This is an excellent programme with the usual eclectic array of NZ voices/writers.
Poetry at Going West:
Plus this little run of highlights:
And many more!
This year’s Going West programme is a poetry treat
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C. K. Stead’s farewell on his NZ Poet Laureate blog
A month from now the new Poet Laureate will be named and my two-year stint will conclude. I was more than pleased to be named Laureate, since poetry has been the centre of my writing life, the part of it I always returned to with most pleasure, that seemed the most demanding, and the most satisfying when it went well – and the award came at a time in life (I was 82) when an end to writing of any kind could not be too far away – so perhaps a rounding off, a kind of culmination, an honour I valued probably more than any other. Although I had a few direct requests for ‘a Laureate poem’, and responded to these, and of course more invitations than usual to appear at festivals and readings, there was nothing particularly demanding about the role unless you made it so; and since it’s my temperament to pursue what Yeats calls ‘the fascination of what’s difficult’, I have made a bit of a burden of the Laureate blog. I have not been, and still am not, ‘a blog person’. The literary blogs I had read seemed as often as not vehicles for malice and gossip, and I did not want to go down that path. I did them, rather, as literary exercises, thinking aloud about whatever poetry theme or bit of local literary history happened to be exercising my mind at that time. So they have become a collection of literary essays, loosely autobiographical, which I suppose at some point might be published as a book. There have been so few reactions to them that I have never been sure whether I have been talking to myself, or to a small roomful, or more; I’ve only been certain that the bigger world out there, the world of crowds and popular culture, was not listening. But if they are publishable together the effort has not been wasted. For those who have read and commented on them, my grateful thanks!
For the complete post and Karl’s series as Poet Laureate see here.
Poetry Shelf Winter Season: Cliff Fell off-piste
Cento: The Rose of Tralee
I began to investigate the world,
Tearing at something of the mystery of birds, calls,
And the blue and green of the riverbed.
Once, I read a story of killed horses.
It is copyrighted.
But when the huntsman knelt beside her,
A pistol in his hand,
The Rose of Tralee quivered like a quartertone,
Though soundless. A fountain of roses flowed from her head.
You don’t have to understand the tui’s song
To admire it. I was so much older then,
Though only a child –
It was bitter to say farewell to the earth so renewed,
Bitter to sing in chapel that week:
The body of each of us is your body, Lord.
Author note: I first wrote – or stumbled upon, really – ‘Cento: The Rose of Tralee’ in 2002, a significant year in my development as a poet. The making of the poem happened fast and involved a kind of trance-like going sideways out of my usual practice, a shift in direction or approach that certainly nudged me out of the comfort zones of my writing.
As its title indicates, the poem is a cento (of sorts), though when I was writing it, I did not yet know of the Latin form that lends its creative process an air of legitimacy. I think I was just experimenting with the possibilities of Eliot’s dictum about poets stealing and trying to make something better or ‘at least something different’ out of their thefts. So it was that one Sunday evening in that long, marvellous winter I was looking through a 1991 anthology of post WW2 eastern and central European poetry, The Poetry of Survival, edited by Daniel Weissbort. The poems are for the most part darkly moving, sometimes terrifying, born of the holocaust and the forging of the Iron Curtain. I think I was trying to find some translations of Slavko Mihalic by Charles Simic, as I was reading Simic at the time. I already knew the anthology well. It had been a bible of mine during the 1990’s, at a time when I was focused on extending my reading of 20th century poetry.
I can’t now remember exactly which line or poem set me off, but I suddenly began to wonder if I could make a poem by opening pages at random and selecting lines that caught my eye. By the time I’d come up with the key image, ‘Once I read a story of killed horses’ – a conflation of lines by Dan Pagis and Peter Huchel – I had invoked a childhood memory of a horse being shot. This was on a farm where I was working a summer job, aged 14. So, the narrative of The Rose of Tralee’s sad demise, her hoof trapped in a crevice, began to insert its voice into a solemn parade of lines that have their origins in poems by Nina Cassian, Paul Celan, Leopold Staff, Zbigniew Herbert, Czeslaw Milosz, Agnes Nemes Nagy. Others, maybe, that I cannot now trace. In a moment of light relief, ‘It is copyrighted’ was an amusing, ironic aside from the sixteenth canto of Hans Magnus Enzenberger’s ‘The Sinking of the Titanic’. As I tried to resolve the poem, as a nightingale transformed into a tui, I must have started casting my net wider. It seems clear to me now that ‘I was so much older then,’ must be a steal from Bob Dylan’s ‘My Back Pages’. How it got in there, I can’t quite remember, but it did.
Cliff Fell is working on a fourth book of poems.
From Paula: For Poetry Shelf’s Winter Season, I invited 12 poets to pick one of their own poems that marks a shift in direction, that is outside the usual tracks of their poetry, that moves out of character, that nudges comfort zones of writing. It might be subject matter, style, form, approach, tone, effect, motivation, borrowings, revelation, invention, experimentation, exclusions, inclusions, melody …. anything!
Last days for: 2017 NEW VOICES – Emerging Poets Competition is NOW OPEN for entries
Background details and entry forms are available
This year’s judge will be poet, writer Dr Maris O’Rourke.
Closing Date : August 1st.
The competition is open to current or former undergraduate (BA, Hons, BSc, BComm etc) or Masters student attending The University of Auckland, Auckland University of Technology, Manukau Institute of Technology and Massey University (Albany Campus, Auckland only)
The winners will be announced at the Divine Muses Reading held on National Poetry Day, Friday August 25th at the St Paul Street Gallery, AUT.
Details here
Poetry Shelf Winter Season: Johanna Emeney off-piste
Shaken Down
In the hospital corridor,
the one two of my shoes
on hard lino,
then something
sounds broken—
a thermometer—
I have left people here
in rooms
and cabinets.
They’ve gone cold
in others’ hands.
The spine of me
spills
into so many
ball bearings…
Orderlies wheel
prone passengers.
Nurses pass
with busy eyes,
until one pauses
to put on gloves,
coveralls, booties.
She sticks up a sign
[DANGER HAZARDOUS SUBSTANCE]
and calls
for a flashlight,
holds it at an angle
to find beads of me-
rcury lodged in cracks
between wall and floor.
Without a fuss
she gathers masking tape,
an eyedropper,
index cards,
and uses them to
corral what is herdable
into new glass tubing.
Her cards say:
MY MOTHER DIED
WHEN I WAS YOUNG TOO, LOVE
What miracle
to approach
naked breakage,
to chase it unafraid,
gather it up
and talk it back down
to something
resembling normal.
©Johanna Emeney, Family History, Mākaro Press, 2017
Author note: “Shaken down” grew from two ideas rattling about—a fresh one and a memory:
1) A friend told me that one of the first jobs nurses learn is to shake down a thermometer.
2) I kept thinking of a nurse who had been exceptionally kind to me on the night my mother was killed. This nurse, probably about twenty years my senior, told me about losing her own mother, and how it had affected her.
This is the first poem I wrote that departs from naturalism, moving towards a very minor kind of magical realism. To start with, I was just trying to recapture the experience of walking alone down a hospital corridor, having lost my mother in a car accident, my father still in the ICU. The huge loneliness and disbelief still felt such that they called for more than a realist presentation. The broken thermometer, leaking its apparently irretrievable, noxious mercury, the I-speaker, her spine turning liquid and draining out of her body—together, they were what it was like.
The nurse in the poem who executes practical measures in tidying up the mess (I had to google “how to clean up a small Mercury spill”) is supposed to symbolise that beautiful truth about good nurses—their ability to balance the medical and the personal so adeptly.
Had I not ventured into territory more fantastical than my norm, I think the poem would have been sentimental and lacked emotional verisimilitude. That would have been a shame, because to express gratitude genuinely, you can’t sound mawkish or trite—in real life or in a poem.
Johanna Emeney’s two books of poetry are Apple & Tree (Cape Catley, 2011) and Family History (Mākaro Press, 2017). In 2018, Ibidem Press will publish her academic textbook The Rise of Autobiographical Medical Poetry and The Medical Humanities, based on her doctoral study, and she is currently working a chapter on poetry for Routledge’s Companion to Literature and Disability. Jo has a background in English Literature, Japanese and Education—subjects she read at Pembroke College, Cambridge. She works as a tutor at Massey University, Auckland, and co-facilitates the Michael King Young Writers Programme with Rosalind Ali.
From Paula: For Poetry Shelf’s Winter Season, I invited 12 poets to pick one of their own poems that marks a shift in direction, that is outside the usual tracks of their poetry, that moves out of character, that nudges comfort zones of writing. It might be subject matter, style, form, approach, tone, effect, motivation, borrowings, revelation, invention, experimentation, exclusions, inclusions, melody …. anything!
Invitation to launch of Luminescent by Nina Powles
The latest Starling: fresh young voices, new poems by Chris Tse and a Bill Manhire interview
The Starling Issue 4
Ok, I am a big fan of this.
This is an excellent issue. Featured writer, Chris Tse’s poems are rich in direction and effect.
Most importantly, the editors are adept at selecting fresh young voices that make you hungry for poetry (and short fiction ) and what words can do. I was going to single a few out – but I love them all! Eclectic, energising, electric, effervescent.
Bill’s interview is a good read:
On rhyme: ‘On the other hand I think sound patterns are at the heart of poetry – they tug words away from meaning and towards music. And one bizarre thing is that the need to find a rhyming word can force you to move in directions you might not have otherwise imagined. Rhyme can make you surprise yourself.’
On needing a dose of humour: ‘The greatest danger for poets is self-importance. Some poets really do believe themselves to be wiser and more perceptive than the rest of the human race.’
On getting students to bring poems by published poets to share in class: ‘The main thing would be that no one in the class would have their minds made up beforehand; or be trying to bypass the poem in order to find out ‘what teacher thinks’. It’s much better for the students to bypass the teacher and get to know the poem directly. Paradoxically, a good teacher can help this happen.’
Poetry Shelf Winter Season: Courtney Sina Meredith off-piste
Uprising
Please be
an uprising
scissor my
black lace
indicate
be light
I’m scared of losing my faith
in people
/
I’m scared of losing my face
/
when I look into silver
your lips kiss all the shit away
I want an electric guitar
with a big circle amp
someone beautiful could sit there
& fuss over me
I like controlling the sea from my bedroom
bleeding & tearing the moon
I like howling at my octopus tits
one in every room
I’m a virgin
framed
a baby grand
next to mops and brooms
please keep calling me
so I can watch
your name flash angry blue
/
a storm
under my pillow
/
electric lines smile in the sky
with my smallest finger
in the smallest hour
I trace the maze
you were good at holding me
when the rain had nobody to fall on
you were good at knowing
souls from bodies
I still wear my organs like 80s leather
I still hear your voice in the corner be light be light
©Courtney Sina Meredith
Author note: I was 22 when I wrote this and in a lot of pain, I had no idea what was ahead of me, ignorance really is bliss. Months later I would undergo my first major operation and my endometriosis would be confirmed. I was channeling ancestors and trashing lovers and asking myself to keep on giving when I really felt like there was nothing left to give.
Courtney Sina Meredith is a poet, playwright, fiction writer and musician based in Auckland. She’s held a number of international writers’ residencies including the prestigious Fall Residency at the University of Iowa. In 2012 Meredith published her first book of poems, Brown Girls in Bright Red Lipstick, and in 2016 launched a collection of short stories, Tail of the Taniwha, with Beatnik Publishing.
Courtney Sina Meredith, 2017 Arts Queensland Poet in Residence, will talk to Annie Te Whiu of Queensland Poetry Festival about her poetry, and the importance of place and politics in her writing, see here.
From Paula: For Poetry Shelf’s Winter Season, I invited 12 poets to pick one of their own poems that marks a shift in direction, that is outside the usual tracks of their poetry, that moves out of character, that nudges comfort zones of writing. It might be subject matter, style, form, approach, tone, effect, motivation, borrowings, revelation, invention, experimentation, exclusions, inclusions, melody …. anything!
Writers on Monday poet & essayist Marianne Boruch
Would anyone like to write this up for Poetry Shelf – for those of us sorry to miss it?
31 July The Little Death of Self: Marianne Boruch
American poet Marianne Boruch notes that ‘Both poetry and the essay come from the same impulse—to think about something and at the same time, see it closely, carefully, and enact it.’ A recent poetry collection Cadaver, Speak, sees her in the dissection room considering the ravages and resilience of the body, and in her new essay collection The Little Death of Self, Boruch’s restless curiosity ranges across science, music, medicine and art, asking questions such as ‘Why does the self grow smaller as the poem grows enormous?’ She is joined by poet and essayist Chris Price to explore how her poetry and essays approach the big topics of love, death and human knowledge.
Event runs from 12.15 to 1.15pm, Te Papa Marae,
Level 4, Te Papa
ADMISSION IS FREE, ALL WELCOME
Please note that no food
may be taken onto the Te Papa Marae
More from Poetry & the Essay Conference
Poet essayist Marianne Boruch at Writers on Mondays
Those of you in or near Wellington next Monday (31 July) will likely want to get yourselves along to this Writers on Monday session which looks like it will be right up our alley.
The Little Death of Self: Marianne Boruch
American poet Marianne Boruch notes that ‘Both poetry and the essay come from the same impulse—to think about something and at the same time, see it closely, carefully, and enact it.’ A recent poetry collection Cadaver, Speak, sees her in the dissection room considering the ravages and resilience of the body, and in her new essay collection The Little Death of Self, Boruch’s restless curiosity ranges across science, music, medicine and art, asking questions such as ‘Why does the self grow smaller as the poem grows enormous?’ She is joined by poetry and creative nonfiction convenor Chris Price to explore how her poetry and essays approach the big topics of love, death and human knowledge.
The Writers on Mondays events are open to the public and free of charge.
12:15pm to 1:15pm, 31 July 2017
Te Papa Marae, Level 4, Te Papa, Wellington
Find out more about Marianne Boruch on the Poetry Foundation website
Conference subtitle
You may also notice that the conference has now acquired a subtitle: Form and Fragmentation. While reading through all the wonderful proposals we have received and attempting to draft a programme, we came to realise that form and fragmentation was one of the key themes that was emerging. We’re sure it will be the topic of many interesting discussions.
Conference programme coming soon
We are delighted and overwhelmed by the proposals we’ve received – more than can possibly fit into a three-day unstreamed conference. We’re working on the programme and trying to include as much as we can. If you’ve submitted a proposal, we’ll be in touch soon.
We’ve decided to delay opening registrations until we’ve published the programme. We’re so excited – it’s going to be amazing!
Our mailing address is:
Dr Anna Jackson
School of English, Film, Theatre and Media Studies
Victoria University of Wellington
PO Box 600
Wellington 6140
New Zealand
NZ Poetry Shelf 