Category Archives: Uncategorized

A week of poems: Anne Kennedy’s ‘Island Bay has a new sea wall’

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Island Bay has a new sea wall

 

 

The old sea wall was so grey

The new sea wall is so grey

 

The old sea wall was heavy as plutonium

The new sea wall is warm under my hand

 

Boats in the bay were from a painting

Boats in the bay wiggle their hips,

no-rhythm, they’re

white and nerdy

 

Old sea wall

New sea wall

 

Old sea wall met the sea like a fist bump.

Hello! Why, hello.

New sea wall fits with the sea

like lovers spooning

on and off

 

The old sea wall was a statue of a wall

The air trembles with sand and salt and light

 

There was the storm, the ravage, the pieces

 

Old sea wall was so Marguerite Duras

New sea wall is so Marguerite Duras

 

Old sea wall

New sea wall

 

Was curved like a public bar and Italian

fishermen leaned on it smoking

looking out to sea

New sea wall is so straight

glittering in the sun

 

Old sea wall was so wall

New sea wall is so new

 

After the storm the city council wanted

no wall at all!

Because all things

 

Old sea wall was so sea levels

New sea wall is so sea levels

 

The pieces, the people, the fight

 

Old sea wall was so gonesville

New sea wall is so concrete

so warm and gritty

island and sea

 

Old sea

New sea

 

 

©Anne Kennedy

 

 

 

 

 

A week of poems: Airini Beautrais’s ‘North Mole’

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North Mole

 

We see Kupe climb out of his car

at the North Mole, pull his wetsuit

hood over his head, place foot after foot

on the sharp rocks towards where we are.

Hey man, he says, as he reaches the sand.

He’s given up on the gym –

it doesn’t motivate him.

He has more of a surfer’s mind. And the band?

Yeah, yeah, his music is going well.

He times his movements to the swell;

so many things could lie beyond the roll

of water, out past the end of the mole.

And each wave curling in to the shore

is like the sea saying what are you waiting for?

 

©Airini Beautrais

A week of poems: Joan Fleming’s ‘The mattress’

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The mattress

 

The mattress

dumped

several hot

winters ago

on the dune

is a fantastical

ruin

postgraduate

art students

fevering

in the coastal

cities

with their backs

to the reddirt

desert

the thing

is being

eaten by

fantasise

of making

such an object

with its look

of casual

devastation

its tessellate

padding

its industrial

stitching

its coil

and cushion

insides

rupturing

gorgeously

its once-

whiteness

scuppered

its purpose

brindling

its sense of history

dense

yet

without

statement

(perfect)

anything

is possible

in the white

cube

of the gallery

(not so much

in Nyirripi

Yuendumu

Papunya

Kintore)

between

the sorry

camp

and the

kardiya

houses

Art Mattress

disintegrates

and convolutes

without

audience

back at camp

the wire

bedframe

serves

as a butcher’s table

then later

we sleep

on it

 

©Joan Fleming

 

 

 

A week of poems: Joan Fleming’s ‘The kids’

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Thousand apologies but I had to take this poem down as I couldn’t get the format right on the blog (crazy to have tried!) and my screen shots didn’t work in all browsers.

I am posting another fabulous Joan-Fleming poem instead.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A week of poems: Helen Rickerby’s ‘Thoughts while waiting next to the Katherine Mansfield statue, Midland Park, Wellington ‘

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Thoughts while waiting next to the Katherine Mansfield statue, Midland Park, Wellington

Robot Katherine Mansfield
I am tired, and I want to slide
my hand into your elongated hand
clutch your smooth, chilled fingers
like a drowning girl
I am sure you would take me somewhere:
we’ll fly to Paris, perhaps, before the war, or
some raggy party in London, circa 1908
Or we could just wheel around the harbour like gulls
You could show me the house by the bay
and I won’t tell you it was damaged in one of those storms
(you already know)
Or are you tired too, from standing there
in all this weather?
Shall we just head to Fontainebleau
and we can lie down on those Persian carpets
rest our heads and close our eyes
just for a moment

©Helen Rickerby

 

 

A week of poems: Chris Tse’s ‘Notes for Taylor Swift, should she ever write a song about me’

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Notes for Taylor Swift, should she ever write a song about me

 

I look for men like I look for nouns, though

I have very little use for them once I find them.

I write out their names like blank cheques

and put my trust in their honesty. I revise

my lists until I have no time to action them.

Yes, they’re meant to be an efficient exercise

in compartmentalisation, but there’s always

something I’ve overlooked so I rip them up

and start again. Like they say—once more

with feeling! I lack the mechanics to say no,

but I do have the common sense to run away

from falling pianos. Some men I’ve loved

have lacked that initiative. I’m destined

to be a poster boy without a cause,

without a slogan. But you can at least

give me a chance, right? Make me a hit song

for the ages—the last great crossover ballad.

 

©Chris Tse

 

 

 

A week of poems: Nick Ascroft’s ‘Cheap Present’

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Cheap Present
A young mum with a trolley tries to barter
with the Warehouse staff, says yeah her pinus
radiata breadbox took a jolt
and scratched the upper half a bit. They take
her with a pinch of salt, and call the guard.

A skimping hard case writes a cheque, and now
the Black & Decker he can get himself.

The teen who works the checkout beeper watches
all the crud that’s destined for the tip
flood past: a jersey with a little rip,
a spatula, a fishy aftershave
to keep a bachelor a bachelor,

a plastic sword, a power board, some bran.
The checkout chick nicks something for her man.

 

© Nick Ascroft

 

 

 

A week of poems: Kiri Piahana-Wong’s ‘For Michelle’

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For Michelle

 

You have receded against the far

horizon. It’s been three months

since you left, I can barely make

out the shape of the vessel you

sailed away on. I lie in my garden

and I grieve. Nothing seems to

thrive, not the flowers, not the

vegetable plants. Sometimes I

go to the shore and look out.

I think I can see you, surely

you are just there, surely

you haven’t left yet, it’s too

early, did no-one tell you?

I know now that’s what

happened. You forgot to

read the timetable, you didn’t

realise, Oh yes, the time to

catch this ship is years from now,

I have all the time in the world.

 

©Kiri Piahana-Wong

 

A week of poems: Emma Neale’s “‘So Sang a Little Clod of Clay'”

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‘So Sang a Little Clod of Clay’

William Blake

 

When it hurts, but she doesn’t say;

when it dulls, but he still gives praise.

 

When she bites, but he refuses rage

and he walks free, yet she stays.

 

When they wait through blunt dismay

although they ache as the children play

 

this is tread and bootgrind

this is hope’s hard labour

this is the heart’s ripe savour

this is the sting of healing

this is the rope of time —

 

and love is dust

ignited

in fleet, golden murmuration.

 

©Emma Neale

 

 

 

A week of poems: Albert Wendt’s ‘New Coat’

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New Coat

 

This late summer morning is learning how to breathe

while Reina embroiders on the lanai shaded by our rainbow umbrella

 

Pete and Willie of Villa Magic have taken five weeks to burn

scrape and sand off our villa’s century-old skin  and replace it

 

In the kowhai a lone cicada’s love call sounds like the imperious

snapping of fingers ordering our villa to rise up

in its new coat of iceberg white

 

and plum trimmings: its radiance will wrap round Reina’s

fingers and needle

and the morning will breathe in admiration

 

© Albert Wendt April 2014