Poetry Shelf noticeboard: Poetry Day event TODAY at Unity Books (WTN)
Leave a reply
Category Archives: Uncategorized
Poetry Shelf noticeboard: Vaughan Rapatahana reviews Wild Honey with small interview – plus a plug for WORD!
Full review here
Vaughan Rapatahana has just a posted a terrific feature on Wild Honey on Jacket2. I am usually doing the reviewing and posting so felt nervous being on the other end of the critique. Especially when I am in a cycle of terrible doubt about what I do and write, the state of the planet, the covid issues, the political game playing at home and abroad, about whether people read things any more. I wake in the night and worry about this.
I felt incredibly moved and restored by Vaughan’s engagement with the book – by his acknowledgement that this was an important arrival in view of a history of women poets in the shadows, by his considered attention. I send a bouquet of thankfulness.
I am reminded that books are an important part of who we are – and that we must do everything in our power to create them, publish and circulate them, review them, celebrate them, even challenge them if needed. Read and talk about them. Gift them!
This paragraph in particular moved me so much – there are people in the world building houses of knowledge, peace, forging multiple connective links:
I am immediately reminded of the work of Hirini Melbourne and his concept of whare whakairo, or a carved meeting house, whereby everything in and about this construction fits into and lends support, stability and splendour to every other component. The parallels are manifest. Granted that I am transposing women poets into his words, however Melbourne’s description of te whare whakairo rings out as so similar to Green’s own kaupapa in Wild Honey, namely, “The whare whakairo is … a place of shelter and peace. It is a place where knowledge is stored and transmitted and where the links with one’s past are made tangible … [it] is a complex image of the essential continuity between the past and present …” (Melbourne, 1991).
I also answered a few questions for the feature, after a run of wakeful nights with world and local worry, so my self-filter wasn’t on – I was answering from that secret-self-core that is private and wakes in the dark to dream, worry, invent and somehow find the truth.
Last year I did Wild Honey events throughout Aotearoa where women came and read, and I have never experienced anything like it. Such a strong feeling as younger and older writers made connections, different kinds of voices were heard together. I felt like I was holding something enormous that I created but that it got bigger than me as so many women told me what the book meant to them. It was overwhelming and it was wonderful.
I am due to do a Wild Honey event at the Word festival in Christchurch with a stunning group of women poets and I can’t wait. Come and say hello!
Poetry Shelf noticeboard: submissions now open for Oscen
‘Or do they? Humanity seeks purpose. We seek order, truth, belonging. In times past, we looked to myths and gods in order to explain the world to ourselves and to understand why we should continue to endure. In Joseph Campbell’s words: It has always been the prime function of mythology and rite to supply the symbols that carry the human spirit forward. Myths and religion are often seen in the western world today as something that only irrational fools would believe in — we have now science, empiricism, the provable world. We cast off the narratives that hindered us. What more could be left? Yet we make new gods to fill their places even though we don’t label them as such. We look to ideologies and technologies and new narratives that are meant to hand down to us the irrevocable truth, meant to build for us strong social structures, meant to take us into the next era of greatness. There’s a tight feedback loop between the gods we believe in and the societies we create, writes Aaron Z. Lewis of his 2019 pantheon of gods, which is why we must take seriously the metaphors we believe by.
So we want to know: what are the myths of today? How are they propelling us forward or holding us back? Have they changed from old, or is it that we’ve strayed from some true essence our ancestors knew? What purpose do they serve? What of the monsters, the supposed villains? Do they hold a clue in dismantling the binaries that our present narratives bind us to? What is the relationship between myth, reality, and subjectivity, and how do we tell? How do we retell? What are the personal stories that have saved you? What should the myths of tomorrow be? ‘
Full submission details for forthcoming issue of Oscen here
Poetry Shelf noticeboard: the launch of Ko Aotearoa Tātou/We Are New Zealand.
Otago University Press warmly invites you to celebrate the launch of Ko Aotearoa Tātou/We Are New Zealand.
This is a free event but requires registration, which can be done here
We apologise if this system has caused any distress. We have been advised there are now limited numbers of tickets available and sincerely hope you are able to secure a place at what promises to be a very special event.
When: Friday 30 October, 5pm to 6pm, followed by a reception from 6pm to 7pm
Where: TBS Space, Tūranga, 60 Cathedral Square, Christchurch
- This free event is part of WORD Christchurch Spring Festival 2020. Registration is required
Poetry Shelf celebrates te reo Māori
Te Henga, Waitākere
This week many of us have celebrated te reo Māori – I have listened and read and, as I listen and read, I try to imagine an Aotearoa where every child becomes fluent, where we hear and see and read te reo Māori everywhere, where we honour the whakapapa of Māori place names and pronounce them correctly. I support te reo Māori as essential learning in all schools.
When I failed school and left without UE I had no idea who and how I wanted to be, but I went to night school to learn te reo Māori. It was Whangārei. It was the 1970s. It was ban the bomb badges and women’s liberation groups. It was vegetarian food and Joni Mitchell retuning her guitar. It was discovering Hone Tuwhare in the high school library. But as much as I thought learning te reo Māori was important, it felt even more important to step back and give space and time to Māori to grow their language again.
A week celebrating te reo Māori is a wonderful thing. A year boosting it even more so. A decade, a lifetime. Language is so important. We are what we speak. Just as our multiple stories are important. That 17 year old young woman is carried inside me, now that I am an older woman, and it feels like I am being invited into the language nest. With small steps, without wanting to speak over or take over, I feel this warm and encouraging embrace. I will make mistakes, I will hear the rōreka, the kõrero. I feel my way as the seeds of a language are planted. Tēnã koutou.
Kia kaha te reo Māori.
I am learning to grow kūmara and potatoes
in my Waitākere garden,
learning to listen
learning to speak
learning to feel
learning to be
Poetry Shelf noticeboard: Love in the Time of Covid – call for submissions
Go here for information
Poetry Shelf noticeboard: Boosted campaign for Food Court Bookshop
We (Carolyn DeCarlo & Jackson Nieuwland) are opening a bookshop in Wellington that will feature exclusively books by independent publishers and small presses. This is an expansion of our project Food Court, a reading/zine series that we’ve been running for the past six years. Poetry will obviously be a big focus for us at the bookshop!
Go here to contribute
Poetry Shelf poets on poems: Rachel Lockwood on essa may ranapiri’s ‘she cut her face shaving’
‘She Cut Her Face Shaving’ essa may ranapiri
(from ransack, Victoria University Press, 2019)
essa may ranapiri’s work frequently explores the uncomfortable boundaries that exist in binary gender, and uses form and technique to push readers away from conventional approaches to both gender and poetry. Everything in their piece ‘she cut her face shaving’ works to push the reader towards a new space, from the vocabulary and imagery to the way the lines are arranged on the page.
The arrangement of the work on the page exemplifies the subtle ways that ranapiri affects the reader. Rather than proceeding straight down the page, ‘she cut her face shaving’ begins to drift right from the second line. The final shape evokes images that reflect those in the poem – the drip of blood, the curve of a neck- but also reflect a preoccupation with resisting convention. Throughout their collection ransack, words drift and explode across the page in varying arrangements. The visual aspect connects to the subject matter, which centres on ranapiri’s identity as a takatapui and non-binary individual. This poem is a microcosm of an effect found throughout this work- the reader’s eye is physically drawn away from conventional pattern, into a new space and shape that ranapiri has created.
Form and content collide again in the fifth line. Ending this line with the word testosterone is a confirmation of a non-cis experience that is only hinted at the beginning of the poem. Positioned at half-way, this line offers an opportunity to the reader to consider the first section in a new light, and prepares them for the impact of the second section. The deliberate use of pronoun immediately afterwards reinforces this transitionary moment. The pronoun use is sparing throughout this work, but rich with meaning, drawing connection between ownership and the body. The title itself gives context to the poem, ‘her chin’ positions the reader as an outsider in this situation. Garments and body parts that could be ascribed ownership are not, instead they become ‘the pencil skirt’, ‘the hair’, ‘the jaw’. Ownership appears again in this vital fifth line- ‘that testosterone/ bought her’. After this moment, both the Adam’s apple and the ‘lateness’ become hers again. The pronouns here own this experience, and are unafraid to do so.
The slash is a dominant feature of this poem, and serves multiple purposes. One that immediately pushes itself forward is the echo, again, of the ink on the page and the action of the work. Lines that are not broken up by the slash are broken up instead by the line break. Nothing goes on for longer than four words. These short, sharp lines, remind the reader of the pattern of shaving, the short strokes, and in one particularly poignant use – the ‘/cut/’ of hair seems at once to reference the ‘cut’ of the title. Additionally, it breaks the flow of the reader. There appears to be no particular rhythm to the slashes or line breaks, simply a disruption. The disruption to the face by the cut, perhaps, or the disruption to the presumed reader represented by a non-binary figure.
Another strong use of the slash is the way it abstracts the body. Every part of the body, down to the clothes being worn, have their own line. Here the body is represented not as a whole, but as separate pieces. The reader is invited to consider the way we read these pieces as masculine or feminine within the context of the poem and its title. The limited pronoun use works in conjunction with this, separating the pieces not only from each other, but also from a singular ownership of this body. Once this space between body and self is established, ranapiri jams the masculine and feminine together, setting the reader off balance. Gender has remained ambiguous before this moment, and could be intentionally misread to provide a more cis-normative view. ranapiri quashes this in the seventh line, bringing that all important ‘her adam’s apple’ into play. Immediately the subject of the poem comes into view, shedding new light on to the readers experience, and preparing us for the final two lines.
What all of these techniques have in common are the spaces both literal and figurative in the story. ranapiri seems to be again referencing the final part of their work. What is missed out, what we are ‘late’ to, preoccupies this poem, haunting every line and every sparing word. ranapiri creates in this work a space where identity can be celebrated and mourned in the same breath, the past and present as well as hopes for the future tumbled up together.
Rachel Lockwood
Rachel Lockwood is Hawke’s Bay born and bred but now living in Wellington and studying a BA at VUW. She was a 2019 National Schools Poetry Award finalist, and has previously been published in Starling.
You can hear Rachel read her poem in Starling 10 here
essa may ranapiri (Ngāti Raukawa/Tainui/Ngāti Takatāpui/Clan Gunn/Highgate) is a person or some shit / or whatever / they wrote a book of poems called ransack / it’s still in th world / the only time they use they/them pronouns for themselves is in these bios / isn’t that funny / thx goes out to their ancestors / who are as big as everything / just wow / just everything / they will write until they’re dead
Monday Poem: You can read essa’s poem ‘when i was born i didn’t say anything’ here
NZ Poetry Shelf 