Tuesday Poem: I Have Sent a Package, by James Norcliffe

I Have Sent a Package

I have sent a package to summer
stamped with rime and franked with frost.

Inside are valleys and beaches,
the arc of their longing licked by cold waters.

There is music too: the percussion
of surf and of rocks falling from a mountain.

Open it carefully - say, when a warm
wind billows your northern curtains,

ruffles, perhaps, the light in your hair -
then warily unwrap these gifts.

If the ash tree just beyond were with you,
it would be a dance of yellow leaves

not this crown of spikiness where
blackbirds crouch, shrinking into their feathers.

I have been sending such parcels
all the days of my vanity, imagining

your curiosity, your juggling the weight,
your fingers working at the string.

This is one more. A package to summer
from one distant season to another.

- James Norcliffe

James Norcliffe was born in Greymouth, and lives in Church Bay (Banks Peninsula). Other than a period spent teaching English in China and Brunei, he has lived in Canterbury for his whole adult life. He has published award winning fiction, short fiction, and fantasy novels (young adult and adult), as well as six collections of poetry. He was Burns Fellow in 2000, and in 2003 was given the Christchurch Press Literary Liaisons Honour Award for his lasting contribution to literature in the South Island.

"I Have Sent a Package" is taken from his 2012 collection Shadow Play, which was a finalist for the 2011 Proverse Prize and is published by Proverse Hong Kong.

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National Poetry Day

The US gets National Poetry Month, but here in New Zealand we get one day. For some reason, Poetry Day events in Christchurch always seem to be held in the day time. If I lived in Auckland, Wellington, Dunedin or a number of other places, there would be evening events to go to. But for the last few years I have always been working on a Friday and hence unable to participate.

At last I have Fridays free. Which means I was able to attend the reading held at the University Bookshop - a wonderful shop that I would frequent more if it weren't for the issue of parking, as all parking on campus is permit only. It was a treat to be in a proper bookshop, one that doesn't give prominence to cookbooks and "biographies" of sports stars. And a treat to hear readings from local poets Kerrin Sharpe, James Norcliffe and Tusiata Avia, followed by a performance by singer-songwriter Adam McGrath of The Eastern.

There were earthquake poems, of course. But not too many. Tusiata Avia read her poem describing her drive to pick up her daughter from her inner city preschool, in grid-locked traffic after February's quake. Her journey turned into a hero's epic, in which her street turned into a river (that part at least, would not be exaggerated at all). Hordes of drowned wildebeests made an appearance, and she drove for five days. It was a powerful poem, full of emotional truth if not literal truth.

James Norcliffe's earthquake poem referred to "The Death of Seneca". It's always hard to remember poems hear once, however the phrase "the earth shrugged" sticks with me. Jim's poems, he said, were rather dark, but the commentary that comes with them is always spiced with humour, and the audience had plenty of opportunities to laugh.

Kerrin Sharpe spent a year at the International Institute of Modern Letters in Wellington. A number of her poems were set in Wellington. I particularly enjoyed "Sewing the World". Her mother, apparently, was a milliner. This poem was full of references to stitches such as feather stitch - but also to the streets of Wellington - a bonus for me as I spent the first half of my life there, and each street name triggered a visual picture in my mind. Although there is nothing in the way of straight forward fact in Kerrin's poems - she has a magical way of looking at the world.

Afterwards I browsed the bookshelves and found a small selection of "Revived Editions" i.e. second hand books. Most of the city's second hand bookshops have been casualties of the earthquake. So I was delighted to find some excellent poetry books here at very reasonable prices, and brought three home with me.

Poetry Pleasure Doubled

It's good to see new poetry events springing up in Christchurch. For National Poetry Day in July one of the local events was "Poetry for Pudding" at Borders Bookstore. This is now being trialled as a regular event on the first Friday of the month. It's an open mic night (without the mic) held in Gloria Jean's, the coffee area at the back of the bookstore - which led to pauses in the readings as we waited for the coffee machine noise to die down a little. The poetry, as is usual at these events, was mixed in style and quality. However, at the end of the readings, an "accidental" audience member stood up and commented that he had never liked poetry, but he thought all the poems read out were great, and he had really enjoyed it.

I suspect the group would have been bigger if it was not for the other poetry event of the evening. At 5.30 we had a poetry reading for New Zealand Book Month with four well-known local poets and one out-of-towner. The readers were Joanna Preston, Tusiata Avia, James Norcliffe, Frankie McMillan and Otago poet Brian Turner. This was very much a time for re-hearing familiar work, as many of the poets were reading from their latest books, several of which are on my bookshelves.

An evening of entirely new poetry can be hard on the concentration, and familiar poems often gain on rehearing. I do wish though that New Zealand was a slightly larger country with a slightly greater pool of good poets. I was glad of Brian Turner's presence as he read a number of unfamiliar poems, and I do like at least some new work added to the mix. This is not to detract from any of the readers - the standard of the poetry was high, and all read well. The complimentary glass of wine no doubt added to the good spirits of the audience. At the end of the evening Brian was awarded the Lauris Edmond Memorial Award for contribution to poetry, and gave a suitably surprised speech of thanks.

It was a bit of a rush to get from one event to the other, and most didn't attempt it, so perhaps next month there will be a larger number of local poets enjoying "Poetry for Pudding".