was my mother
I was sorry for
she thought she was to blame
for having him
my brother shared a room
with him
all night he’d rock
inside his cot
one winter he got sick
and never spoke
again
no-one
could visit us
because
of Tommy’
©Jack Ross 2018
Jack Ross is the managing editor of Poetry New Zealand, and works as a senior lecturer in creative writing at Massey University. His latest book, The Annotated Tree Worship, was published by Paper Table Novellas in 2017. He blogs here.
Read Siobhan Harvey’s launch speech for Janet Charman’s 仁 surrender
A conversation and poem from the Sarah Broom Poetry Prize Finalists: Wes Lee
Lifesaving
They don’t do it anymore,
breathe into the mouth to save.
We had learnt it reluctantly,
lined up beside a recumbent dummy,
waiting to take our turn to kneel at that mouth.
The simplest things disturb –
at night when the fluoros shut off and the cover is pulled,
the tiles swabbed – there it lies open,
not even a ventriloquist’s dummy
is so exposed.
©Wes Lee ‘Lifesaving’ won second place in The London Magazine‘s 2015 Poetry Competition
A conversation:
If you were to map your poetry reading history, what books would act as key co-ordinates?
I have always admired truth-tellers: Anne Sexton (The Awful Rowing Toward God), Raymond Carver (All of Us), Denis Johnson (The Throne of the Third Heaven of the Nations Millennium General Assembly), Dorothea Lasky (Thunderbird), Sharon Olds (Satan Says), Rachel Wetzsteon (Sakura Park), Claudia Rankine (Don’t Let Me Be Lonely), Douglas Wright (Laughing Mirror), Alice Anderson (Human Nature). To name a few.
One of my favourite poets at the moment is a Lovelock Paiute writer from Nevada, Adrian C. Louis (Ceremonies of the Damned), who blows my hair back, and makes me laugh out loud! He speaks such truths, I am in awe of him.
I also recently loved Michel Faber’s first book of poems on the subject of his late wife’s struggle with cancer: ‘Undying’. Brilliant book.
I am waiting to receive (through the mail) the Collected Poems of Jane Kenyon.
What do you want your poems to do?
Sharon Olds has said that she wants her poems to do something useful. I agree with that.
I want my poems to be brave, to connect, to surprise. I want to trust my voice, to resist self-censorship; to learn something each day about my own drama, as I learn each day from other poets. A journey of surprise and discovery.
Which poem in your selection particularly falls into place. Why?
I suppose a poem like: ‘Mania Come Back!’ which goes against the grain of the prevailing idea that the stable world is the desired world. It’s a poem that grinds against the flat plane of balance.
There is no blueprint for writing poems. What might act as a poem trigger for you?
I read poetry every day, and often other people’s writing is a trigger. Not only poetry but articles, essays, interviews, world news, movies, etc. And of course lines come up from “nowhere” and set the thing off.
If you were reviewing your entry poems, what three words would characterise their allure?
Resilient.
Ordnance.
Sly.
You are going to read together at the Auckland Writers Festival. If you could pick a dream team of poets to read – who would we see?
Probably poets I would like to meet, reading from the following collections:
Julian Stannard (The Parrots of Villa Gruber Discover Lapis Lazuli)
Michel Faber (Undying)
Vicki Feaver (The Book of Blood)
Elspeth Smith (Dangerous Cakes)
John Burnside (Black Cat Bone)
Martin Figura (Whistle)
Wes Lee is the author of Body, Remember (Eyewear Publishing, 2017), Shooting Gallery (Steele Roberts, 2016), and Cowboy Genes (Grist Books, University of Huddersfield Press, 2014). Her work has appeared in the Poetry New Zealand Yearbook 2018, New Writing Scotland, Westerly, The London Magazine, Landfall, Cordite, Poetry London, Irises: The University of Canberra Vice-Chancellor’s Poetry Prize Anthology 2017, and many other journals and anthologies. She has won a number of awards for her writing including the BNZ Katherine Mansfield Literary Award; The Short FICTION Writing Prize (University of Plymouth Press); The Bronwyn Tate Memorial Award. She is currently working on her third poetry collection, By the Lapels.
The four finalists will read from their work at the Sarah Broom Poetry Prize event at the Auckland Writers Festival on Sunday 20 May, 3.15-4.15pm. Guest judge Eileen Myles will introduce the finalists and announce the winner.
Sarah Broom Poetry Prize page.
Poetry Shelf audio spot: James Brown reads ‘Soft Returns’
James Brown’s latest poetry book is Floods Another Chamber (VUP, 2017). You can find ‘Soft Returns’ in this collection.
Victoria University Press page
Selina Tusitala Marsh has edited Best NZ poems 2017 – the Pasifika way
Yes! What a breath of outstandingly fresh air. I love Selina’s approach to picking the poems – you need to read the whole piece here
And it is a crackingly good selection. I can’t wait to read and listen. Some of my favourite reads from 2017 included. Content’s page here
From the intro:
‘I dedicate this last 12 months of choosing the ‘best’, to my friend and mentor, the late Associate Professor Teresia Teaiwa, whose Memorial Scholarship Fund continues to help give Pasifika peoples a choice.
Everybody loves free books (excluding my sons). I accepted this invitation to judge 2017’s batch of newly published poems because frankly, I wanted the books. I wanted to be able to map the latest constellation of Aotearoa’s poetry stars and navigate the various poetic journeys being offered from a particular time and place. I wanted to be inspired. After reading what seemed like, say, 3000 plus poems, I got what I wanted.
But I soon discovered that this was not an easy task. It wasn’t just a matter of reading a few poems and picking the ones I liked ‘best’. The sheer variety of form, tone, subject matter and lyricism soon problematised what I had thought was the ‘best’. Many a judge before me has acknowledged the impossibility of the task ahead. Most point to the bright sticky pink bubble gum of subjectivity that clicks and pops in the mouth whilst reading: ‘click, I like this one; pop, don’t like this one. Blow, I’m in my own bubble anyway.’ Presumably, this lets one off the hook. But I soon discovered that what I liked was too small a cage in which to read these free-range poems—just to further mix my metaphors in the post-euphoria of having climbed the Mt Everest of 2017’s poetic metaphors. Note to self: stop with the tongue in cheek stuff and get on with the serious business of writing this Introduction! (Aah, but whose tongue and in whose cheek?)
As a Pasifika Poet-Scholar, I wanted a more egalitarian way to ‘judge’ the ‘best’. I wanted to do something different, more collaborative, more epistemologically Pasifika—recalling Sia Figiel’s famously poetic passage nestled in the middle of her novel, Where We Once Belonged:
there is no ‘I’
only ‘we’
So, I decided to seek out the opinions, responses, reactions of the ‘we’ for a select numbers of poems that I hadn’t liked enough to include in my measly top 25. I gave out books and I gave out poems (with the payment that they could keep what they liked). My readers? Fellow Waiheke Trail Tribe runners, real estate agents, book club members, students, teachers, family members, people at the bus stop I saw often enough to bug. I asked them to give me 1-3 poems they liked and why.’
Selina at the Tokotoko Laureate event. Photo credit: Fiona Lam Sheung
Some poems from the Ockham NZ poetry finalists: Sue Wootton’s ‘Wild’
Wild
Measure my wild. Down to my last leaf,
my furled, my desiccated. This deciduousness,
this bloom. Calculate my xylem levels.
My spore count, fungal, scarlet
in a bluebell glade. Whoosh,
where the foliage closes on a great cat.
Test me: how many tigers in my jungle,
how many lions at roam? Map my rivers,
deltas, estuaries. Mollusc, whelk, worm.
Monitor my silt. Do I have spoonbills,
high-stepping and watchful over the darting fish?
Rainfall on pines. Dappled sunlight
in my dells. Under moss, the fallen log, under
the log the hibernating hedgehog. Late my dates,
or soon? Return of the albatross, godwits
gathering. What clouds me, shifts,
but: indigo thunder-stack, pink wisp. Count the mice.
What will survive me, O my cockroaches, O my lice?
Scaffold me with metal, cage me in glass, tube me,
needle me, fill me, flush me. Saline solution:
the ocean. Oxygen therapy: the sky.
Mineral deficiency: socks off. Soil. Dark
rot, eye-less wriggle, while the roots seek, seek.
Un-diagnosable, that ticklish insect.
Mountain peak speak only snow, and thus
I am diminished; thus I rest in my pulse. Sweet
heart. Monitor my yearn, and treat it with trees.
Un-pane me. Wilden my outlook.
Membrane animal, skin mammal under the osmosis moon.
Allow my tides. All this to say, in love we nest, and on Earth.
©Sue Wootton from The Yield
Sue Wootton lives in Dunedin where she writes fiction and poetry and, as a PhD candidate at the University of Otago, is researching the importance of literature to health and wellbeing. Her debut novel, Strip (Mākaro Press), was longlisted for the fiction prize in the 2017 Ockham NZ Book Awards, and her most recent publication, The Yield (Otago University Press) is shortlisted in the 2018 poetry category of the awards. She is the selecting editor for the Otago Daily Times Weekend Poem column and edits the weekly Health Humanities blog Corpus: Conversations about Medicine and Life, found at corpus.nz
The poem “Wild” was awarded 2nd place in the International Hippocrates Prize for Poetry and Medicine in 2013. Sue’s website is suewootton.com
Congratulations! Sarah Broom Poetry Prize finalists 2018
Sarah Broom Poetry Prize Finalists 2018
We are delighted to announce four finalists for the Sarah Broom Poetry Prize in 2018.
Stuart Airey is a poet with a day job as an optometrist, which involves using the logical, scientific part of his mind. He describes poetry as “letting me explore all the other bits”. Stuart began writing poetry a few years ago; these poems are as yet unpublished, but they have been performed in his local church. Though he has been living in Hamilton for many years now, Stuart feels an increasingly strong call from his Christchurch roots and his resonance with loss. Poems allow a part of him to look up at the Port Hills, walk along leafy Saint Albans, and gaze longlingly out at the Sumner surf.
Jane Arthur was born in New Plymouth and lives in Wellington with her partner, baby and dogs. She has worked in the book industry for over 15 years as a bookseller and editor, and is a founder of the New Zealand children’s literature website The Sapling. She has a Master’s in Creative Writing from the IIML at Victoria University, where her supervisor was Cliff Fell, a 2017 Sarah Broom Poetry Prize finalist. She also has a Diploma in Publishing from Whitireia Polytech and a Master’s in English Literature from Auckland University. Her poems have appeared in journals including Sport, Turbine, Ika, and Sweet Mammalian.
Wes Lee is the author of Body, Remember (Eyewear Publishing, 2017), Shooting Gallery (Steele Roberts, 2016), and Cowboy Genes (Grist Books, University of Huddersfield Press, 2014). Her work has appeared in the Poetry New Zealand Yearbook 2018, New Writing Scotland, The London Magazine, Landfall, Poetry London, Irises: The University of Canberra Vice-Chancellor’s Poetry Prize Anthology 2017, and many other journals and anthologies. She has won a number of awards for her writing including the BNZ Katherine Mansfield Literary Award; the Short Fiction Writing Prize (University of Plymouth Press) and the Over the Edge New Writer of the Year Award in Galway. Wes is currently working on her third poetry collection, By the Lapels.
Robyn Maree Pickens is an art writer, poet, and curator. Her critical and creative work is centred on the relationship between aesthetic practices and ecological reparation. Robyn’s poetry has appeared in the Australian eco-poetic journal Plumwood Mountain (2018), and US journals Matador Review (2017), water soup (2017), and Jacket 2 (2017). Her most recent work was exhibited at ARTSPACE, Auckland in March 2018. Robyn’s poetry criticism has appeared in Rain Taxi (2018) and Jacket 2 (2018). Currently Robyn is a PhD candidate in ecological aesthetics in the English Department at the University of Otago, and an art reviewer for the Otago Daily Times, The Pantograph Punch, and Art News.
The four finalists will read from their work at the Sarah Broom Poetry Prize event at the Auckland Writers Festival on Sunday 20 May, 3.15-4.15pm. Guest judge Eileen Myles will introduce the finalists and announce the winner.
The judge:
Eileen Myles is an American poet and writer who has produced more than twenty volumes of poetry, fiction and other works. Their poetry collections includes I Must Be Living Twice (selected poems) and Not Me, and they are the author of Inferno, a novel detailing the hell of the life of the female poet. Myles has been awarded the Guggenheim Fellowship in nonfiction, four Lambda Book Awards, and numerous other awards and fellowships. Fellow novelist Dennis Cooper has described Myles as “one of the savviest and most restless intellects in contemporary literature”.
NZ Poetry Shelf 