Felt(Massey University Press, 2021) is Johanna Emeney’s third poetry collection, following Apple & Tree (Cape Catley, 2011) and Family History (Mākaro Press, 2017). Her nonfiction writing focuses on poetry and the medical humanities, and poetry and disability. Jo has a background in English Literature, Japanese and Education. She is a senior tutor at Massey University, Auckland. Jo and her husband David share a few acres with their cats, goats and ponies.
Kay McKenzie Cooke’s fourth poetry collection was published by The Cuba Press in June 2020 and is titled Upturned. She lives and writes in Ootepoti / Dunedin.
A while ago the world seemed unbearably bleak and dark, and whenever the world seems bleak and dark, an idea unexpectedly falls into my head like rescue remedy. I had bought a bundle of UK poem booklets that came with an envelopes from the wonderful McLeods Bookshop in Palmerston North on my Wild Honey tour. Each featured ten poems on a theme and I loved the idea of sending one to someone just when they needed a poem boost (The Women’s Bookshop in Auckland stocks them I see). My rescue remedy was to host a season of themes over autumn and winter – with me picking poems but also inviting some poets to send poems and suggestions. The response has been overwhelming. Rescue remedy de luxe!
I wanted the presence of the theme to range from subtle to loud so I struggled over the preposition in the title. It might be a poem after or towards or with or from or by or under or hinting at a theme. Not necessarily about! It might simply be a single word resonating. A cameo appearance. I had 15 themes, but Alison Wong suggested ‘Light’, and Hinemoana Baker suggested ‘Land’, so 17 poetry themes will be appearing over the coming months.
If this had been for a print anthology, I would have spent several years reading and selecting, going to libraries, bookshops, agonising, agonising, agonising. But my rescue-remedy plan meant staying at home and returning to my vast New Zealand poetry collection which as you can imagine after Wild Honey is rich in women’s books. I felt like I wanted to do a whole book on each theme so many poems sung out.
Thank you to everyone who has contributed to my rescue remedy. It means a lot. You cannot imagine what a delight it has been to return to books I have loved over the past decades and to savour new poems sent me. To feel poetry work its magic.
Ten poems about clouds
The Sky
The sky thinks it is a flock of birds.
Then it thinks it is a cloud.
It also thinks it is widespread words.
Sometimes it looks up at the stars,
imagining other skies,
and sometimes down at the water
where it thinks it sees more stars.
At such times it believes itself to be a god.
But no such luck, poor sky! Soon enough
it is saying hello sir and madam
what a nice day it’s turning out to be
and can you perhaps spare a dollar,
thank you, thank you kindly. The sky
can still hold a small cloud in its hands.
Today it does so, and it rains.
It held our old home that way, too,
awkward and vertical and cold –
the snow caught fire as each day died.
But yes, it is safer here on the flat.
A man comes by with coal in a wheelbarrow,
muttering, muttering. He wants
to sell us warmth, his feet don’t leave the ground.
We think that we will always miss the sky.
It says look up whenever we look down.
Bill Manhire
from Wow, Victoria University Press, 2020
The Sky as a Metaphor for Everything
We can’t tell if the sky is clinging
to night or happy to welcome this new morning—
everything in this existence wrapped up and encapsulated
in the changing colours and how we constantly remark on clouds’
silly, ever-shifting shapes, how fast they travel, and so on.
Truthfully, we hate how light always wins
in the sky, in rooms, in movies where it’s a stand-in
for goodness— but never in our real lives.
Though our eyes do adjust eventually, and we get by—
like the sun rising in the morning in the sky.
Jane Arthur
from Craven Victoria University Press
Clouds
roll
south of the volcanoes.
You cut mushroom gills
soft as moth wings
that fluttering in the belly.
Bread rising on the water tank,
look out to patchy light
on the hills — moving.
Try to forget the names
of everything and call
them out new like rain
dropping on lava.
Steam born and gone
in the same instant.
A thought of one
you still look up to see
isn’t there.
Morgan Bach
in JAAM 33, 2015
Long White Clouds
all anyone ever does around here is / grow weed and stare / into burnt-
out houses / into the rabbit hole / into the cards / into the skin /
and roll their cars / their eyes / their r’s / their cigarettes / and kick
snow / kick rugby balls / kick each other / kick bad habits / only to
find another / like an eel / in the creek / in the backyard / in the
dark / in winter / and try to kill it on the rocks / chase the girls /
in a shed / a bathtub / a bed / with wet fingers / eyes / tongues /
and T-shirts / from spilled beer / spilled cum / spilled blood / spilled
secrets / bad boys / with bad skin / bad tattoos / and bad reputations /
because here / all anyone ever does is / swear / across their hearts /
at referees / at other drivers / taking to the road / cos all anyone
ever wants around here is / out / of home / of the closet / of the
relationship / of the sixth-storey window / open it / to the cold / to
the clouds / to the sky / cos all anyone ever does around here is / dive /
Tayi Tibble
from Poūkahangatus, Victoria University Press, 2018, picked by Amy Brown
Spelling Out Goodbye
“This doesn’t seem to be working,” he said quietly, “Perhaps we should try it another way. “Like this!” He split his shoes, laughed all the way to the top of the roof. “The plane will be coming soon,” he said, “Before that, would you help me out and make me a cheese sandwich?”
“Cheese,” said she, “Of course.” She clattered off like a train carriage. When she returned he was snuggled up on the nearest cloud with his breath spelling out hello goodbye. He left his pocketknife in his pocket, stuffed stars by hand into black-eyed plastic bags. He said catch as he floated them down to her.
Johanna Aitchison
in Miss Dust, Seraph Press, 2015
Couple
(after Magritte)
The couple with clouds in their heads
are just outlines cut into a wall
so what you’re seeing is what’s behind
on cloudy days it’s clouds
on rainy days water.
Tusiata Avia
in Wild Dogs under My Skirt, Victoria University Press, 2004
I had never seen you so open
Crumpled on the couch saying
seventh of the seventh
you seemed to be between
trying to get up and sinking further.
A soft redness about you
and a kind of shift somewhere,
to dreams, or clouds,
not things we usually have been
to each other.
Later, you folded the card sent from the office
inside his cap that served
on the deck of a warship in Korea.
Kept it beside you for weeks
until one day it was gone.
Wes Lee
appeared in The New Zealand Poetry Society Anthology 2020
Weather
Winter rain beats on the windows;
there is cloud-hidden snow
on the hills.
In our space, built for the elderly,
warm air encloses thoughts
of long ago:
the coal range, pots of soup
and rain.
Helen Jacobs
from A Habit of Writing, The Cuba Press, 2020
Reflections (clouds)
dawn the sky is splattered
by my juicy mandarin,
the sea a mirror
of tears soon to fall.
watching —
we capture the skyline,
grey lines folding like pursed lips.
wrapped in thick ash and two woven wings,
the sun sets a foot on our city
one eye blending
across an open sea.
E Wen Wong
Baba Yaga
Lyall Bay is often the scene
of tempests, everything pelted
with salt water, rust spreading
like ill humour. The police
are often patrolling in Lyall Bay.
When the cumulonimbus sit like fat
white cauldrons steaming with cirrus,
look our for brush strokes-
someone’s been sweeping the sky
clean as linoleum after an accident.
Amy Brown
from The Propaganda Poster Girl, Victoria University Press, 2008
Johanna Aitchison has published three collections of poems, Miss Dust (2015), a long girl ago (2007), and Oh My God I’m Flying (199). She was the 2019 Mark Strand Scholar at the Sewanee Writers’ Conference (Tennessee) in 2019; and her poetry has been published in New Zealand, the U.S., and Japan. Her poem “Miss Dust in a Motel Room” is forthcoming in Landfall 241.
Jane Arthur lives in Wellington, where she is the co-owner and manager of a small independent bookshop. Her debut poetry collection, Craven, won the Jessie Mackay Award (Best First Book) at the 2020 Ockham NZ Book Awards.
Tusiata Avia is an internationally acclaimed poet, performer and children’s author. She has published 4 collections of poetry, 3 children’s books and her play ‘Wild Dogs Under My Skirt’ had its off-Broadway debut in NYC, where it took out The Fringe Encore Series 2019 Outstanding Production of the Year. Most recently Tusiata was awarded a 2020 Arts Foundation Laureate and a Member of the New Zealand Order of Merit for services to poetry and the arts.
Morgan Bach is a poet recently returned to her home town of Wellington, where she also works as a bookseller.
Amy Brown is a writer and teacher from Hawkes Bay. She has taught Creative Writing at the University of Melbourne (where she gained her PhD), and Literature and Philosophy at the Mac.Robertson Girls’ High School. She has also published a series of four children’s novels, and three poetry collections. Her latest book, Neon Daze, a verse journal of early motherhood, was included in The Saturday Paper’s Best Books of 2019. She is currently taking leave from teaching to write a novel.
Helen Jacobs, aged 92, was born in Pātea and wrote her first poem nearly fifty years ago in response to a TV programme on nuclear war, publishing her first collection of poetry in 1984 and becoming actively involved with the poetry community in Christchurch for many years. She adopted the name Helen Jacobs to keep her writing separate from her life as local body politician, environmental activist and art advocate Elaine Jakobsson. Helen lives in a retirement village with the art she has collected over the years and a balcony of pot plants, delighted the world continues to offer her things to write about.
Wes Lee lives in Paekakariki. Her latest poetry collection, By the Lapels, was launched in Wellington (Steele Roberts Aotearoa, 2019). Her work has appeared in Best New Zealand Poems, Poetry London, Turbine, Poetry New Zealand, Westerly, The Stinging Fly, Landfall, The New Zealand Listener, Australian Poetry Journal, among others. She has won a number of awards for her writing, including, The BNZ Katherine Mansfield Literary Award. Most recently she was awarded the Poetry New Zealand Prize 2019 by Massey University Press, and shortlisted for The Inaugural NZSA Laura Solomon Cuba Press Prize 2021.
Bill Manhire founded the creative writing programme at Victoria University of Wellington, which a little over 20 years ago became the International Institute of Modern Letters. His new book Wow is published by Victoria University Press in New Zealand and Carcanet in the UK.
Tayi Tibble (Te Whānau ā Apanui/Ngāti Porou) was born in 1995 and lives in Wellington. Her first book Poūkahangatus won the Jessie Mackay Award for Best First Book of Poetry in 2019. Her new collection Rangikura will be published in June by Victoria University Press.
E Wen Wong is a first-year Law and Science student at the University of Canterbury. She was the winner of the 2020 National Schools Poetry Award.
A bathful of kawakawa and hot water, Hana Pera Aoake, Compound Press, 2020 (reprinted 2021)
The opening poem, ‘Perhaps we should have stayed’, in Hana Pera Aoake’s collection of poetry and prose is like a chant, like a manifesto for self, like a list to pin to a fridge or a heart, to keep you moving and remembering, and thinking and feeling, and the title keeps repeating like an insistent beat, and it is political and it is personal, and it is sideways and direct, and it is searing and it is balm, and I can’t stop reading it, and I have read it five times in a bath with mānuka leaves that drift in on the wind.
PERHAPS WE SHOULD HAVE STAYED.
SOMETIMES THE LONGING MIGHT KILL YOU.
OTHER TIMES IT MIGHT BE THE EXHAUSTION.
IT’S GOOD TO BE YEARNING.
MAYBE YOU YEARN FOR SOMEONE OR MAYBE YOU
JUST YEARN FOR SOMETHING BETTER.
WATCHING BODIES FROM VERY FAR AWAY
THROUGH A SCREEN DOES NOT GIVE YOU A SENSE
OF WHO SOMEONE REALLY IS.
PERHAPS WE SHOULD HAVE STAYED.
THE IDEA OF HAPPINESS IS JUST CAPITALISM.
Hana is writing this book from Lisboa, from that far away point, where writing becomes the connective bridge to the land that they hold dear, and as you read you move across the memory bridge, from the waterfront there to the water here, from the Portuguese river to the line of police removing Ihumaato protestors. The prose piece is rich in direction, building in momentum like the Pacific ocean flowing and the voices of the protestors, never ever losing sight of the sea, and it is an umbilical chord and it is a cry, an insistent poetic cry to do better.
Elsewhere there is a yoga teacher that reminds the writer of a vegan flatmate ‘who didn’t clean and was really racist and ate all my food, and had a trust fund’. There is puking and there are drugs. There is a cameo in Sex and the City. There is a Lisboa square where the Jewish were once slaughtered. There are emails to write and fliers to be designed. There is an empty womb. There is all this and there is so much more. Hana’s language is the most super-charged gloriously exhilarating uplift of words you can hope to meet, that draw in Te Reo Maaori and Portuguese, and pay attention to rhythm, so that you are itching to hear it read aloud, because this is prose and this is poetry, and yes this is song. Song from the heart, from the whole body, moving and yearning and finding a way to be.
Yet if this collection is song, it is also an incisive and vital probe, drawing on reading, ideas, history, the present and the future, challenging Western discourse, asking questions, musing on what ‘constitutes a common’, on the co-option of Maaori concepts by Paakeha, on the inseparability of body and mauri, on the damaged world, on the power of myth.
As a Maaori I feel death all around; not just because fantails follow me most days, but because I carry dead bodies inside me. I name them as I name myself, my rivers and my mountains. I ache at night thinking of my grandmother dying alone in a rest home during this pandemic.
from ‘We were like stones like weeds in the road’
Chris Holdaway (Compound Press) has produced an exquisite book, using mid-20th Century typefaces designed by Samoan New Zealander Joseph Churchward. Hana has produced a collection of writings that within 83 pages take you out of yourself into a state of wider contemplation and deeper mourning and intricate learning and necessary action. This book I hold to my heart.
Hana Pera Aoake (Ngaati Mahuta, Tainui/Waikato, Ngaati Hinerangi) is an artist and writer based in Waikouaiti on stolen Kai Tahu, Kati Mamoe and Waitaha lands. They are keen to restart the land wars and love eating kaimoana and defacing colonial property.
Gaps in the Light uses form in innovative ways to express deeply the experience of loss and joy in ways I can’t remember reading anywhere else. Nothing is binary here – everything feels multidimensional, so perfectly complicated, like echoes off multiple surfaces. It’s simply astounding! ~ Pip Adam, author of Nothing to See, The New Animals, I’m Working on a Building, and Everything We Hoped For
To read this work is to enter the forest as an elemental being, and then feel the loss of that forest. The lover, the bereft and the broken are here. It’s a journey of close attention, pain, rage and truth revealed as the path is taken. Gaps in the Light is compassionate, deeply chanted music. ~ Kirstie McKinnon, author of Songs from the Water
Gaps in the Light burns with fierce emotion; multiple voices float in and out until the whole text becomes hypnotic and taut … revealing the depths, nuances and complexities of love in all its forms with an utterly-earned intensity. Iona Winter asks you to stare directly into her eyes … be warned, she won’t blink first. ~ Helen Lehndorf, author of The Comforter and Write to the Centre
The next film in our Different Out Loud series is Te Ara Kanohi, an understated and emotionally powerful piece from poet Serie Barford. In her poem Te Ara Kanohi, she explores the emotional terrain of love and loss, in the geographical context of the west Auckland beaches and forests she and her late partner explored together. The second film in our Different Out Loud film series, filmed by Anna Marbrook, Te Ara Kanohi is a nuanced and powerful emotional discourse by one of New Zealand’s strongest poets at the top of her game.
How to Live with Mammals, Ash Davida Jane, Victoria University Press, 2021
Ash reads ‘water levels’
Ash reads ‘mating in suburbia’
Ash reads ‘transplanting’
Ash reads ‘carrying capacity’
Ash Davida Jane’s poetry has appeared in Mimicry, Sweet Mammalian, Starling, The Spinoff and elsewhere. Her second book, How to Live With Mammals, was published by Victoria University Press in April 2021. She lives and works in Wellington.
RSL Ondaatje Prize Shortlist
