Census Day

The census in New Zealand is usually held every five years. Half the census forms had been delivered when the 2011 Canterbury earthquake struck. The disruption caused was so great that the census was postponed for two years.

We have just been filling in our census forms. I was very intrigued to find that there are special instructions for those living in Canterbury, to cover unusual situations.

For instance, my insurance company is paying my rent, do I say "yes" to paying rent?
Do I count money received from the Red Cross as income?
If I am not living in my house because it is damaged what is my "usual" address?

A full list of the instructions is here.

As a genealogist I am particularly interested in census forms because I make use of hundred year old census records in my research. Unfortunately this only applies to records from the UK and USA, as legislation in New Zealand forbids individual forms ever being released to researchers.

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.