Gap in My CV

I had this belt buckle with a picture of Karl Marx’s face on it. It was a real talking point, let me tell you. A big brass depiction of the beardy philosopher around my waist while I was in the supermarket, in the street, at the garden centre, drawing people’s eyes to me and making them think of the great currents of history.

So what happened was I was swimming in the lake one Saturday and someone stole my belt! I sprinted to the shore like one of those daft frogs that runs on water like someone’s electrocuting it, but the thief was hotfooting it away already. Well, what would you do? I threw on my trousers, held them up with one hand and chased the purloiner like an avenging spirit.

The thief was resourceful. He checked into spas and camouflaged himself in the mud baths, so I had to do the same, soaking in the hot, therapeutic slurry like some blissed-out predator. He’d go into a pub and disappear from view, so I’d have no choice but to order pints all day and watch the door to see if I could collar him when he made a break for it.

I did that for six months, and I was so tired at the end of it that I took a good long rest for another six months. So that’s what goes on my CV for late 2023 and early 2024, between ‘Office Oaf’ and ‘Sales Dick’. No, I didn’t get the belt back.

Erik Kennedy
from Sick Power Trip, Te Herenga Waka University Press, 2025

‘Gap in my CV’ by Erik Kennedy

I reviewed Erik’s poetry collection Sick Power Trip for Radio NZ last year and immediately loved it. The poem that resonated with me the most, and which I really enjoy reading out loud to other people, is ‘Gap in My CV’.

The gap in the CV is a real-life dilemma for a lot of writers and other creative practitioners. Many of us find it hard to juggle the ‘day job’ with a creative career. Many creative projects take a lot of time, space and dedication to come through to completion. But, if you quit your job to write a book, will you ever get another job? Will potential employers look at your CV and ask why there’s a six-month gap, and will they still want to employ you if you say you were writing poems during that time? I am not sure if this is what was on Erik’s mind when he wrote this poem, but it’s what comes to my mind, and heart, when I read it. ‘Gap in My CV’ treats the subject with characteristic gusto, telling the story of a person who has to explain the gap between their roles as ‘office oaf’ and ‘sales dick’. As it turns out, they have been on a long, exhausting journey to find the thief who has stolen their Karl Marx belt buckle, which has taken six months, and they have then needed another six months to recover from it. The fact that it’s Karl Marx on the belt buckle gives the whole poem a beautiful underpinning of irony. It’s a poem sitting amongst other poems that deal with serious political subjects, sometimes with rage, often with humour. It’s a very generous collection. I feel seen by this poem, and by this book.

Airini Beautrais is a poet, writer and teacher based in Whanganui. Her most recent publication is the essay collection The Beautiful Afternoon (Te Herenga Waka University Press, 2024).

Erik Kennedy is the author of the poetry collections Sick Power Trip (2025), Another Beautiful Day Indoors (2022), and There’s No Place Like the Internet in Springtime(2018), all with Te Herenga Waka University Press, and he co-edited No Other Place to Stand, a book of climate change poetry from Aotearoa and the Pacific (Auckland University Press, 2022). He is the poetry editor of takahē and an adjunct fellow in English at the University of Canterbury. Originally from New Jersey, he lives in Ōtautahi Christchurch.

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