"Tuatara", by Nola Borrell

Matiu/Somes Island, Wellington

Keep your distance you’re new here rough-edged and arrogant One step closer and you won’t see me you won’t see me anywhere Always lie low, I say I’ve learnt a thing or two over 200 million years Take away your ‘ecologically appropriate quarters’ this drainpipe will do And quit drooling over me I pounce on skinks and wetas eat my own kind If a female won’t dance I bite her neck and then I take her Still, I’m glad of a bit  of company. Keep our numbers up and keep yours down Not that I’m worried I’ve outlived the dinosaur I may outlive you How many years did you say you’d been here? *

First published in Turbine

Published here with permission of the poet

TP hub editor this week: Janis Freegard

I have long admired this tuatara poem by Nola Borrell. I like its matter-of-fact, irreverent tone, its down-to-earthness and its perfect ending. I like the way interesting facts about tuatara (their dining habits, the fact that they've been here 200 million years) have been woven in, but without it sounding as though the poem is trying to teach us something.  And I cling to the hope that tuatara and many other species will outlast humans. Nola is also an accomplished, award-winning haiku poet and her economy with words shows in this poem.

Nola and I are both "in residence" at New Pacific Studio as I write and I was lucky enough to hear her read 'Tuatara' at the Open Day last weekend. Nola tells me that this well-travelled poem has been translated into Ukrainian and French.

Nola Borrell has had poetry including haiku published in New Zealand and overseas since the mid 1990s, and has won various awards. Her work has appeared in NZ journals and anthologies, Australia, US, UK, Croatia, Slovenia, Roumania, Poland, Japan and Algeria and online websites. Nola co-edited (with Karen P Butterworth) the taste of nashi - New Zealand Haiku (Windrift, 2008). Her chapbook this wide sky was published in 2012 (Puriri Press); and waking echoes in 2013 (Korimako Press). Nola is a member of Zazen, an international haiku workshop, and Convenor of
Windrift Haiku Group, Wellington.

This week's editor, Janis Freegard, is the author of The Continuing Adventures of Alice Spider (Anomalous Press, 2013) and Kingdom Animalia: the Escapades of Linnaeus (Auckland University Press, 2011) and co-author of AUP New Poets 3. She lives in Wellington and is the current Ema Saiko Fellow at New Pacific Studio in the Wairarapa.