A Poetry Roundup

I loved this quote from Michelle Leggott's note to her latest poetry collection Heartland:

A family is a series of intersecting arcs, some boat-shaped, others vaults or canopies, still others vapour trails behind a mountain or light refracted through water.

I also came across a poet new to me on the Poetry Daily website. Chloe Honum is a young American poet, brought up in Auckland, New Zealand.Her poem, The Tulip Flame, from the book of the same name is simply incandescent.

On the Best American Poetry blog, Gregory O'Brien is presenting a new weekly series showcasing New Zealand poets. The first of the series, Bill Manhire's poem Hotel Emergencies, is here.

And finally, Tuesday Poem always has a wonderful selection of poetry to read every Tuesday.

The Best Thing About Winter

...is that I am up early enough to see the sunrise (or rather, the sun rises late enough for me to see it). Like this...

And then this morning, there was a mist about the hills, just beginning to dissipate as the sun rose above it:

One of the things that I love about our new house is that we are up on the hill, with no power lines in the way to spoil the view of the sky, and the city.

We drove off this morning to an all day event,down the hill where we found ourselves below the cloud. The power lines criss crossed back and forth across the street, the sun climbed in the sky looking as if it was huge and caught in the power lines, reminding me of the legend of Maui and how he caught the sun in his net.

Tuesday Poem: Sonnet for Deborah

Sonnet

for Deborah

These grey days, I hunger for colour. I scavenge
in produce aisles, take home bags overflowing
with orange-skinned mandarins, broccoli, dark
as pines, purple grapes, tri-coloured capsicums.

I sip herbal tea and read your messages.
Mongolia’s as hot as Korea, you say, but drier,
Everywhere is dusty. The vegetable soup is greasy
with mutton fat, and not much fibre in it.

You will pass through Osaka on your way home,
visit temples with gardens of pebbles
and carefully-raked sand. By the time you return
the maples in our garden will be swelling with new buds.

The Japanese have a special name for it.
Shinryoku – the tender new green of spring


I wrote this poem some years ago when my daughter had just finished two years' teaching English in Korea and was about to return to New Zealand. The weather has been so grey and damp over the last few days that it seemed very appropriate to the season.

It was published in the Christchurch Press, and in "The Chook Book: Free Range Organic Poetry", a publication of our small poetry group, the Poetry Chooks.

For more Tuesday Poems, visit the main hub site.