Tuesday Poem: 9 O'Clock Call to Prayer, by Marissa Johnpillai

Nine o'clock call to prayer

The bell of the cathedral rings & I give thanks
for the generations of historical building societies:
the worshippers
of hewn stone & gables;

it rings and I give thanks for mortar grooves,
for the fashion of gargoyle motifs
I look up;
the bell rings;

I give thanks for steeples,
for hotel doors that open automatically,
for balconies on apartments;
it rings & I give thanks

for restaurants
hiding like mice in alleyways,
for second-hand stores,
for souvenirs, for the neon

of English, Japanese & Korean the bell rings;
I give thanks for window displays, for takeaways, for travelling
coffee mugs, for the pep of people in well-pressed suits receding
joyfully into offices; the bell rings.

I must give thanks for the hands
& knees of workers now dead, those who have knelt
to plant brick upon brick, for their dusty dungarees
the bell rings, and God!

I give thanks for the inventor of dungarees,
the makers of dungarees, the fabric millers, metal forgers
turning out buttons & buckles for dungarees, the patient fingers
of all those who have taught children how to do up the clasps.

The bell rings. I give thanks for this tiny piece of world
in which there is the possibility of rolling
from a sidewalk
into a stream.

I loll on a grass verge. The bell rings.
I give thanks for the tolling, for the falling of heavy sound
like a dome over these city blocks, for the hourly exposure
of its sacred acoustics.

******************
Marissa Johnpillai finds herself in Otautahi, turning over thoughts with a garden fork. She has studied and taught at the Christchurch School for Young Writers, and in 2007 received an MA in Creative Writing from Victoria University of Wellington. With the help of a Creative Communities grant through the Christchurch City Council she published a chapbook of poems Hymns for Her in 2009.

Marissa is both a talented poet and an excellent performer of her work. Her reading of the above poem can be found on her website A Problem like Marissa.

It has been on my mind in the past week. I offer it here, with her permission, both as a reminder of what we still have to be thankful for, and in the hopes that the cathedral bells will be heard ringing again before too long.

Links to further Tuesday poems can be found in the sidebar at the main hub site.

More Poetry Events

At Joanna's book launch (see this post) I was offered a free double pass to a poetry event the following night, called Love Letters in the Margins. Not quite poetry, actually, but a fusion of poetry and music involving three bands, each with a poet appearing with the band.

I always accept free tickets! I planned to take my daughter, a contemporary of Marissa's, but she had to work, and the first few friends I tried were unavailable, so I gave up and decided to go alone. Which may have been just as well, because when I reached the ticket office at the Telstraclear Club where my name should have been on a list, they knew nothing about it. Since it was just me, however, they let me in for free anyway.

I thought I was entering what was basically a tent in Cathedral Square, but once inside I was astonished by the opulent surroundings - it was a polygonal space with plush upholstered wooden booths round the outside, and further polished wood chairs and tables on the floor in the middle. There was a bar and restauraunt service. The ceiling was draped red fabric with black scroll-like designs appliqued on - all very attractive.

The poets appearing with the bands were young local poets Marissa Johnpillai, Ciaran Fox and Ben Brown. I don't know their ages apart from Marissa, but their energy and style is what leads me to describe them as "young" as opposed to the more middle-aged and sedate sensibilities of many of the poets who read at the events I usually go to. Marissa read many of the same poems that she read at her book launch earlier in the week. What I like about Marissa's poetry is that it is positive and celebratory with none of the "angst" that often permeates the work of teens and twenty-somethings. There is a lot of food in her poems, and sex. It touches on her life both in Sri Lanka and in New Zealand, so has a touch of the exotic to it - but it also made me a little homesick for the Cuba St fountain in Wellington where I grew up! (Marissa spent a year studying for her Master's in Creative Writing in Wellington).

The main difficulty with Marissa's reading was that I felt the band, Le Mot Cafe, were a touch loud in places, making it hard to hear her words. It did help that I had heard the poems and bought her chapbook at her book launch.

The other bands weren't quite so loud. I'm not going to say much about the other poets, although I enjoyed their readings, because I haven't had the benefit of being able to read the poems before or after the event (perhaps I should have bought the CD).

I found the collaboration interesting. At her book launch, Marissa had also performed with backing music - the rather quieter tones of a flute. Some of her poetry, although far from all of it, falls a little flat on the page, and I feel it is definitely conceived as music as well as poetry - the intonation, pacing, and so on is integral to its success. Most of her poetry though is just as successful on the page as in performance. I did feel that in all three cases on Saturday night, the poets had written their work separately from the band, and each piece as performed seemed to be a fusion of first a poem read to music followed by a song which originally had no relation to the poem. Still, it seemed to work.

I've known Marissa for ages since she was a contemporary with my daughters at the Christchurch School for Young Writers, an organisation which runs Saturday morning, after school and correspondence writing classes for primary and high school age students. And this morning I caught up with another their fellow students when I saw her face in the newspaper - Jenna had been blogging as Tatiana Anymodel at Jezebel - here is her "coming out" post - it's a great read! And I have to say that the School for Young Writers was a great place (and still is) for nurturing young talented writers - I expect to hear more of both Marissa and Jenna in the future.