Poetry Shelf Monday poem: 15.3.19

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15.3.19

 

 

This poem can hold the sky for you to see

you will fall into the wide blue of hope

and the wide blue of the next day and the day before

 

and you will see beauty and you will pause

at the sight of the plunging kereru

 

but this poem is different because it struggles to hold

 

the surge of grief and the loss of words so so

so poetry feels helpless because

 

what good a poem in the face of massacre

what good a poem against the home made unsafe

what good a poem in my white skin

what good a poem when my skin is crying

what good a poem when we feel so bad

what good a poem for the bereft families

what good a poem when life’s fabric changes

what good a poem for intolerance

what good a poem against the racist taunt

what good a poem when mothers fathers

grandparents children friends are dead

 

or when the Muslim family is detained at the airport

or when the young girl in hijab is abused on her way to school

or when a detained Muslim poet shares his dream

or when you are told to go back where you came from

 

which is here

which is home

which is where

your children

are born

 

and so and so

this poem is holding out you     a fragile pronoun

not knowing who will fit and who will agree

you and you and you and we are in mourning

 

and so and then

when our children marched for the good of the planet

and when we will all march for the good of the planet

and when we will all march and we will all speak for the good

of the beating heart of the planet which is you and you and we

 

and I am writing heart and we will keep writing heart

because the heart of the planet depends on

kindness and respect and love and open arms

 

and in this surge of tears and voices speaking

as we stand and sit and bow and pray in solidarity

and I hear National Radio

and I cannot stop listening

to Mohamed Hassan’s podcasts

 

and a Sikh taxi driver speaks of human solidarity

and a Muslim looks at his neighbours laying flowers

and they are all lost for words and he speaks

and the white flowers are laid and the family gathers

and the families gather and a nation gathers

and candles are lit and vows are made to

 

make this place home to make this our home and to

stand against racism and this is yes you and you and your

and we are heart to heart and I am holding out words

yes these words after making salty bread and spreading butter

and trying to move through the day and writing words

like white flowers like a wreath of sadness

like human warmth like human peace like hope for we

 

 

Paula Green

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Poetry Shelf Friday talk: Johanna Aitchison on anagram poems

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Anagram Poems

 

Like many obsessions, my preoccupation with anagrams began by accident. I am writing my doctoral thesis at the moment, and had been struggling with my topic: alter egos in elliptical poetry. To put it bluntly: all of the alter ego poetry that I was writing for the creative section of my thesis was terrible; not so terrible that it was not even recognisable as poetry, but that uglier low level kind of terrible you get when you’re mining an area that has been all mined out and the work that results is simply boring. So I was on the lookout for inspiration, trawling for ideas that were more interesting than my thesis “starter idea”, when U.S. poet Dora Malech’s latest collection of poetry, Stet (2018), landed on our veranda in an Amazon package. My first thought on reading the poems was, “Huh?”; second thought, “What even is this?”; and then a series of thoughts that tumbled out on top of each other such as, “How does she do this?” “This is amazing!”, and “Wow, I’m so jealous, I wanna write anagram poems, too.”

Stet is a book of poetry which is composed primarily of anagrams, with a side of erasures. Malech states that she is influenced by the German artist and poet, Urnica Zurn, who wrote a series of vivid and disquieting anagram poems in the 1950s, as well as the French school of poetry Oulipo, which uses various restrictive forms to enable creativity, of which the anagram is one.

Thus began my obsession with this form–and the way that you can mine a single sentence or word or, in the case of the third section of Malech’s book, an entire poem (she writes a series of poems which are anagrams of the Sylvia Plath poem “Metaphors”)–and resulting questions (some of which Malech explores in Stet), such as:  How can lyric subjectivity survive within such a tight machine? Is this kind of poetry too sterile and fragmented to really connect with a reader? I am at the beginnings of my explorations in this area, so don’t have any firm answers yet. But writing anagram poems (in which, for example, an entire poem may be made out of a single line, re-arranged) is kind of like build-your-own-nightmare. You get to choose the particular brand of nightmare, and that ambit of it, but within very tight parameters. To put it more another way, it’s like performing back flips in a very tight space; but if you pull it off, the thrill is real.

 

Johanna Aitchsion

 

 

Johanna Aitchison is a doctoral student at Massey University, Palmerston North, examining anagrams and erasures in hybrid poetry. Her most recent volume of poems, Miss Dust (Seraph Press, 2015), was described by reviewer Sarah Quigley as “Emily Dickinson for the 21st century”. Her poetry has appeared in anthologies such as Best New Zealand Poems 2008 and 2009, and Best of Best New Zealand Poems (2011). She was a 2015 resident at the International Writing Program at the University of Iowa and the 2012 Visiting Artist at Massey University.

 

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Poetry Shelf noticeboard: First ever anthology of Waikato poets launches

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LAUNCH – BROWSERS BOOKSHOP VICTORIA STREET HAMILTON SUNDAY 31st March at 4.00 pm.

All very welcome. Many contributors will read their poems and copies will be available to purchase. Refreshments available.

 

 

 

 

 

Poetry Shelf noticeboard: Poetry at AWF 2019

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Find more poetry and the AWF programme here.

I want to congratulate Anne O’Brien for showcasing poetry to such a degree and for always paying attention to New Zealand/ Aotearoa poets and spoken word performers.

Brava!

 

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Anne Michaels – among other things – is currently Toronto’s Poet Laureate, and her latest collection of poems All We Saw has garnered rave reviews.

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Hughes’ debut poetry collection Gathering Evidence was similarly feted, winning The Irish Times Shine/Strong Award, and making it on to several shortlists including the NZ Post Book Award for Poetry.

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Counting Patti Smith among his fans, poet and performer Luke Wright presents an hour of his best poems, in which he struggles with Brexit, doubt, duty and channels half-cut nights spent shouting impotently at the telly, namely at the BBC’s Question Time.

 

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includes  Friday Poem readings, and short poems with sweet cookies from The Receptionist coffee kiosk – all presented by an array of the writing great and good. Join Michele A’Court, Aroha Awarau, Gina Cole, Elaine Castillo, Avi Duckor-Jones, Emma Espiner, Steff Green, Kirsty Gunn, Karyn Hay, Chessie Henry, Dominic Hoey, Jeffrey Paparoa Holman, Chloe Honum, Nathan Joe, Stephanie Johnson, Kelly Joseph, Simone Kaho, Ahi Karunaharan, Erik Kennedy, Renee Liang, Lana Lopesi, Nic Low, Vana Manasiadis, Liam McIlvanney, Courtney Sina Meredith, Karlo Mila, Tze Ming Mok, Emma Neale, Bob Orr, Ruby Porter, Tess Redgrave, Isa Pearl Ritchie, Victor Rodger, Nick Sheppard, Carl Shuker, Damian Skinner, Michael Steven, Tayi Tibble, Jamie Trower, Kirsten Warner, Ian Wedde, Lisa Williams, Annabel Wilson, and Ashleigh Young

a feast of poets in this lot!!

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MC’d by Grace Taylor, each poet takes turns to riff off the final line of the previous poem. Featuring Kyla Dela Cruz, Stevie Davis-Tana, Carrie Rudzinski, Dietrich Soakai, and Jahra Wasasala.

 

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Bob Orr and Jeffrey Paparoa Holman   

 

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Judge and award-winning poet, novelist and essayist Anne Michaels invites the three selected finalists to read before announcing this year’s winner.      

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Bruce Ansley (Wild Journeys), Patrick deWitt (French Exit), Gregory Kan (Under Glass) and Ruby Porter (Attraction)

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includes Ockham NZ Book Awards shortlisted poet Helen Heath (Are Friends Electric?)

 

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Join US-Filipina novelist Elaine Castillo (America Is Not The Heart) and New Zealanders Isa Pearl Ritchie (Fishing for Māui), Tayi Tibble (shortlisted for the Ockham NZ Book Awards for Poūkahangatus) and Sugar Magnolia Wilson (Because A Woman’s Heart is Like a Needle at the Bottom of the Ocean)

Poetry Shelf noticeboard: Verse Us 3 featuring Daren Kamali and other guests

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BACK AGAIN BY POPULAR DEMAND! VERSE US 3 LIVE POETRY with Special Guest Daren Kamali Also featuring Fiona Stevens Ivy Alvarez Vana Manasiadis…

Poetry Shelf noticeboard: Bob Orr reading in Kāpiti

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Bob Orr will be reading poetry in Kāpiti

Sunday 31 March. It’s 4-6pm, open mic first (one poem each) $5 cover charge.

Robert Harris Cafe, Coastlands Mall, Paraparaumu. New Venue.

 

 

 

 

Poetry Shelf Classic Poem: Therese Lloyd picks Dinah Hawken

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Talking to a Tree Fern

 

1.

 

You’re not ashamed of your past.

It hangs there in rust-coloured layers

and you curve out of it

fully at ease.

 

2.

 

Behind you the bay

sports expensive speed boats. More and more

they force their vibrations right up

your root-tips.

 

3.

 

You used to live here with other natives.

Now willows and poplars flickering gold

have proudly established themselves.

 

4.

 

I’ve heard you discussed as an item

of our international trade. They

conceive of you standing in each

pebble garden of suburban Los Angeles.

 

5.

 

The man at the back

has asked how much I care about you.

He says you impede his view.

 

6.

 

In the bush near here

you gather in tight bunches

your pasts hanging down and spreading

over the ground like soft mats.

I want to crawl under there

I need to know what you’re chatting about.

 

7.

 

Rowing out as usual

to the calmest part of the lake

I hear a chain-saw preening itself

and sense the spikes stiffening on your trunks.

 

8.

 

Once I saw you at a Marist Centre

stiff and brittle like an empty erection,

no fronds, no flow.

Mary was cramped into a grotto nearby

totally into pleasing God.

 

9.

 

I was just wondering whether

Christ had risen again this year or not

(Good Friday was April Fool’s Day)

when I saw three fantails fooling around

in your fronds, in the rain.

 

10.

 

Under your dark arms

that night with no moon

I decided to let my life

climb up quietly

like the rata on your trunk.

 

11.

 

It leans so superbly

your long black trunk

perhaps it is frightening

the man at the back.

 

12.

 

Suddenly, in the city,

staked into a neat fence

you poke out your black tongue.

Keep coming and coming

back into my life.

 

 

©Dinah Hawken, from It Has No Sound and Is Blue, VUP 1987

 

 

Therese Lloyd writes:

“Talking to a Tree Fern”, like so many of Dinah Hawken’s poems, is one of those gentling breathing poems that I find myself returning to again and again. Despite the quiet, contemplative place this poem smooths out for the reader, it is also studded with glorious sparks of irony and cynicism. But make no mistake, this is also a fiercely political and feminist poem.

Broken into twelve discrete stanzas, each one acts like a tiny meditation, similar to a haiku, that brings the reader right into the present. The sections create a natural pause after each one before moving on to the next.

Part of the immense appeal of this poem is the way Hawken seamlessly weaves together such hefty concerns as spirituality, the natural environment, sexuality, patriarchy, and capitalism.

The fourth section for example, reads:

 

I’ve heard you discussed as an item

of our international trade. They

conceive of you standing in each

pebble garden of suburban Los Angeles.

 

While Hawken’s relationship with her tree fern is personal, here she ends each line with a distancing word, a way to remind her reader of the commodity humans have made of the earth.

The poem is also gorgeously sensual. Words like ‘curve’, ‘flickering’, ‘soft’, and ‘leans’, are peppered throughout. But then there’s the striking simile in Section 8 that always stops me in my tracks: ‘stiff and brittle like an empty erection’. It always makes me wonder, is this a sexy poem? I think it is. There’s Mary, that once pregnant virgin of course, ‘totally into pleasing God’, and the repetition and urgency of the final two lines, ‘Keep coming and coming/ back into my life’, have an undeniably seminal urge behind them.

Poems that resonate with me are the ones that change with each reading. Reading this poem now as a 44-year-old woman is a completely different experience to the one I had when I first read it in my 20s. Back then I was attracted to the poem’s gentle touch, the soft earth that the speaker wants to crawl under. When I read it now, in the light of huge global events such as #Me Too movement, and children marching for climate change, I’m inspired by its quiet bravery. Dinah Hawken’s poems have always found fascination in the way the natural world shapes our everyday human consciousness, and this poem is a brilliant example of that. But its power is in its gentle but firm insistence. Like the fern in the poem, it pokes out its tongue at us.

 

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Therese Lloyd is the author of the chapbook many things happened (Pania Press, 2006), Other Animals (VUP, 2013) and The Facts (VUP, 2018). The Facts has been shortlisted for the 2019 Ockham New Zealand Book Awards.

Dinah Hawken’s first book, It has no Sound and is Blue, won the 1987 Commonwealth Poetry Prize for ‘Best First Time Published Poet’. Her seven subsequent collections include Oh There You Are Tui: Selected Poems and her most recent, There is no harbour, (2019). Four of her books have been shortlisted for the New Zealand book awards. In 2007 Dinah was named the winner of the biennial Lauris Edmond Award for Distinguished Contribution to Poetry in New Zealand. She now lives in Paekakariki on the Kapiti Coast.

 

Poetry Shelf review of There is no harbour

Vitoria University Press author page