Two Years On

The peaches on my daughter's peach tree are ripe, so today we are bottling peaches. Which reminded me that two years ago we did the same. The photo above was taken on 21 February 2011. The next day at work, when the city shook and everything came tumbling down, one of my thoughts as I drove home was of the jars of peaches on the kitchen bench. I fully expected to arrive home and find them smashed in pieces all over the floor. They weren't. The lack of damage to the contents of our house seemed to me, and still seems, a minor miracle.

Damage to the structure of the house is another matter. We are still bogged down in insurance claims, about which I have said little here, because although we are worse off than many, we are better off than many, many more. And because the situation is still quite unclear.

Yesterday, the actual two year anniversary, there were memorial services around the city. I thought of going, but didn't. I felt rather low all day, which may have been because of the anniversary, or it may have been the bronchitis I've been battling for several weeks. I have aching chest muscles, probably strained from all the coughing. Bronchitis in one of the best summers we have had for years is unexpected. On the other hand, it hit me just when our street was dug up to replace the earthquake damaged sewer pipes. The old pipes were cut through to connect the new ones. There was dust everywhere due to the dry weather (there still is - the road works started on January 7th and are not finished yet). Many Christchurch residents have reported increased respiratory problems since the earthquakes. There is no proof that it is related, but it does seem like a big coincidence if it is not.

While there was no Tuesday Poem on my blog this week, I was editor at the main hub site, where I posted Joanna Preston's poem Fault in memory of the earthquake. It's a great poem, and I am grateful to Joanna for letting me use it.

My daughter's earthquake anniversary post is here.

We have had more than 11,000 aftershocks in the two and a half years (since the first earthquake on September 4, 2010). They are settling down - we have only felt a few this year, but yesterday, late in the evening, we had a good jolt, as if to say "don't think it's over yet".

Tuesday Poem: An Inward Sun, by Emma Neale

An Inward Sun

A small, pale circle
shimmers on the kitchen bench
darts to the wall,
drops back to the floor
where it pulses
quick with fear and warm life.

The cat tries to pat it and pluck it:
sniffs, perhaps thinks
of the furred, golden heart
of a field mouse; butter-fried yolk;
round of Gouda; scrap of Sunday pancake.

The baby wants to work the trick
it thinks the cat in its catness can't:
tries to pinch the sun spill up
between finger and thumb;
licks at the honey trickle look
as it pools on the back of his hand,
and so grows the belief
that if he could touch his tongue to the sun
it would taste of popsicle melt,
beach grit, hind-milk, skin-salt
and a whiskery, shadowy,
trace element of cat.

copyright Emma Neale 2012

My thanks to Emma and to Otago University Press for permission to post "An Inward Sun" as my Tuesday Poem this week. It is included in Emma's collection The Truth Garden which won the Kathleen Grattan award for poetry in 2011. It was also the first place getter in last year's Poems in the Waiting Room competition. It is not to late to enter this year's contest, which closes at the end of the month. There are some good prizes on offer for poems suitable for inclusion in poetry cards to be distributed to doctor's waiting rooms, rest homes etc, and the entry fees help to fund the printing and distribution of the cards - a very worthwhile cause, in my opinion.

Emma Neale is a poet and prose writer who lives in Dunedin. She has published a number of novels including Night Swimming and The Fosterling, and three collections of poetry: Sleeve Notes,How to Make a Million, Spark and The Truth Garden.She has also won a number of awards and prizes including the Kathleen Grattan award, and is the judge for this year's Poems in the Waiting Room competition.

For more Tuesday Poems, visit the main hub site.

January

A quick photo summary of the last month

Road works in our street, repairing damage to the sewers from the earthquakes (the road works are a huge nuisance, but the repairs are very necessary)

The bird on the neighbour's sunflowers is a greenfinch

I made a quick trip to Wellington - through Wellington, really, for a family funeral

Kaikoura peninsula from the air - I keep meaning to get a disposable film camera when I fly, so I can use it while taking off, when we are told all digital devices have to be turned off.

Back in Christchurch, an artist has decorated the fence in front of one of the remaining buildings in the city so that it looks like a reflection of the building, if you stand in the right spot.

Tuesday Poem: The Ambassador's Blonde Daughter

The Ambassador's Blonde Daughter

The ambassador’s blonde daughter
has dark eyebrows which she dyes
with potions flown in from Europe –
one week chestnut, the next mahogany.

The ambassador’s daughter is studying gravity.
She speeds downhill on her bicycle
the chain snaps
parts fly
she swerves past potholes,
tumbles to a halt on the verge
at the foot of the hill
dusts herself off
blowing kisses at all the passing boys.
The young men fetch ice creams
and bicycle parts. She sits on the pavement,
licks up the drips while they perform repairs.

A blessing on the ambassador’s blonde daughter!
May all your ice creams be hokey pokey
your life be ruled by levity
may young men walk tightropes for you
gypsy violins serenade you
in all the countries of Europe
may you dance in the streets
garbed for the fiesta, your skirts frilled and flounced,
your eyebrows striped green red and blue.

(c) Catherine Fitchett

Tuesday Poem returns this week from a summer break. I thought I would start the year with one of my own poems, which was published in JAAM at the end of last year. The inspiration for this poem came from a school friend of mine who was, indeed, the "ambassador's blonde daughter" - though there is nothing in the poem which is strictly untrue, it somehow seems to have become heightened and glamourised along the way!

"Hokey pokey" is New Zealand's favourite ice cream flavour, it is vanilla ice cream with chunks of hokey pokey in it - a sort of honeycomb toffee. Delicious on a hot day.

For more Tuesday poems visit the main hub site.

2012 in Photos: the Final Two

These two unrelated images have been sitting on my desktop for a week or two waiting for me to post them. Since I am now back at work and hence well into 2013, I thought it was time to post them and move on.

The epitome of Christchurch as it is now - a small boy peers through the fence at the end of the Restart Mall, which separates the cordoned off parts of the city from shoppers. The cordoned area is gradually shrinking, but we have a way to go yet. It reminds me of our childhood trips to the zoo, but instead of peering through the fence at wild animals, children now peer at cranes and diggers.

This one was taken in the middle of the North Island. We stopped at a lookout to admire, and photograph, the view, but instead of the magnificent vistas in the distance, my eye was caught by this bottle perched on a fencepost. Despite not being able to satisfy myself with the right composition of the diagonal lines of the hills and fences, the image lingers with me, as I'm still wondering who left it there, and why.

Through the Window

This is the view out of my living room window

Looking at this reminds me that I am going back to work on Monday, and all the gardening that I planned to do over the break is far from completed. Such as those weeds in the paving stones. The plum tree is in need of pruning, so we can get in and out of the front door easily, but I won't do that until it has finished cropping for the year.

And then there is the view through the other window:

Roadworks are a part of life in Christchurch. This lot are replacing earthquake damaged sewer pipes. We can't drive in and out of our street during the day, so my car is parked a block away.

I have been making inroads into a group of small patchwork quilts that I want to complete and send off to their intended recipients. It's a project that has been sitting around for quite a few years. I found when I set up for machine quilting one of the quilts that I couldn't figure out how to do it from the manual. I knew how, once upon a time. I think I will have to take my sewing machine to the dealer on the other side of town for some instruction, and to figure out if the problem is with the machine or the user. But as soon as I step outside the door, the hot wind blasts in my face, and then there is the issue of having to carry the machine to the car.

At least it's not as hot here as in Australia where they had to add new colours to the weather map to show how hot it is, and in some areas they had to stop serving petrol because it was evaporating.

2012 in Photos: On the Wall

Looking back over my photos, I have quite a few which show the ways locals have attempted to brighten the city, which otherwise would look very shabby and depressing with all the demolitions going on since the 2010 and 2011 earthquakes

This building had windows boarded up with hardboard, so someone decided to make large photographic murals depicting various activities apparently going on in the empty apartments

Unfortunately efforts to save this building failed, and it has since been demolished. No buyer could be found who was willing to pay the huge cost of restoring it.

On the road to the beachside suburb of Sumner, shipping containers have been installed to protect the road from rockfall.

The containers have been converted to a gigantic outdoor art gallery.

And then there are the more conventional sorts of murals:

Finally, our newly reopened local library complete with red steel emergency earthquake bracing, all decorated for Christmas:

2012 in Photos

I was looking over my photos from 2012, many of which I intended to post here but never quite did. Here are a couple of wee guys from Hamilton Zoo - these were among my favourites.

I haven't linked to Thematic Photographic for a while, but this week's theme is favourites, so it seemed a good time to go back there. I'll be posting more 2012 photos in the next week or so, I suspect. Some of them are favourites, and some of them - well, I can't judge the photographic quality, as I can't see past the subject matter, born out of a need to document what is going on in Christchurch as more and more buildings are pulled down, and new ones start to take their place - rather slowly. Next week, the march of the road cones reaches our street. I may have to get out and take more photographs, just to escape from the inevitable construction noise.

Welcome to 2013

I've been pondering the direction I want the blog to take this year, though I haven't come to any conclusions as yet. My earlier posts were quite varied, then I joined Tuesday Poem and found myself posting a poem a week, which eventually became almost my only posts.

I'd like to get a bit more variety back, and I haven't yet decided whether to keep up with the Tuesday Poem. I haven't been writing enough poems to post one of my own every week, and getting permission from other poets can be a bit time-consuming at times.

I haven't made any New Year resolutions. I haven't chosen a word for the year. (I thought I might try that one year - it seems a popular idea in the blogosphere. I chose "open". And then we had a rather large earthquake, and the word took on meanings I hadn't really anticipated. Such as all the buildings that were literally "open" after walls fell down, even rather private rooms such as toilets being on public view.)

I have been reading Oliver Burkeman's book The Antidote: Happiness for People Who Can't Stand Positive Thinking. It's a very interesting and apparently well researched read, which calls into question the benefits of many aspects of popular psychology such as goal setting and affirmations. More in another post - perhaps.

One thing that he does seem to support is the benefits of mindfulness. So I am trying to mindfully keep in mind some of my unfinished projects, and actually do something about them.

It's been a quiet New Year for me, on the whole. I didn't even stay up till midnight. It occurs to me that it is a strange way of celebrating new beginnings - to party like crazy until the old year is finished, then spend the first day of the new year too hung over and blobbed out to do anything! (That's my excuse, anyway).

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!

Tuesday Poem: The Beautiful Morning by Fiona Farrell

The Beautiful Morning

On beautiful mornings,
flowers fling up their
bright skirts, trees wink
and children run from
their parents' hands to
stand in the crack that
has opened overnight
outside the kitchen.
They jump in.
They jump out.
In and out
as if it were a crocodile.
The earth lies still and
lets them jump
in
and out
of its open mouth.

On beautiful mornings
the front of the bagel shop
falls down flat on the street.
The pub slumps in the gutter.
And the church across the
road lays down its heavy
cross. It spreads itself in
tiny pieces, no bigger than
a man's hand
among the daffodils.

- Fiona Farrell

******

Fiona Farrell's poem "The Beautiful Morning" was published in Catalyst, volume 9 and also in The Broken Book which was last week shortlisted in the general non-fiction category for the New Zealand Book Awards. The Broken Book is the book that Fiona was writing when the 2010 and 2011 earthquakes struck Christchurch. Originally a book about walking, it has lovely passages which ramble in the way one might do when taking a leisurely walk about the countryside. However the earthquakes changed the nature of the book, and interspersed with the prose are a dozen or so poems which interrupt the text in the same way that the earthquakes have disrupted all our lives.

I loved the way that The Beautiful Morning set beauty alongside destruction in such a matter of fact way. And I found the whole book really absorbing to read, a worthy contender for the book awards. (With the poetry shortlist being restricted to three books, it is nice to see a little extra poetry sneaking in to another category).

It was a good week for Fiona last week - as well as her book being shortlisted, she was made an Officer of the New Zealand Order of Merit on the Queens Birthday honours list for her services to writing.

For more Tuesday Poems visit the main hub site.

Snow Day

We don't usually get snow this early in winter but it fell heavily all day today. Unlike many people I did manage to get to work as it is not too far from my home. All the buses stopped at 11 a.m. Most schools and many businesses were closed. The garden in the photo is next door to the place where I work, and I took the bird photographs through the window at lunchtime. The large flower panicles belong to a cabbage palm (ti kouka in Maori) and the little waxeyes were all over them. I'm guessing that they need to eat a lot on cold days to keep up their body heat.

I did get to come home a little early so as not to be on the icy roads when it was getting dark. And our usual Wednesday bridge night was cancelled so I have tackled some long overdue housework - nothing like being active for keeping warm. Back to work in the morning, if the snow stops overnight as forecast.

Tuesday Poem: Written in the Churchyard at Middleton in Sussex

Written in the Churchyard at Middleton in Sussex

Pressed by the moon, mute arbitress of tides,
While the loud equinox its power combines,
The sea no more its swelling surge confines,
But o'er the shrinking land sublimely rides.
The wild blast, rising from the western cave,
Drives the huge billows from their heaving bed,
Tears from their grassy tombs the village dead,
And breaks the silent sabbath of the grave!
With shells and sea-weed mingled, on the shore
Lo! their bones whiten in the frequent wave;
But vain to them the winds and waters rave;
They hear the warring elements no more;
While I am doomed - by life's long storm oppressed,
To gaze with envy on their gloomy rest.

- Charlotte Smith ((1749 - 1806)

I have been reading a small book, "101 Sonnets from Shakespeare to Heaney" edited by Don Paterson and published by Faber and Faber. It has been a revelation - there is a very interesting introduction which discusses that old question "what is a sonnet?" (the answer - it has fourteen lines - probably) and goes on to explain why the sonnet in particular is a perfect shape to contain human thought.

This is followed by the sonnets, from 101 different poets, many familiar, but others new to me. One of these is Charlotte Smith. Years back when I studied poetry at high school, it didn't occur to me that we were not taught any female poets. If pressed, I could have named Christina Rosetti ("Goblin Market") and Elizabeth Barrett Browning ("Sonnets from the Portuguese") and if I thought even harder, I might have remembered Eileen Duggan, whose poem "The Kingfisher" was thought suitable for primary school children - but that was it, against the dozens and dozens of male poets that were taught to us or at least mentioned.

There are of course many contemporary women poets - and I've gradually become aware of earlier ones - Emily Dickinson, Margaret Cavendish, Anne Bradstreet, Amy Lowell and others - but hadn't come across Charlotte Smith before picking up this book. The sonnet form became highly popular in England during the Elizabethan period, but then fell into disregard. It was largely due to Charlotte Smith that it became popular again among Romantic poets such as Wordsworth. For this, she deserves to be much better known.

Tuesday Poem: from Kitchen Sonnets

Kitchen Sonnets 3

Sometimes I feel ten years old, watching you
in the kitchen. You are mixing mash for the hens.
I will feed them, gather the eggs, carry them
carefully into the house. Did you ever wonder
how eggs in the nest bear the warm weight
of the hen and do not break? Here I am now,
older than you ever were. I don’t feel wise,
but astonished to have arrived in this body.
Every year there is more I do not know.
There is so much I would still ask you, but
you would not know the answers, even if you could speak.
I am the child who has run ahead on the path.
I glance over my shoulder, you are no longer there.
I am as strong as eggshells, and ready to break open.

**********

Since Mother's Day has just passed, I decided to repost this which is one of three "Kitchen sonnets" first published in Takahe magazine and later in Flap: the Chookbook 2. My mother died fairly young, and I have been older than she was for several years now. So this is posted in her memory.

For more Tuesday Poems visit the main hub site.

Tuesday Poem: The Poker Players

The Poker Players

A cold wind has passed
down the street on horseback,
shooting up the town,
lashing his whip.
The poker players have made
their declaration: “I’m out”
and flung down their hands
of various golden suits.
Leaves lie in drifts - the spade-like poplars,
lobed maples, and willow
pointed like diamonds.
The players stand about the saloon
grey and gaunt,
against a background of imperturbable green.
Kowhai, manuka, ake ake;
the natives are still in the game.
They are keeping their cards close to their chests.

- Catherine Fitchett


*******

It seemed a good time to post something seasonal. This is also fitting because I have been playing cards a lot over the past year - bridge, not poker. New Zealand native plants - of which three are named in the poem - are mostly evergreen (not just the conifers), as opposed to the imported English varieties common in Christchurch, such as willows, oaks, chestnuts and poplars. "The Poker Players" was first published in the Christchurch Press and also appears in Flap: The Chookbook 2.

Tuesday Poem: A Brief for the Defense, by Jack Gilbert

I came across Jack Gilbert's poem "A Brief for the Defense" a few days ago, after finding a reference to it in an interview with Jack Gilbert posted at the Poetry Daily website.
A google search revealed a few Youtube videos, but none of them turned out to be the author reading it, and I didn't like the rather overwrought voice of the young woman in one of them - so rather than embed the video, I am just posting the link to the text.

The central message of the poem "we must risk delight" is a powerful reminder, at a time when we seem to be surrounded by bad news in Christchurch - more and more buildings that will have to be demolished, a growing housing crisis, lack of progress on insurance issues, and so on. All of which pales into insignificance compared with problems elsewhere in the world. Gilbert's poem addresses all this very powerfully.

I am aware that asking readers to click links to another site risks losing attention on the internet - but click the link anyway, the poem is worth it.

Tuesday Poem: The Herbert Plot, by Jenny Powell

The Herbert Plot

for Donna Demente

As if you were chasing summer
and taking an apartment on the Riviera

or travelling on a tour of galleries
and architectural treasures,

you announce a stopover
at Herbert, ticket purchased,

documentation all in order,
the plot written and waiting

for an opening, there on those
green hills. Not highland hills

or Emerald Isles but Mount Charles
where the heart's land rises

hill upon hill and in their bones
history rattles. The slow gaze of time

wraps a hundred shades of love
and sorrow in a convergence

of yellow and blue, the last echo
of life tumbling down to the sea,

lifting into the requiem of night,
Donna, Donna, Madonna.

- Jenny Powell


******

A week or so back I had the pleasure of attending the launch of three new chapbooks published by Cold Hub Press. Among them was Jenny Powell's new collection , Ticket Home. Jenny was kind enough to give me permission to use a poem from the collection as my Tuesday Poem this week. I have been enjoying reading her poems very much. As often happens, to navigate the difficulty of choosing among them, I settled on one with personal resonances - I remember stopping off at the Herbert cemetery referred to in the poem some years ago, to search for the graves of my great great uncles and their families. It is a lovely small graveyard on a hillside shaded by pines and other trees. Donna Demente is an artist and gallery owner from Oamaru. Jenny says "The poem was inspired by an exhibition of work by Donna Demente in Oamaru's Forrester Gallery. I didn't want to think about her chosen place. As with many things we don't want to consciously consider, the unconscious has a way of retaining them, hence the poem."

Jenny Powell is a Dunedin poet who has written five individual collections of poetry. She has worked with other poets to produce two collaborative collections, 'Double Jointed' and 'Locating the Madonna.' Her latest collections are 'Vietnam: A Poem Journey' (HeadworX, 2010) and 'Ticket Home' (Cold Hub Press, 2012).

For more Tuesday Poems, visit the hub site to check out the main post for the week, and to visit other Tuesday Poets linked in the sidebar.

Beckenham Mural

This mural appeared on the brick wall of the pharmacy in Beckenham (a suburb near me) in the last week or so. Some of the buildings depicted were destroyed in the earthquake, including those on the now vacant lot next to the wall. I suspect the appearance of the mural means that nothing will be built there any time soon.

It was estimated that, to replace all the buildings that were destroyed, a new one would need to be completed every four days for the next ten years. And ongoing insurance problems are slowing the rebuild. It will happen, eventually, but in the meantime it is good to see artwork like this to brighten up the city.

Tuesday Poem on Wednesday

Ozymandias

I met a traveller from an antique land,
Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown
And wrinkled lip and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read,
Which yet survive stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed:
And on the pedestal these words appear:
"My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!"
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.

- Percy Bysshe Shelley 1792 - 1822

I find this vision of ancient ruins keeps popping into my mind, with the growing number of demolitions around our city, and the controversy over the future of the Christchurch Cathedral. So I thought I would post it for my Tuesday Poem this week, though I am a day late due to some rather late nights out.

Meantime, at the main Tuesday Poem website, the Tuesday Poets have been building a collaborative poem for our second birthday. We have constructed it by contributing a line each in turn. It was great fun to do (and challenging, as well).

Tuesday Poem: Easter, by George Herbert

Easter

Rise heart; thy Lord is risen. Sing his praise
Without delayes,
Who takes thee by the hand, that thou likewise
With him mayst rise:
That, as his death calcined thee to dust,
His life may make thee gold, and much more, just.

Awake, my lute, and struggle for thy part
With all thy art.
The crosse taught all wood to resound his name,
Who bore the same.
His stretched sinews taught all strings, what key
Is best to celebrate this most high day.

Consort both heart and lute, and twist a song
Pleasant and long:
Or, since all musick is but three parts vied
And multiplied,
O let thy blessed Spirit bear a part,
And make up our defects with his sweet art.

I got me flowers to straw thy way;
I got me boughs off many a tree:
But thou wast up by break of day,
And brought’st thy sweets along with thee.

The Sunne arising in the East,
Though he give light, & th’ East perfume;
If they should offer to contest
With thy arising, they presume.

Can there be any day but this,
Though many sunnes to shine endeavour?
We count three hundred, but we misse:
There is but one, and that one ever.

George Herbert (1593 - 1633)

This seemed an appropriate song to post as my Tuesday Poem this week. There is an extensive discussion of the poem at Patrick Comerford's blog here.

Fall/Autumn

I went into the city today (as much of it as is open) for a bit of gift shopping. Then I browsed round a bit and took some photos. You can stand on a corner and in one direction the view looks like this:

(apologies for the poor focus)

and then in the other direction it looks like this:

It's not only the leaves that are falling. The pace of demolition is increasing, everywhere there are unsafe buildings being torn down. Crowds of people used to stop to watch the demolitions, now hardly anyone bothers. In the meantime much of the city remains off limits. I stopped to help out some overseas visitors, trying to find a gift shop which had advertised on an obviously out-of-date brochure (there are far too many of those around still). I had to tell them that, no, that address was firmly behind the cordon, and suggest other shopping areas they might be able to reach on foot. When last seen they were heading off to the museum and its gift shop - one of the few nineteenth century Gothic revival buildings that has survived, having been earthquake strengthened some years ago. Many other supposedly earthquake strengthened buildings have not survived - I guess they weren't earthquake strengthened enough.

Easter trading hours are a bit strange in New Zealand. Good Friday and Easter Monday are officially public holidays. But back when the public holidays were gazetted, nearly everybody worked Monday to Friday, so it didn't occur to our law makers to make Easter Sunday a public holiday. They did however make it one of the few days a year on which shops (with a few exceptions) are not permitted to trade. So now that shops open all weekend, and on most public holidays as well, the result is that the shops are closed at Easter on Friday and Sunday but open on Saturday and Monday (apart from some garden centres which open and get fined for doing so. No doubt it's profitable for them).

Our public libraries on the other hand, were open on Sunday - because it's not a public holiday and they are not covered by shop trading hours rules - but closed on Easter Monday. Bizarre.

I didn't manage to spot an Easter Bunny road cone - though there are hundreds of road cones not too far from here begging to be "bunnifed". So, if you would like to see what they look like, head to my daughter's blog

or Cheryl Bernstein's

or Christchurch Daily Photo.

Tuesday Poem

No Tuesday Poem this week becuase life is keeping me busy. Nothing particularly exciting - work, autumn tidy up in the garden, jam making, family coming for meals and the like. If you need a fix of tuesday poetry, do go over to the main hub site where all the participants are listed in the side bar, and where there will be a special poem developing for our second birthday - growing a line at a time over the next couple of weeks.

I have managed some poetry related things recently. A poetry class with Joanna which comes with plenty of homework, some poetry submissions sent out to various publications, and the news that one of my poems placed third in the inaugural Poems in the Waiting Room competition. So if I keep writing, I may have some more of my own work to post on Tuesdays, which will save me the effort of sending out all those permission requests.