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.