Happy Christmas

Tuesday Poem: Something for Christmas

Yes, I'm a little late this week. It is getting busier and busier round here, but in an unashamedly sentimental mood, I picked up a wee book at the library at the weekend, Amazing Peace by Maya Angelou. It is a poem that was read at the lighting of the White House Christmas tree on December 1, 2005. Click the link to read it on line.

We stopped in Latimer Square on the way home late the other night to take photos of the Telecom Christmas tree. Cathedral Square, our traditional city centre is still cordoned off nearly two years after the February 22nd 2011 earthquake. So the Christmas tree is in Latimer Square instead - image above. I'm looking forward to it being back in its traditional place next year - or maybe the year after?

For more Tuesday poems visit the main hub site.

Tuesday Poem: Temptation

Temptation

The rind falls on the bench top
in the shape of her initial.
He slices the fruit in thin segments
with hands stippled and pleated by age.

He arranges its slices on a porcelain plate.
Carries it in shaking hands
to where she sits deep in a chair,
shrunken in its arms, propped on pillows.

Once he courted her with apples.
This pear softer and kinder
to aged gums. He feeds her
slice by slice. She sucks the sweetness.

A trickle of juice runs down her chin.
Winter will come soon enough.
He is feeding her the sun.

*****************

The Canterbury Poets Collective finished their spring series last week with an evening featuring the winners (by audience vote) of the open mic portion of the previous seven weeks' events. I was fortunate enough to be included. This is one of the poems I read. I always thought that if I had been Eve in the garden of Eden, I would have found pears much more tempting than apples, which are altogether too neat and well-behaved a fruit to be very seductive.

I entered this poem in the inaugural Poems in the Waiting Room competition and was pleased to be awarded third place. The next competition is now open. It's a worthy cause and worth support with your entry fees.

For more Tuesday Poems,visit the main hub site.

Tuesday Poem: Poem Walking, by Helen Jacobs

Poem Walking

If you cannot sing the world
if the tune is too complex
and the reach too vast

perhaps a poem walking
from door to gate is for you
a small parcel of contents

you can tick: nandina, potato vine,
weeds, letter box and constant cars.
Not an extensive list.

Bring in the blue and white of overhead
and a red helicopter. Now you have it,
your world written down, wrapped up.

But walk further
to the living street of springs
a pavement of design beside bush and flax

to the park and pond
where voices are heard, boys are playing.
they hope for fish.

You have pushed out the perimeter.
You have walked into the smallest part
of the larger sound, the Big Band.

You imagine playing the music of oceans
of river runs, mega-city percussion.
Your poem has come out

from behind the fence.

- Helen Jacobs

*******

We have had a wealth of poetry events in Christchurch lately, among them the launch of Helen Jacobs' new book, "Dried Figs", published by Sudden Valley Press. This is Helen's sixth poetry collection and as it says on the back of the cover, as she is now in her eighty-fourth year another book cannot be guaranteed.

Helen is an acute observer of her immediate surroundings. As the poems in this collection vividly express, one's horizons perhaps narrow somewhat with increasing age - but she makes a good deal out of such every day subject matter. I felt the poem above expresses this rather beautifully.

The poem was first published in the New Zealand Poetry Society collection "Across the Fingerboards" in 2010. Photos of the book launch and information on how to order Dried Figs can be found on Helen's website.

For more Tuesday Poems, visit the main hub site>

Tuesday Poem: Escape at Bedtime, by Robert Louis Stevenson

Escape at Bedtime

The lights from the parlour and kitchen shone out
Through the blinds and the windows and bars:
And high overhead and all moving about,
There were thousands of millions of stars.
There ne'er were such thousands of leaves on a tree,
Nor of people in church or the Park,
As the crowds of the stars that looked down upon me,
And that glittered and winked in the dark.

The Dog, and the Plough, and the Hunter, and all,
And the star of the sailor, and Mars,
These shone in the sky, and the pail by the wall
Would be half full of water and stars.
They saw me at last, and they chased me with cries,
And they soon had me packed into bed;
But the glory kept shining and bright in my eyes,
And the stars going round in my head.

- Robert Louis Stevenson (1850 - 1894)

Every year the Scottish Poetry Library produces a set of poetry postcards for National Poetry Day (which occurs during October in the UK). I received a set in the post a few days ago, courtesy of my friend Mary of fatblackcatjournal (Thanks Mary!). Most are modern poems, however one of this year's selection was the above poem by Robert Louis Stevenson, which I was unfamiliar with.

Robert Louis Stevenson was a Scottish poet, novelist and travel writer. His father was a leading lighthouse engineer, and he initially studied engineering, but showed no enthusiasm for his studies. He wrote novels such as Treasure Island, The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, and Kidnapped. His most well-known book of poetry is A Child's Garden of Verses, some of whose poems reflect the long periods of illness he endured as a child.
He settled in Samoa where he died in 1894, probably of a cerebral haemorrhage.

For more Tuesday Poems visit the main hub site.

Luxcity

On our way home from the bridge club last night we stopped off in the central city to look at the light intallations. These are part of Luxcity which is the opening event in the Festival of Transitional Architecture. It was great to see the city come to life. The lights and crowds made it easy to overlook the fact that these installations were all set up on the sites of demolished buildings - many suspended from the cranes which are still working to pull down all the damaged buildings.

This one is looking straight up the centre of the structure in the first photo (the colours cycled through several variations). You can just make out the beam of the crane holding it up. Since I had my camera on a tripod on time exposure, this one was rather tricky to set up as the camera was flat and pointing straight up, making it difficult to compose the image on the view screen.

Tuesday Poem: The Sea Question, by Elizabeth Smither

The Sea Question

The sea asks 'How is your life now?'
It does so obliquely, changing colour.
It is never the same on any two visits.

It is never the same in any particular
Only in generalities: tide and such matters
Wave height and suction, pebbles that rattle.

It doesn't presume to wear a white coat
But it questions you like a psychologist
As you walk beside it on its long couch.

Elizabeth Smither was a guest reader last week at the Canterbury Poets' Collective spring reading series, and I took the opportunity to ask her permission to post this poem, which sprung to mind as I sorted through photos taken a couple of weeks ago on the beach at Mt Maunganui. It was originally published in The Tudor Style (Auckland University Press, 1993) and later appeared in The Nature of Things: Poems from the New Zealand Landscape published by Craig Potton Publishing in 2005.

Elizabeth Smither is a poet, novelist and short story writer. She has published many collections of poems and was selected as the inaugural Te Mata Estate Poet Laureate. In 2008 she was awarded the Prime Minister's Award for Literary Achievement in Poetry.

For more Tuesday Poems, visit the main hub site and check out the blogs listed in the sidebar.

Back from a Break

I had a week's holiday, then spent the next week catching up. I hope to line up some permissions for Tuesday Poems in time for next week. In the meantime, some photographic evidence of our trip. I have been taking ferry trips between the North and South Islands of New Zealand for longer than I can remember.

Tuesday Poem: Three Days in a Wishing Well, by Kerrin P Sharpe

three days in a wishing well

at the bottom
of the well
lined with porteous
yellow blue art tiles

ceramic hands hold
moon drop coins
arranged as feathers
on a hunter's shirt

and a city care
man with hose and
bucket is separating
wishes from water

the research is called
three days in a wishing
well now the council knows
the thoughts of the boy

rowing nowhere the
woman carrying shortbread
as live environments.com
even the washing

instructions for this poem

- Kerrin P Sharpe

*********************

Recently the Christchurch Writers Festival returned after an absence of four years due to earthquakes. One of the events I was happy to attend was the launch of Kerrin P Sharpe's new book Three Days in a Wishing Well. The poem I have selected here is the title poem.

Kerrin's poems are delightful, full of beautiful images but ultimately somewhat mysterious, so that I always want to come back to reread them. I believe that fellow Tuesday Poet Helen Lowe will be featuring another poem from the book shortly. And the Victoria University Press website also has an extract in their "recent news"

Kerrin P Sharpe was born in Wellington but now lives in Christchurch. She is currently Writer-in-Residence at St Andrews College and teaches creative writing at the Hagley Writers' Institute. She completed the Victoria University Original Composition programme taught by Bill Manhire in 1976 and has recently returned to writing as her family have grown up and left home. Kerrin's poems have appeared in many journals, and in Best New Zealand Poems 08, 09 and 10. In 2008 she was awarded the New Zealand Post Creative Writing Teacher's Award from the Institute of Modern Letters.

Tuesday Poem: Slant

Slant

Tell all the truth but tell it slant – Emily Dickinson

Beneath the jagged mountains
crossed cranes at dawn
frame the city skyline
buildings propped and braced
with beams and girders
all diagonals
the twisted bridge
the fallen staircase

in the house the sun slants
onto unlevel floorboards
portraits askew on the walls
smile their cockeyed smiles
after each aftershock
crack in the plaster
zigzags across the ceiling

it started in spring
last month you stood in the hallway
snowflakes, blown in
through the gap in the wonky doorway
settled on your shoulders

now across the yard
a spiderweb carried on the wind
one end anchored to the broken spouting
the other angled across the sky
like a kite string
festooned with pink petals

*******

Today is the second anniversary of the 2010 September 4th earthquake. Hard to believe it has been two years already. The poem above is more about the aftermath of the February 22nd quake six months later. It was written last year about this time, but much in it hasn't really changed. The cranes are still there - more of them, in fact, taking buildings down rather than putting new buildings up. At least we have straightened the pictures! It seemed an appropriate moment to let it out into the world.

For more Tuesday Poems visit the main hub site.

Tuesday Poem: The Weight of Calves, by Karen Zelas

The Weight of Calves

after Mandy Coe

A calf estimated to weigh
thirty million tonnes
split from the Tasman Glacier.
If this was its weight,
imagine if you can, its size, ice
more voluminous than water.

And imagine its age:
I’m told the residence time
of glacier water may tip
one million years. All
those old molecules, trapped
for aeons, waiting release
into Brownian motion.
The world’s reservoirs
leaking. Greened plains lapped
by cattle. The weight.

The birth of a calf is assisted
by gravity. Maternal groans
as the glacier labours through rock
and the calf drops,
torn from terminal ice. An echoing crash.
A wave. Turquoise light. Hard
shards slice water. The calf
part-submerged, melting. Freshwater
mingles with saline.

Calving into water causes a splash;
into oceans, raises the level. Collapse
the ice sheets and tides will lift
six metres perhaps. Think of that.

Cows and calves
where they never should be.
Weighing heavy.


Karen Zelas lives in Christchurch. A former psychiatrist and psychotherapist, she returned to university, taking creative writing papers at Canterbury University in preparation for giving up her day job. Since 2004, her poetry has been increasingly widely published within New Zealand, including in Landfall, Poetry New Zealand and Takahē, and broadcast on radio. It has also appeared in Australian ezines Snorkel and Eclecticism and recently been blogged by Interlitq (UK). Several anthologies contain her work. In 2009 she was the recipient of a Creative Communities grant. She is editor of the anthology Crest to Crest: Impressions of Canterbury, prose and poetry (Wily Publications, 2009).

Karen’s first novel Past Perfect was published by Wily Publications in 2010, and is to be released as an ebook by Interactive Publications this year.

For the last five years, Karen has been Fiction Editor of Takahē literary magazine and chairs the Takahe Collective Board. She is married with children, grandchildren and a child-substitute: a miniature poodle.

Karen's book, Night's Glass Table, was the winner of the 2012 IP Picks Best First Book Competition run by IP (Interactive Publications), Brisbane. It is to be launched in conjunction with the Christchurch Writers' Festival at 4.30 - 6pm on Thursday 30 August, as part of an extensive reading tour through NZ. Books can be purchased online, including e-publications, via the IP website (click on "Store"), or directly at the Night's Glass Table mini-site.

Tuesday Poem: Looking Back, by Aleksandra Lane

Looking Back

Something must have disappeared
from that day. A little sun veneer,
surface of light stolen
by the swooping hands
on your watch
perhaps. All around us
the grass was dazed dry
and the trees above were moving
in small fits, like children
not yet acquainted
with their own bodies,
but still painfully aware of their will.
We willed each other away
and then willed the other too quickly too
close again. Between us
there were no words, only children
unmade and children undone. It seemed
nothing was missing
at the time – that something
must have disappeared just now in me
explaining the day
must have lost a tooth
in that grass, in those clouds –
a little milkiness
never to be found again.

Looking Back is taken from Birds of Clay, Aleksandra Lane’s first book in English, after two published in Serbian. Aleks moved to New Zealand in 1996, and completed her MA in Creative Writing at Victoria University’s Institute of Modern Letters in 2010, receiving the Biggs Poetry Prize. Her poems have been published in Jacket2, Sport, Turbine, Takahe, Snorkel, Side Stream and Swamp. She lives in Wellington and is studying for a PhD in English at Massey University.

I enjoyed reading Birds of Clay, a varied collection which contains a range of forms - a number of prose poems, free form poems like Looking Back, but also more traditional forms such as the rather edgy villanelle "Knife". I was attracted to Aleks's beautiful although sometimes surreal imagery. I found some of the poems rather mystifying at first, but they reward careful re-reading. A book to be savoured. My thanks to Aleks for allowing me to choose a Tuesday Poem from her collection.

For more Tuesday Poems, visit the main hub site.

Tuesday Poem: The Annunciation, by Rhian Gallagher

The Annunciation

Tintoretto

This is no swallow, no butterfly.
Feathered with Concorde power
Titanic bulk, breathlessly aerobic
Gabriel dives in under the lintel,
wings swept back behind Olympic shoulders
he tilts like a display pilot
and just clears the entrance.

Mary pulls up under the impact
cherubs sail on the draught
like a herd of sky-diving babies. Outside
Joseph grapples with a bit
of four by two, oblivious to the super-human
frequency. The earth's in a bad way.

As to Gabriel
you can see he's not going to help
pick up the pieces, he's not even going to land,
message delivered on a rush of air,
no buttering up of Mary,
his beautiful arms poised towards heaven
before he back-flips out of there.

- Rhian Gallagher

*********

Rhian Gallagher recently won the New Zealand Post Book Awards poetry category for her second collection of poems, Shift. This is her first with a New Zealand publisher - her earlier collection, Salt Water Creek (where The Annunciation appeared) was published by Enitharmon Press in the UK, where she lived for eighteen years.

While there are many fine poems in "Shift", it is often the first poem that I read by a new author that most impresses itself on my memory, and that is the case here. I read The Annunciation when it appeared on the Poetry Daily website, and it led me to seek out more of Rhian's poetry, which I enjoy immensely.

Rhian suggested that it might be hard to find a copy of Salt Water Creek now, but I did find it listed on both the Fishpond and Amazon websites. Shift is much more readily available, and both books are well worth reading.

For more Tuesday Poems, visit the main hub site.

Tuesday Poem: Empiricism, by Roger Hickin

Empiricism

a wayfaring stranger who climbs
a steep village street
an old embroidress who’s lost her needle––
stranger stoops to help her look
but soon gives up–– lo siento
needle nowhere to be seen

wizened stub of a woman opposite
watches squatting on her doorstep––
está loca she informs the stranger––
the embroidress is nuts
she’s got no needle

a few doors up a younger woman points
at woman two–– take no notice of her
she advises–– está sorda
she’s stone deaf doesn’t hear
a word you say

all this–– perhaps a comedy routinely played
to confuse the wayfaring stranger
who threads his way
up the narrow street
inclined to doubt
wanting to believe

in the existence of the needle

********************

Roger Hickin has worked as a visual artist and exhibited regularly throughout
New Zealand since 1985. Although he has written poetry since the 1960s, his main preoccupation was with sculpture & painting until the early 2000s when poetry began to demand more serious attention. A poem about a moribund rooster is still recalled by some who heard it at a reading in the public bar of the City Hotel, Dunedin, in 1983.
Two collections of Hickin’s poetry, Waiting for the Transport and The Situation & other poems, appeared in 2009. His Cold Hub Press publishes poetry by New Zealand & international writers. He lives in Governors Bay on Lyttelton Harbour.

Thanks to Roger for permission to use this poem which appears on the Phantom Billstickers' poetry posters. I took a stroll up to a nearby main road on National Poetry Day to have a look at the posters there and spotted this one. It's a strange place to post them as there is not much foot traffic, mainly cars and heavy trucks thundering by on their way through to the port at Lyttelton. I thought it was an appropriate day to give the posters a bit of attention.

For more Tuesday Poems visit the main hub site - check out this week's post, and the poets in the sidebar.

Tuesday Poem: William McGonagall

Montrose

Beautiful town of Montrose, I will now commence my lay,
And I will write in praise of thee without dismay,
And in spite of all your foes,
I will venture to call thee Bonnie Montrose.
Your beautiful Chain Bridge is magnificent to be seen,
Spanning the river Esk, a beautiful tidal stream,
Which abounds with trout and salmon,
Which can be had for the catching without any gammon.

Then as for the Mid Links, it is most beautiful to be seen,
And I’m sure is a very nice bowling green,
Where young men can enjoy themselves and inhale the pure air,
Emanating from the sea and the beautiful flowers there,
And as for the High Street, it’s most beautiful to see,
There’s no street can surpass it in the town of Dundee,
Because it is so long and wide,
That the people can pass on either side
Without jostling one another or going to any bother.

Beautiful town of Montrose, near by the seaside,
With your fine shops and streets so wide,
‘Tis health for the people that in you reside,
Because they do inhale the pure fragrant air,
Emanating from the pure salt wave and shrubberies growing there;
And the inhabitants of Montrose ought to feel gay,
Because it is one of the bonniest towns in Scotland at the present day.

- William McGonagall (1825-1902)

I have just finished a series of Joanna Preston's Reading for Writing classes, one of which took the topic of "Bad Poetry". Of course, the poets studied had to include the immortal William Topaz McGonagall. There is something curiously encouraging about studying bad poets, when struggling to write good poetry! And of course, working out just why it is bad can offer useful guidance as to what to avoid in one's own writing.

The classes were held at the Sydenham room of the Christchurch South Library. Bad news when I picked up the newspaper this morning - ongoing inspections of council facilities have revealed that the library is at only 10 to 20% of new building strength due to earthquake damage, and it has been closed. It was the first library branch to reopen after the February 2011 earthquakes and has been a lifeline in so many ways - as a library, art gallery for community groups, cafe and meeting place, City Council service centre, learning centre and educational facility and so on. The award winning building was completed in 2003 - showing that the impact of the quakes extends beyond the old, unreinforced masonry buildings that were the first casualties.

Presumably Joanna will be looking for a new venue for her next series of classes. I hope she finds one as they are well worth attending - most of the class members were repeat attendees, since there is something new to learn every time.

For more Tuesday Poems visit the main hub site. This week, poems from the finalists in the poetry category of the New Zealand book awards are posted there, and other participants are linked in the side bar.

Tuesday Poem: Controversy, by Ursula Bethell

Controversy

There is perpetual contention
Between the guardians of the dwelling house and the demesne.

Shall the garden be a paradise,
And the inside of the cottage a shambles?

Or contrariwise, the garden a wilderness,
While we preserve the image of a Dutch interior?

While one cries out 'The wash-up waits!'
The other murmurs wistfully 'The lawns! The lawns!'

Tell me now, what is your dream -
The neatest apartment in Knightsbridge?
Or in a deep glade of Eden a booth of green boughs?

Ursula Bethell (1874-1945)

Ursula Bethell was born in England and came to New Zealand with her parents as a small child. She returned to England to complete her education and stayed there for 25 years. She then returned permanently to New Zealand and purchased Rise Cottage on the Cashmere Hills in Christchurch, where she wrote the bulk of her poetry, celebrating her beloved garden and the views of the plains and mountains.

At the weekend I went to view the latest exhibition at the Christchurch Art Gallery. The fact that the gallery has been closed since the earthquakes has not stopped the staff from finding ways to mount exhibitions. This one, Reconstruction: Conversations on a City is installed on display stands placed along Worcester Boulevard next to the gallery. It contains reproductions of photographs and paintings showing buildings and gardens of Christchurch in the past (more and less recent) and as they are now.

On one of the stands there were images of gardens along with the above poem by Ursula Bethell, which is what prompted me to choose it for my Tuesday Poem this week. For more Tuesday Poems, visit the main hub site.

Tuesday Poem: On First Looking Into Chapman's Homer, by John Keats

On First Looking into Chapman's Homer

Much have I travelled in the realms of gold,
And many goodly states and kingdoms seen;
Round many western islands have I been
Which bards in fealty to Apollo hold.
Oft of one wide expanse had I been told,
That deep-browed Homer ruled as his demesne:
Yet did I never breathe its pure serene
Till I heard Chapman speak out loud and bold:
Then felt I like some watcher of the skies
When a new planet swims into his ken;
Or like stout Cortez when with eagle eyes
He stared at the Pacific - and all his men
Looked at each other with a wild surmise -
Silent, upon a peak in Draien.

John Keats (1795 - 1821)

Poets have often been inspired by painters and sculptors. In Christchurch at the moment we have an example of the reverse process - Michael Parekowhai's installation "On First Looking Into Chapman's Homer" pictured above, which represented New Zealand at the Venice Biennale. Part of this exhibit, which explores themes of exploration and discovery, is now at the Art Gallery's temporary room above the Ng Gallery in Madras Street. The rest of it - two enormous bronze bulls on grand pianos - wouldn't fit into the room (presumably it was the narrow stairway that was the problem) - and stands on a vacant lot opposite. One of the more interesting uses of the many demolition sites around the city.

John Keats himself was of course, inspired by another work of literature - translations of Homer's Iliad and Odyssey by George Chapman. In this poem Keats likens his discovery of the translation to the Spanish explorers who first reached the Pacific Ocean on the edge of the isthmus of Panama - in the region then known as Darien. (It was in fact, Balboa, not Cortez, who discovered the Pacific - one of the more famous literary errors).

I was struck when preparing this post by the dates of Keats's life - he died at the age of around 25. What might he have achieved if he had lived longer? There is hardly time for juvenilia in a life so short.

For more Tuesday Poems, visit the main hub site.

Tuesday Poem: Chiaroscuro

Chiaroscuro

Five o'clock. The bright interiors
of freight forwarders' warehouses
framed in the dusk like a Rembrandt nativity
on an old postage stamp. No camels.
No baby. Planes overhead. Men with forklifts,
ordinarily wise, load cargoes
for distant lands. A single soft flake
lands on my windscreen.
The evening's first star
grows brighter in the sky.

*****

Just after winter solstice seems an appropriate time to post this poem, which is a winter poem, and could also be a Christmas poem, except of course that here in the southern hemisphere Christmas comes in mid-summer.

I used to work near the airport, and in winter it was getting dark when I left the office. A sudden glimpse of a lit warehouse, which somehow reminded me of the painting on the postage stamp shown above, inspired this poem.

It was first published in the Christchurch Press daily newspaper, and later appeared in Flap: the Chookbook 2.

For more Tuesday Poems, visit the main hub site for links to all the participants.

A Trip to the Library

The temporary Christchurch central library is situated just north of the cordoned red zone, where a lot of demolition work is going on. So - I never know what things will look like when I go to change my library books.

Here is a small park (actually I think it was used as the set of a children's TV show) just along from the library three weeks ago



and here it is when I went yesterday



I felt incredibly sad to see just how many buildings are disappearing, and there are more to come.



Another from three weeks ago - the tall building behind the crane is the Price Waterhouse tower - soon to be completely gone.



A bit of Christchurch graffiti humour.

There is a new temporary central library opening tomorrow, further south - I may try that one next time, both to see if they have more books (there are still a lot unable to be retrieved from the damaged main library), and to see if the surrounding streetscape is a little less depressing.

Tuesday Poets do Flash Fiction

I have been nursing a cold - sleeping in, then huddled under a pile of quilts working my way through Wolf Hall, which is a very fat book. In the meantime,for your reading pleasure, many of the Tuesday Poets are celebrating flash fiction this week.

And over at Helen Lowe's blog, she has chosen Learning Italian, one of my poems, for the Tuesday Poem this week. Thanks, Helen!