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

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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.