Sunday

Yesterday it rained. Today was fine and sunny, though not without cloud. Since moving to the hill nearly a year ago, after more than thirty years on the flat, I haven't yet tired of the view from the window.

The kowhai tree is flowering. I had left the wheelbarrow underneath it. A host of blossoms had dropped off and were floating in the rainwater.

Sunlight reflecting off the neighbour's attic window onto their roof.

The poetry I am writing this year seems much more focussed on observations of the world around me, than poems I have written previously. Taking photographs is another way of observing my surroundings, details stored up for later.

Tuesday Poem: To Waitemata Harbour, by Sarah Quigley

To Waitemata Harbour

You have such
clever hands.

You hold the islands
on the tips of your
fingers, lightly so

you never submerge
them. Firmly enough that
they don't float away.

If a person could hold
another person like that -
well, then

there would only be
love.

- Sarah Quigley

***************

Some of the best events at the Word Christchurch Writers Festival were the free ones. For instance, on Friday evening there was a launch of three poetry books: Hinemoana Baker's Waha (Mouth), Kerrin P Sharpe's There is a medical name for this, and Essential New Zealand Poems. (Not so much the launch, as a launch, as there have been launches of the latter book around the country).

The one drawback was trying to fit a celebration of all three books into the space of an hour.Nevertheless, I enjoyed the readings and was happy to purchase all three books.

Sarah Quigley's poem is included in Essential New Zealand Poems. It is one I have loved since I first came across it in AUP New Poets I published by Auckland University Press in 1999.

Sarah is a novelist, critic and columnist as well as having published two poetry collections. She was born and grew up in Christchurch, obtained a D Phil in Literature from Oxford University, and returned to Christchurch where,among other things, she taught for a time at the School for Young Writers - two of my daughters were among the young people who benefitted from her tuition. She was the inaugural winner of the Creative New Zealand Berlin Writers' Residency in 2000, and has since lived and worked in Berlin. Her 2011 novel The Conductor was the number one bestselling fiction title in New Zealand for 21 weeks.

Thanks to Sarah for permission to post her poem here.
For more Tuesday Poems, visit the main hub site.

Te Puna Quarry Park

These are a selection of photos taken at Te Puna quarry park on our recent trip north. It is a park which climbs the very steep sides of an old quarry. I have focussed here mainly on the plants, there are also some interesting sculptures (and an amazing view).

For Carmi's Thematic Photographic: Vegetation.

From Above

I spent the weekend attending a number of sessions at the Word Christchurch Writers' Festival. The "fringe" events on the Sunday took place at the Physics Room, a gallery and exhibition space on the fourth floor of the old High Street Post Office building which now houses C1 Expresso and Alice in Videoland. So I clambered up the four flights of stairs, stepped inside the gallery and was mesmerised by this view. It occurred to me that I hadn't been this high up since the earthquakes. In fact there are not many functioning tall buildings left in the city.

The wooden trees that echo the forms of the cabbage palms in the foreground are a recent sculpture installation. On the left, the empty area where there is a mini golf course was once an area of narrow lanes with quirky shops. Just out of view, behind temporary fencing is the damaged building that housed the Twisted Hop, the scene of a poetry book launch I attended a few years back. So much of the city is now just a memory.

Elizabeth Knox apparently described Christchurch as "a city living in memory and expectation, with ghost streets and dream buildings". It seemed an apt description.

Birds of a Feather

As a would-be wildlife photographer, I am not very successful. My photo files reveal plenty of attempts to photograph birds, but mostly they come out blurred, tiny dots in the distance in the middle of the photo, seriously backlit, or just plain boring (endless photographs of gulls, which at least tend to stand still and not fly away until you come really close).

I recently visited an exhibition from the New Zealand Society of Nature Photographers at the Canterbury Museum, and the stunning photos there reminded me just how far I have to go to match their skill level.

Nevertheless, here are a few bird photos for Carmi's theme of the week.

I captured the pied stilt while having a lakeside rest break on our recent trip to the North Island.

The rest of the photos were taken around Christchurch:

The gulls were bathing in a rainwater puddle in our rather earthquake damaged central business district.

A kereru (New Zealand wood pigeon) enjoying a berry feast in Victoria Park, a local park popular with hill walkers and mountain bikers.

There are some rather swampy paddocks at the foot of the hill where we live. It's a popular hang out for pukeko (also known as "swamp hens", although this name is being used less often these days).

And lastly, gulls and ducks on the golf course in Hagley Park. This one makes me smile, because they didn't want to move, despite the best efforts of the man with the golf club. I guess they are very used to golfers, and rate the chance of being hit by a golf ball too low to make the effort to move out of the way.

Tuesday Poem: Morning Glory, by Siobhan Harvey

Morning Glory


These final moments of sleeping
cradle something which can never be

reclaimed. Like land and water, we
have shared the space, the companionship

of mother and child. Now posed in simple relief,
your marble body, your eyes closed appear, like a statue,

imagined of substance which might simply break.
Soon, you’ll wake up anew

to friends, books and independence strangers will measure
out with their invisible, impartial scales. In metamorphosis

quick as an intake of my breath, you’ll be dressed
in your first uniform. As swiftly, I’ll see you own it

and so will attempt to still a need to cry.
For all the years I’ve held back the stirring

of these things with a sentinel’s weakness, I break
the slumber of our moment by calling our your name.

**************************

"Morning Glory: is taken from Siobhan Harvey's recent collection, Cloudboy which won the 2013 Kathleen Grattan Poetry Award.

Some poetry books can be dipped into here and there. This is one I read straight through from beginning to end. It gains power as it goes, being an account of the author's relationship with her autistic son, and his difficulties entering school. The poem above is a lovely example of the sensitivity expressed in the collection.

Another poem from the collection, Cloudmother was earlier posted on the Tuesday Poem main hub site, with a commentary by the hub editor, Helen McKinlay, and Siobhan's own comments on the collection. To these, I have little to add, and recommend clicking through to read those comments, if you haven't already done so.

Thanks to Siobhan for permission to post "Morning Glory" here.

Tuesday Poem: Christian Milne (1773 - ?)

On a Lady
Who Spoke with Some Ill-Nature of the Advertisement of
My Little Work in the Aberdeen Journal

Says pert Miss Prue,
"There's something new
In Chalmers' weekly papers -
A shipwright's wife,
In humble life,
Writes rhyme by nightly tapers!

"That folks of taste
Their time should waste
To read them, makes me wonder!
A lowborn fool
Ne'er bred at school,
What can she do but blunder?

"Write rhyme, forsooth!
Upon my truth,
"Twill put it out of fashion;
She can but paint
In colors faint
Rude nature's lowest passion.

"A wife so mean
Should nurse and clean
And mend her husband's jacket,
Not spend her time
In writing rhyme
And raising such a racket!"

**********

While on holiday it was a delight to discover several excellent second hand bookshops, at one of which I picked up a fat volume "British Women Poets of the 19th Century". There were a few I had heard of, such as Elizabeth Barrett Browning, and Christina Rossetti, and many many more that I hadn't. Perhaps sentiments such as those expressed in the poem above - women should stick to domestic business - explain why so many female poets didn't receive greater recognition.

I enjoyed the humour of this poem, and was interested to read about the author, who was the child of a carpenter. Her mother died soon after her birth, and her stepmother tried to prevent her learning to read and write. She married a ship's carpenter, and they had eight children. I was intrigued to read that she received 100 pounds for her only volume of poems, and that she invested it in a sixteenth share of a ship. So her poems must have been quite well received, as it seems unlikely that publication of a book of verse today would earn sufficient funds to buy one sixteenth of a ship, even a small one!

For more Tuesday Poems, visit the main hub site.

Strangers from Afar

Carmi's Thematic Photographic theme for the week is strangers from afar. Looking into my photo files, I find I don't do that very much. I did, however, find the above photo that I took a couple of months back, outside Christchurch's transitional cathedral. Something about the electrician's kneeling figure intrigued me. Perhaps it is to do with the motto "laborare est orare" (to work is to pray). (Which reminds me, I intended to write a poem based on the scene).

To find more, I had to go back much further in my files. It turns out I'm less shy of taking photos of strangers when I travel overseas (which is not very often).

The modern centurion in the photo above seemed to have echoes of the fellow in the photo below:

The last of my selection was taken in Singapore.

Orchids

Photographed at Te Puna Quarry Park.

Lenticular Cloud over Wellington

We were up early last Monday morning on our way to the ferry terminal, and spotted this amazing cloud over the hills at sunrise. I had heard of lenticular clouds before, but never seen one.

On the Beach

We have been on holiday.More photos to come, in the meantime here is an image for Carmi's Thematic Photographic. This week's theme is look straight down, which this photo seemed to fit, more or less.

Tuesday Poem

Busy this week, but Helen Lowe has posted one of my poems as Tuesday Poem on her blog - Learning Italian.

What I've Been Reading

Every so often I come across a list on a blog, generally at the end of December or early January, titled something like "the best ten novels I've read this year". You won't find that here.I mean, who has time to read that much? Possibly, if you only read novels, there would be time to read enough - say twenty or thirty - that it would be worth picking the best ten. But my reading is not restricted to novels, there are of course newspapers, and magazines, lots of poetry books, non fiction, research related to family history, and so on.

And then there is my day job, and other pursuits like writing, sewing, playing bridge (one of the few things my husband and I do together, so I am not about to let it go), and getting out and about for some exercise and inspiration.

So - "best ten" - not so much, and as for "1001 books you must read before you die" I once calculated how many I would have to read a year, and laughed at that book title, which doesn't seem to allow any time at all for additions for personal preference, or all the books that are going to be published between now and the date of my demise, whenever that might be.

I have however read a couple of books lately that I thought worth a mention. The first, one that has often popped up in "must read" lists, and the second, one I had never heard of before.

The first novel I ever read by Rose Tremain was "Music and Silence", a historic novel which I found mesmerising. I wanted more, so tried a number of the author's other books, and was disappointed. Her modern novels don't appeal to me - I tried "The Long Road Home" - OK but not outstanding - and "Trespass" in which I found most of the characters unpleasant and unappealing, although admittedly by the end of the book they had grown on me a little. Then there was "The Colour", another historical novel, but set in New Zealand rather than Europe. Somehow, the setting just seemed inauthentic and I couldn't get into it properly because of the overwhelming sense of "not quite rightness".

Finally, however, I got round to "Restoration" and more recently, "Merivel", both of which I enjoyed enormously. And I can't quite say why these grabbed me when the others didn't. It's not that the characters are less flawed. Maybe I prefer flawed characters who are firmly in the past? Perhaps if the settings are suitably remote, I can forgive flaws as being of another time and place? I haven't come to a conclusion yet.However, I can say for those who like deeply layered, complex historical novels, these are well worth reading.

The other book which I am just about to return to the library is one that I found on the new books shelf. I knew nothing about the author - it's her first novel - but the book looked intriguing so I picked it up. And I'm very glad I did. The author is Jess Richards and the book is "Snake Ropes". Jess Richards was born in Wales and grew up in South West Scotland. The setting of the book is a mysterious island somewhere far to the west of Scotland. The inhabitants have long been isolated. Their only visitors are the mysterious tall men who come from the mainland to trade for fish and for the women's craft work, being careful not to disturb the culture of the islanders too much. The story is told in the voice of two young girls, Mary who is an islander, and Morgan whose parents have settled there from the mainland, after fleeing something dark in their past. If I had to label this book with a genre, I would say "magical realism".Morgan can talk to the dead, and the myths told by Mary's grandmother become tangled in the story so that it is not quite clear what is myth and what is real. The blurb on the back of the book reads "The day the tall men come from the mainland to trade, Mary's little brother goes missing. She needs to find him. She needs to know a secret that no one else can tell her."

It's a stunning book, highly imaginative, unlike anything else I have ever read. I highly recommend it.

That Sky Again

This week Carmi asked for our favourite photos. And thinking about it, I decided my favourite photo is always the one that I saw in my head, which is never quite how the scene turns out.
Being winter here, and since I have a day job, my photo opportunities are limited lately, but it seems I am a little obsessed with the sky. The above is the sunrise as seen from our living room one stormy morning (a little grainy, because there wasn't much light). For some reason, I thought of a geode - a crystal deposit inside a hollow rock, which is revealed by slicing it open. The sun seemed to be breaking through the clouds in the same way.

For more favourite photos, visit Carmi here.

Tuesday Poem: The Idea of Trees

The Idea of Trees

The cherry tree has had its last revenge,
its thirsty roots seeking out a crack
in the drainpipe, prising it wider.
We call the plumber to dig up the driveway.
We think we love trees, but we don't.
We are in love with the idea of trees,
try to make them fit the confines
of our tidy suburban plots of land.
They are not tame. We are surrounded
by their amputated limbs
where we try to keep them clear
of the gutters and power lines.
Remember the peach tree,
the one that the neighbours cut down
two summers ago? First they picked all the fruit,
arrived on our doorstep with overflowing bags.
Two weeks later we were still eating,
juice dripping down our wrists and elbows,
as we savoured the fruit
of a tree that didn’t exist.

- Catherine Fitchett, first published in Takahe, December 2011

I am always uncomfortable about cutting down trees, and yet it is often very necessary in suburban gardens. The cherry tree was behind our former house. Unfortunately we never managed to get many cherries from it, even though they were delicious, as the birds were expert at getting in first. And the tree grew to tower over our two storey house, so it had to go. We also had a large plum tree in front of the house. When I revisited the area recently I found that the new owners had removed it. The front yard looks very bare to me now, but the difference in the amount of light reaching inside is amazing.

Lately, I have been reluctantly cutting down trees from our new section, trying to get more light onto the vegetable garden. There are dozens, so I'm hoping the ones I remove won't be missed, eventually. We plan to replace some of them with fruit trees, probably dwarf varieties.

All these tree cutting activities reminded me of the poem.

Helen Lowe has also posted one of my poems for Tuesday Poem this week. Visit her blog to read Blue.
And for more Tuesday Poems, visit the main hub site.

Alpacas

A couple of months back we took a weekend trip away. On the way back home we stopped at Adobe Alpacas for their open day, an alpaca farm run by a former work colleague of my husband. Maggie breeds alpacas for their fibre, so she is gradually culling out her coloured animals and increasing her flock of white alpacas. There were quite a few mothers and babies, including the little cutie above.

It's been a while since I took part in Carmi's Thematic Photographic. His theme this week is Critters, so it seemed like a good opportunity to post this photo.

Tuesday Poem: from The Bruce, by John Barbour

..A! Fredome is a noble thing
Fredome mays man to haiff liking.
Fredome all solace to man giffis,
He levys at es that frely levys.
A noble hart may haiff nane es
Na ellys nocht that may him ples
Gyff fredome failyhe, for fre liking
Is yharnyt our all other thing.
Na he that ay has levyt fre
May nocht knaw weill the propyrte
The angyr na the wrechyt dome
That is couplyt to foule thryldome,
Bot gyff he had assayit it.
Than all perquer he suld it wyt,
And suld think fredome mar to prys
Than all the gold in warld that is.

- John Barbour, Archdeacon of Aberdeen, ca 1375

The Scots have just celebrated the 700th anniversary of the Battle of Bannockburn, which took place at a site very close to where my ancestors farmed for several centuries near Stirling.

A copy of this poem has been restored for the 700th anniversary of the battle. "The Brus" is believed to have been written by the Archdeacon of Aberdeen in 1375 and tells of Robert the Bruce's wars for Scottish independence.

The battle was fought on June 23 and 24 in 1314 and is relived through the 1,400-line poem. Now, a 15th century copy of the poem has been restored by a team at St John's College at Cambridge University. More information is found here.

The poem is available in a modern translation by A A M Duncan, complete with copious additional notes. (Translation on the left hand side, with the original Scots version on the right hand side of each two page spread)

The passage above runs as follows in modern English:
Ah! Freedom is a noble thing/Freedom lets a man have pleasure,/Freedom all solace to man gives,/He lives at ease that freely lives./A noble heart will have no ease/Nor aught else that pleases him/If freedom fails, for free decision/Is longed for above all else./No, he who has always lived free/Cannot well know the properties,/The anger, no, the miserable fate,/That are coupled to foul thralldom./But if he had experienced it/Then he would know it perfectly/And would think freedom more to be prized/Than all the gold there is in this world.

For more Tuesday Poems, visit the main hub site.

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.

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.

For more Tuesday Poems, visit the main hub site for this week's post, and check out the additional participating blogs linked in the sidebar.

Tuesday Poem: Summer Stars, by Carl Sandburg

Summer Stars

Bend low again, night of summer stars.
So near you are, sky of summer stars,
So near, a long-arm man can pick off stars,
Pick off what he wants in the sky bowl,
So near you are, summer stars,
So near, strumming, strumming,
So lazy and hum-strumming.

-Carl Sandburg, 1878 - 1967

The other weekend a trip to the Mt John observatory near Lake Tekapo reminded me of this poem. White it is autumn, rather than summer, it was stunning to see, on a clear night, how the sky looks away from the city.

In New Zealand - unlike in some parts of the world - we can still see stars in the cities, but with far from the intensity visible away from the pollution of city lights. When American poet Carl Sandburg wrote this poem in 1920, light pollution must have been far less of a problem than it is now, and the summer stars would indeed have appeared so near they could be picked from the "sky bowl".

For more Tuesday Poems, visit the main hub site, where this week's poem is by Irish poet Sean Lysaght. Many other Tuesday poems can be visited by clicking the links in the sidebar there.

The Big Poetry Giveaway Winners

I have drawn the winners and sent the books on their way. The sorting hat aka Random Number Generator has spoken and books are in the post to:
Clarissa Aykroyd, Lissa Clouser, Katrina Roberts and Kimberley McGill. (You may need to allow a couple of weeks or so for them to arrive as they have to circle the globe to reach you).

Thanks to everyone for entering, and for those who didn't win anything here, I hope you had better luck on another blog. If not, do try again next year.

Tuesday Poem: The fall of silence, by Sue Fitchett

The fall of silence

today the silence makes me listen
my pulse ticks

someone reminds me it’s the ninth day
of the ninth month of the ninth year

kowhai buds come out a month early
kereru plunder them

unopened buds pop pop
onto the deck

five kereru perch on a wattle
side by side back to back mute as always

I reach for the phone to call you
never seen so many together

at one time on one tree
my finger stays still

they sit I sit
in this eye of silence

a memory comes uninvited
my mother passes tea cups to

visitors who watch the view
our bay’s natural sound shell

fallen
silent

the shaking starts
bone china in my mother’s hand

rattles like knucklebones
momentarily caught in a fist


© sue fitchett

Waiheke Island poet Sue fitchett has a new collection of poems, "On the Wing" published by Steele Roberts. It will be launched by Sandra Lee at the Waiheke Library, 2 Korora Road from 4.30 pm to 6.30 pm on Saturday 10 May. The above poem is taken from the collection.

Sue says "The collection explores on many levels the relationship between humans and birds, both good and bad; exploring presence and absence, falling and rising, hellos and goodbyes, taking off,, flying and landing and has subtext about women and birds plus 'conversations' with the images, ideas and writing of the English author of The Peregrine JA Baker."

Each week a new poem is posted at the Tuesday Poem main hub site. Up to thirty bloggers also post Tuesday Poems on their own blogs, and links to these blogs appear in the sidebar of the hub site. I highly recommend making time to visit some of these for a wide selection of poems, both from participants' own work and other poets.

Tuesday Poem: The Brazilian Priest's Flying Ship, by Sue Wootton

The Brazilian priest's flying ship

GENTLEMAN'S MAGAZINE 56,1786

Scallop-hulled, my lovely vessel plies the air
on feathered wings. Her bowsprit beak splits clouds,

streams tufts of cumulus and stratus past
her flanks. Her rigging's no frayed salted grid of rope

mast-glued to crawling seas; she hoists no canvas tower
nor stands a man in any so-called nest - nay, she is the crow,

the actual bird, the raptor, gull, horizon-hunting
albatross. Her stately pinions beat. Her canopy's

an iron net strung liberally with amber beads. Gentlemen,
it's by this secret, modern, scientific operation (and by

God's will) we'll keep aloft. And swift, so swift! Two hundred
miles per day - unhindered reef-free sky! Flamboyant

whoop-whoop birds ablaze with jungle song ne'er heard by Christian ears
will roost with us on Tuesday, will decorate our snow-view

Andes Thursday plates with gaudy spectrum (plucked) of plump!
And never becalmed1 Bring forth the bellows. Pump, gentlemen, pump!

-Sue Wootton

Note a description and engraving of this flying ship was published in the Gentleman's Magazine 56, 1786. Invented by a Brazilian priest, the vessel was to be covered by "iron wire, in the form of a net, on which are fastened a good number of amber beads, which by a secret operation, will help keep the ship aloft'. It would offer fast travel ('200 miles in 24 hours') and utilize the latest modern technology (a pair of bellows stored fore and aft) to combat the doldrums.

Sue Wootton is a Dunedin poet and writer, whose work includes three poetry collections Hourglass (2005), Magnetic South (2008) and By Birdlight (2011), and a children's book, Cloudcatcher. This poem is taken from her third collection, By Birdlight, and the associated image is the cover image for the book.

I am giving away a copy of By Birdlight along with other books, in the Big Poetry Giveaway. I will be drawing the winners not too long after the end of the month, so if you would like to enter, add your name to the comments of this post.

For more Tuesday Poems, visit the main hub site where you will find a poem by Lee Posna this week, and links to other participants in the side bar.

Tuesday Poem

State Highway One, South of Oamaru

Horse heads of smoke rear into the sky
from late autumn burn offs. A hawk hovers
over road kill, wheels away as I approach.
Possum spilling its guts on the centre line.
In the autumn blond fields, a crease
backed by a line of dark trees -
a country creek like any other
except for its name
Baghdad Creek
In the distance, I hear gunshots.

© Catherine Fitchett

I am taking part in the Big Poetry Giveaway. This poem appears in Flap: The Chook Book 2 which is one of the books that I am giving away. For more details of my giveaway, see this post.

Note: possums in New Zealand are not the same as the North American opossum, they are the Australian species - protected native animals in Australia, an introduced pest species here. No one that I know gets too upset over possum road kill! There really is a Baghdad Creek, named after a nineteenth century sailing ship that brought early settlers to New Zealand.

For more Tuesday Poems, visit the main hub site.

Emerging

One of the things I have been working on lately. Now that we have our new home and know the wall colours, I have started a quilt for our bed. The colours are based on a fabric which depicts paua shells, beautiful shells with a lining of purples, blues and greens. These pieces are pinned to a flannel backing, so some of the light areas are gaps, not light pieces of the quilt.

Since I last posted about NaPoWriMo, the writing has slipped back.I wrote nothing for about a week. It doesn't look as if I will manage thirty poems this month, but I have written three more in the last couple of days and, in total, way more than I wrote all last year. So I am happy with the results so far. Especially as nearly all the poems I have written are ones I want to work on and keep, rather than being contrived around a prompt for the day, just for the sake of writing something.

Tuesday Poem: Temptation

Temptation

The rind falls on the benchtop
in the shape of her initial.
He slices the fruit in thin segments
with hands pleated by age
and stippled like the skin of the pear.

He arranges its slices on a plate
translucent as the delicate skin
around her eyes. 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 now, 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.

© Catherine Fitchett 2011

After I posted the autumn photos in the previous post, I recalled this poem. I have always thought that if I were Eve, I would want Adam to tempt me with pears rather than with apples.

This poem was placed third in the inaugural Poems in the Waiting Room poetry competition and was published in their poetry cards for Winter 2012.

For more Tuesday Poems, visit the main hub site and see what others have posted.

Remember, I am participating in the Big Poetry Giveaway. To win free poetry books, see this post.

Autumn

Because not everywhere on the internet is in the northern hemisphere :)

We have two apple trees and three pear trees in our new house. The apples are very good for cooking, too tart for eating. The other apple tree didn't produce anything this year. The three pear trees produced really well, each is a different variety although I have no idea what they are. The ones in the photo have quite blemished skin but they taste delicious.

A reminder, I am participating in the Big Poetry Giveaway this month. If you want to win free poetry books, go to this post.

The Problem with NaPoWriMo

NaNoWriMo was first - a movement to write a novel in a month, or at least, write fifty thousand words of a first draft of a novel. If the novelists could have a month, then why not the poets? And so someone started NaPoWriMo. Which is like NaNoWriMo, but different. It's the differences that are causing me problems.

Firstly, in NaNoWriMo, there has never been any suggestion as far as I can tell, that you should post your fifty thousand words on your blog for the world to see. There are all sorts of ways to connect with other people doing the same thing, there is merchandise to buy, there are ways to be accountable for your goals, but posting your work on the net isn't one of them. There are currently two places I know of posting daily prompts to assist the poets, (here and here) but to really join in the fun, you have to post your work. Which is a problem because firstly, it is bound to be a very rough draft (unless you are extraordinarily talented) and secondly, if you want to have your work published in a print (or online) journal, there are fewer and fewer editors who will consider work that has appeared on the internet, even in rough draft form.

The second problem for me is the idea of a "poem a day". For some, that might work. Others, like me, may have days when there is little time to write. Days when I work all day, get in my daily walk on the way home, throw some dinner on the table and go out again to meet an evening commitment. In NaNoWriMo, you can write consistently about 1700 words a day - or you can write 12,500 words every weekend - quite doable - or have a binge over the last few days and do it all then, or whatever you like. The "rules" of NaPoWriMo seem much more rigid.

None of which really matters - after all, I'm a grown-up, I can make my own choices. However, I do like the accountability, the idea that lots of other people are all aiming to write lots of poems this month, the sense of companions on the journey. So, for what it's worth, I am attempting to write thirty very rough drafts this month. There won't be any haiku, because I don't feel as if they really count. Not that good haiku aren't poems, but it is so easy to write a bad haiku that it's too tempting to dash one off and call that my poem for the day. Each poem will have a title, and be of reasonable length, and you won't see it here because it will need lots of revision some time after the end of the month.

And just for an added challenge I'm toying with the idea of having at least one title for each letter of the alphabet. (Kelli Russell Agodon's book Letters from the Emily Dickinson room was my inspiration for this idea). I'm not sure if I'll manage it, we'll see.

So far, I have four very rough drafts, one title with a chunk of brainstorming - too early to call this even a rough draft - and a sixth title with a sort of an inkling of the structure of the poem that will go with it. So I am up to date at the moment, no doubt I will slip back during the week and need a catch up next weekend.

The Jumblies


I

They went to sea in a Sieve, they did,
In a Sieve they went to sea:
In spite of all their friends could say,
On a winter’s morn, on a stormy day,
In a Sieve they went to sea!
And when the Sieve turned round and round,
And every one cried, ‘You’ll all be drowned!’
They called aloud, ‘Our Sieve ain’t big,
But we don’t care a button! we don’t care a fig!
In a Sieve we’ll go to sea!’
Far and few, far and few,
Are the lands where the Jumblies live;
Their heads are green, and their hands are blue,
And they went to sea in a Sieve.


II

They sailed away in a Sieve, they did,
In a Sieve they sailed so fast,
With only a beautiful pea-green veil
Tied with a riband by way of a sail,
To a small tobacco-pipe mast;
And every one said, who saw them go,
‘O won’t they be soon upset, you know!
For the sky is dark, and the voyage is long,
And happen what may, it’s extremely wrong
In a Sieve to sail so fast!’
Far and few, far and few,
Are the lands where the Jumblies live;
Their heads are green, and their hands are blue,
And they went to sea in a Sieve.


III

The water it soon came in, it did,
The water it soon came in;
So to keep them dry, they wrapped their feet
In a pinky paper all folded neat,
And they fastened it down with a pin.
And they passed the night in a crockery-jar,
And each of them said, ‘How wise we are!
Though the sky be dark, and the voyage be long,
Yet we never can think we were rash or wrong,
While round in our Sieve we spin!’
Far and few, far and few,
Are the lands where the Jumblies live;
Their heads are green, and their hands are blue,
And they went to sea in a Sieve.


IV

And all night long they sailed away;
And when the sun went down,
They whistled and warbled a moony song
To the echoing sound of a coppery gong,
In the shade of the mountains brown.
‘O Timballo! How happy we are,
When we live in a sieve and a crockery-jar,
And all night long in the moonlight pale,
We sail away with a pea-green sail,
In the shade of the mountains brown!’
Far and few, far and few,
Are the lands where the Jumblies live;
Their heads are green, and their hands are blue,
And they went to sea in a Sieve.


V

They sailed to the Western Sea, they did,
To a land all covered with trees,
And they bought an Owl, and a useful Cart,
And a pound of Rice, and a Cranberry Tart,
And a hive of silvery Bees.
And they bought a Pig, and some green Jack-daws,
And a lovely Monkey with lollipop paws,
And forty bottles of Ring-Bo-Ree,
And no end of Stilton Cheese.
Far and few, far and few,
Are the lands where the Jumblies live;
Their heads are green, and their hands are blue,
And they went to sea in a Sieve.


VI

And in twenty years they all came back,
In twenty years or more,
And every one said, ‘How tall they’ve grown!’
For they’ve been to the Lakes, and the Torrible Zone,
And the hills of the Chankly Bore;
And they drank their health, and gave them a feast
Of dumplings made of beautiful yeast;
And everyone said, ‘If we only live,
We too will go to sea in a Sieve,—
To the hills of the Chankly Bore!’
Far and few, far and few,
Are the lands where the Jumblies live;
Their heads are green, and their hands are blue,
And they went to sea in a Sieve.

-Edward Lear (1812 - 1888)

Since it is April 1st, a little nonsense seemed in order for my Tuesday Poem this week. My first ever poetry book was The Golden Treasury of Poetry, edited by Louis Untermeyer. I'm pretty sure that I recall that "The Jumblies" was one of the poems in this collection, alongside other favourites such as Ogden Nash's "Tale of Custard the Dragon".

Edward Lear was both an artist and writer, now known primarily for his nonsense verse. He popularised the limerick form.

For more Tuesday Poems, visit the main hub site. Around thirty bloggers each post a poem on Tuesdays (once a week or sometimes less often depending on other commitments). Every week one of the group edits and posts a poem to the main site, and participants are listed in the side bar. They are all well worth a visit.

Do you want to win poetry books? I am participating in the Big Poetry Giveaway this month. For details, scroll down to my previous post.

The Big Poetry Giveaway

The big poetry giveaway is on again! Kelli at Book of Kells started this five years ago, and I tried to join in last year. Somehow it didn't quite work out, as I e-mailed the winners of the books I planned to give away, and didn't receive any return e-mails advising postal addresses. So I am trying again with "double or nothing".

Here is how it works:
Participants give away two books of poetry, one must be by another poet. To win, all you have to do is leave a comment saying you would like to be in the draw, with an e-mail address, otherwise I can't contact you if you win. At the end of April I will draw the winners, e-mail you and ask for a postal address.

So, from last year I have on offer one copy of The Nature of Things: Poems from the New Zealand Landscape which is a very beautiful book - besides poems, there is the added bonus of beautiful landscape photography to admire.

Then, this year I have added one copy of Sue Wootton's third book of poetry, By Birdlight. Sue is my current favourite New Zealand poet, and this collection more than matches the quality of her two earlier books.

Then, a double dose of the book that my small poetry group published - so, not quite my own book, but a quarter of it is my own:
Flap:The Chook Book 2. I have two copies to give away.

I hope that this year I can actually make this work and get all four books in the mail. The draw will be at the end of April, since April is National Poetry Month in the USA. (Lucky Americans get a whole month, in New Zealand we have National Poetry Day in July).

To find more bloggers participating in the Big Poetry Giveaway, hop on over to Kelli Agodon's blog and this post.

Two Cool Websites

No Tuesday Poem this week, as I have been a bit slow in organising permissions. Instead, I have a couple of links for inspiration.

The Phrontistery is a website that I came across while doing a google search for "cotton with a bubbly texture" - I was trying to recall the name of a fabric often used for children's clothes, it was seersucker. The site has, among many other things, thirty different topic specific word lists including one with the names of more fabrics than I had ever imagined existed. If you want some new words, go here.

If you prefer visual inspiration to word based inspiration, try Colossal. Amazing images of artistic projects be they sculptures, paintings, drawings, photography or just too hard to categorise, from around the globe. They have several new posts every day so there is always something new to inspire.

Tuesday Poem: On the Need for a New Flag

On the Need for a New Flag

keep
        the old one
seen by Kupe
                Tasman
Cook

three stripes
        blue
                green
        blue

sea
            sky
land between

flown to mark
            arrivings
leavings

© Catherine Fitchett 2004
first published in The Chook Book:Free Range Organic Poetry

Since the topic has been in the news lately, I thought I would post this poem inspired by a view of land while crossing on the Cook Strait Ferry. (For the record, I never liked the idea of the silver fern on black as our replacement flag, but I rather like Kyle Lockwood's flag design).

For other Tuesday Poems, visit the main hub site.

Tuesday Poem: Jean Sprackland

One of the books I ordered in that lovely break between Christmas and going back to work was Jean Sprackland's recent collection, Sleeping Keys. I had previously enjoyed Jean's collection, Tilt, which won the Costa Poetry Prize, so I was looking forward to this one, not least because houses were on my mind, having spent nearly a year searching for a new house.

This collection is full of houses - leaving them, observing empty and abandoned houses, watching the building of houses. For instance, the title poem, Sleeping Keys, refers to that collection that we all have in the back of a drawer somewhere, of keys whose purpose is no longer quite remembered (but if you are like me, you are reluctant to throw out, in case they should suddenly be needed). There is Moving the Piano, in which the clamourous room fades/to a tinnitus of dust and dead wasps. Sprackland's keen observations lift ordinary tasks out of the mundane, for instance in Clearing the Drain where the clear water surges, blinding/and purging like white light. And Taking Down the Scaffolding ends What love you need/to dismatle the structure you're standing on

You can read a full poem from the collection at Jean Sprackland's website here (and there are poems from earlier collections, too). Or even better, buy the book!

For more Tuesday Poems, visit the main hub site.

Tuesday Poem: The Night Watch Song of the Charlotte Jane

The Night Watch Song of the 'Charlotte Jane'

'Tis the first watch of the night, brothers,
And the strong wind rides the deep;
And the cold stars shining bright, brothers,
Their mystic courses keep.
Whilst our ship her path is cleaving
The flashing waters through,
Here's a health to the land we are leaving,
And the land we are going to!

First sadly bow the head, brothers,
In silence o'er the wine,
To the memory of the dead, brothers,
The fathers of our line -
Though their tombs may not receive us,
Far o'er the ocean blue,
Their spirits ne'er shall leave us,
In the land we are going to.

Whilst yet sad memories move us,
A second cup we'll drain
To the manly hearts that love us,
In our old homes o'er the main -
Fond arms that used to caress us,
Sweet smiles from eyes of blue,
Lips which no more may bless us,
In the land we are going to.

But away with sorrow now, brothers,
Fill the winecup to the brim!
Here's to all who'll swear the vow, brothers,
Of this our midnight hymn:-
That each man shall be a brother,
Who has joined our gallant crew:
That we'll stand by one another
In the land we are going to!

Fill again, before we part, brothers,
Fill the deepest draught of all,
To the loved ones of our hearts, brothers,
Who reward and share our toil-
From husbands and from brothers,
All honor be their due,-
The noble maids and mothers
Of the land we are going to! -

The wine is at an end, brothers;
But ere we close our eyes,
Let a silent prayer ascend, brothers,
For our gallant enterprise -
Should our toil be all unblest, brothers,
Should ill winds of fortune blow,
May we find God's haven of rest, brothers,
In the land we are going to.

James Edward Fitzgerald (1818 - 96)

On Saturday night I headed over to Tommy Chang's in Lyttelton for a gathering of Lyttelton poets. The publicity material for this event stated "Poetry has been a part of the Port’s character since James Edward Fitzgerald composed ‘The Night Watch Song of the Charlotte Jane’ as he sailed across the world in 1840 to pioneer a newspaper in a wooden shack on Norwich Quay simply called ‘The Lyttelton Times’, the tradition is still going strong today." So I thought I would post the Night Watch Song of the Charlotte Jane for my Tuesday Poem this week. The "Charlotte Jane" was one of the "first four ships" to bring settlers to the fledgling settlement of Canterbury in 1850. (I think the publicity material had the date wrong!)

Tuesday Poem: The Kinds of Feelings that Happen on Summer Beaches

I spotted this poetry poster from the Phantom Billstickers in town the other day. It seemed appropriate for the season.

This is actually a song lyric. The artist Lawrence Arabia is the musical guise of James Milne.

If the words are a bit hard to make out from my photo, you can find a performance on Youtube. I have no idea how to embed this, sorry. I will try and find out, and edit the post later.

For more Tuesday Poems, visit the main hub site. This week, there is a poem by Christchurch poet Helen Jacobs, with links to other Tuesday Poem bloggers in the sidebar.

Buskers Festival

Images from the 2014 World Buskers Festival. Great fun!

More Street Art

Another in the series of large murals that have appeared around the city as part of the Rise Street Art Festival. This is just a part of a larger mural, I was rather taken by the slightly demented looking seagulls.

Rise Street Art Festival

I am on a mission to locate and photograph all the murals in the city as shown on the map for the Rise Street Art Festival. Here are a couple to be going on with.

There are plenty of blank walls in the city that need brightening up!

The Word for the Year

It's an internet thing ... or so it seems ... choosing a word for the year. I was a bit dubious about it, but in 2011 I decided to give it a go, and chose "open".

This wasn't quite what I had in mind..

So I abandoned the whole idea, and was wondering whether to try again this year, and thinking maybe not, when the word "move" popped into my head. After moving house, and being aware that more exercise would be a good thing, and wanting to move on in various ways, it seemed appropriate. Only not the earth, OK? We would like to be done with the earth moving around here.

Images from my walk of a few days back. I headed for a park which is based on a disused quarry, and walked along the track that goes up to the top and around the quarry area, with fantastic views from the top.

(For those of you in the US, I hope the blue sky will make you feel a bit warmer).

A New Year and a New Start

So here we are in our new home (we have been here just over a month now) looking out at the view of the city with approximately two tall buildings remaining. That's counting only the ones that go past the horizon. There are a few medium ones, as well. And a lot of cranes. At least we are getting to the stage where some of the cranes are putting buildings up instead of tearing them down. (I zoomed in to take the photo above, otherwise the buildings would be just dots in the centre of the photo).

Leaving our previous house of twenty nine years was a long story. I didn't really want to. After all EQC (the government earthquake insurance organisation which covers the first $100,000 of damage) and/or our insurance company were going to fix it for us, eventually. And yes, when they did, we would have to find somewhere temporary to live for several months. So we would have to move twice - everything would have to be moved out for repairs, then moved back in. Shifting here was a huge effort, but it only had to be done once. And while there are things I miss - like being able to walk about two blocks to the shop if we ran out of milk or eggs - I am enjoying the change of scenery, and the beautiful garden,far more than I expected. Perhaps it is really true that "a change is as good as a holiday".

Of course, we still have about a million boxes left to unpack...

Still, the kitchen is sorted, my little sewing room/office is sorted, more or less, and I finally feel ready to move on and have a year that isn't just about sorting out housing issues. (We looked at seventy houses in our search).

Happy New Year to everyone. Dare I say I hope to blog here more regularly this year? It seems very appropriate that this is my one thousandth post.

A Year of Finishing Things

The blog has been neglected for the last few months. That's because we had housing issues going on, and have spent most weekends looking at houses - seventy in the past year. And now we are all ready to move (well, as ready as we are going to be). Over the year, I have been trying to finish off as many unfinished projects as possible, as part of my decluttering in preparation for a move.

These little quilts have been sitting around way too long. They were a project for an online creativity group that I am part of. At the time I conceived this idea, we were taking turns to set a weekly creativity exercise which we called "Tea and Cookies". So when I saw the teacup block in Quilters Newsletter Magazine, it seemed like a good project to make for the group. I asked each participant (not all sewers) to sign a set of cream coloured triangles, and return them along with a half metre of fabric of their choice. I didn't realise quite how much work was going to be involved. The notes that came with the fabrics tell me that it was started in the year 2000. Thirteen years to completion is better than never finished!

There were twelve people when I sent them out, but the group has shrunk, so there are seven small quilts in the final set. I made each one different to make the project more interesting. The last of these will be mine and is not yet finished. The rest have all been sent to their new owners.

Tuesday Poem: Palm Trees in a Hotel Garden

Palm Trees in a Hotel Garden
... palms fan out
their fingers on the night glass
like starving children
- Susan Wicks

We stand against dark skies.
Behind a transparent wall
unnatural day where strange trees
on forked roots come and go
bearing translucent fruit
beaded with drops of water.
Sometimes they lift it
to their crowns. They are
shifting groves of many colours.
And one slumps low,
rakes his boughs
across a bank of white and black
releasing a flock
of invisible birds.

We wonder how it is
to be so rootless
not to know
those same old familiars
are always by your side.
We fan out our fingers
on the night glass
in invitation:
“sink your roots in soil
lift your branches to the cool air
always and forever
not alone.”

© Catherine Fitchett

"Palm Trees in a Hotel Garden" was first published in Takahe magazine, issue 78, earlier this year. It originated in a class by Joanna Preston, in response to the poem by Susan Wicks from which the quote at the beginning is taken.

The blog has been very quiet lately, as I have had other things keeping me busy. But with National Poetry Day fast approaching, it seemed like a good time to come back to posting a Tuesday Poem.

Wellington Earthquakes

My youngest daughter was sick of the state of the city down here, what with all the city still being in a mess nearly three years after our first quake.
And ever since she has been there, nature has been going crazy. Storms that cut the power to her flat for two days, more bad weather, and now - earthquakes since Friday, working up to a 6.5 late this afternoon.

Fortunately, a bit further from the city and a bit deeper than ours, so no injuries so far. Fingers crossed it stays that way.