Tuesday, April 26, 2011

Pascale Petit: The Hieroglyph Moth



When the white ermine wings
opened at night

like a book of frost
smoking in the dark,

I understood the colours of vowels
painted on moth fur –

the black, red, saffron signs
of a new language.

Antennae grew from my forehead,
my tongue was restless in its chrysalis.

I felt lift-off
as if my bones had melted.
I stepped out into the snow –

not even an exoskeleton to protect me
in this strange country.

Pascale Petit
From 'The Treekeeper's Tale'


__________                                                                      Editor: Kathleen Jones (UK)

Pascale Petit was born in Paris but brought up in Wales. She studied art and became a sculptor before becoming a poet. She’s won, or been shortlisted for, almost all the major prizes in British poetry including the T.S. Eliot award. Her poetry always shows an awareness of visual as well as oral languages and the intricate relationships between signifier and signified.

The poems in her latest collection (which I reviewed here) take the paintings of Frida Kahlo as their starting point. The collection is called ‘What the Water Gave Me’.

'The Hieroglyph Moth' is from an earlier collection called ‘The Treekeeper’s Tale’ and I love its subtlety - the delicate depiction of the moth, and the layers of meaning underneath just glanced at in the spare language  - our lack of understanding of ‘dumb’ animals, insects and birds and our whole relationship with the natural world.

The moth is also a perfect metaphor for the process of metamorphosis that occurs in the mind between the idea and the finished poem. When you begin to write a poem you step out into unknown, dangerous territory and when you put a poem out for public view you really are going naked into a strange country. Pascale Petit says all that in a few words - a perfect demonstration of how poetry wins over prose!


This week's editor Kathleen Jones is a biographer and poet living in England.  She has published 11 books, most recently a biography of  Katherine Mansfield called 'The Storyteller' (Edinburgh University Press and Penguin NZ) and a collection of poetry 'Unwritten Lives' (Redbeck Press).  A winner of the 2011 Straid Poetry Prize, her new collection of poetry 'Not Saying Goodbye at Gate 21' will be published by Templar Poetry in November.

For more poetry posted by the Tuesday Poets, please visit the sidebar and look for the posts marked 'Tuesday Poem'.

With thanks to Pascale Petit for permission to use the poem.

Tuesday, April 19, 2011

Pacific Tsunami Found Poems by Teresia Teaiwa


1.
The telephone says
The body says
The multinational corporation says
           
Samoans had taken the sea’s friendship for granted
We can’t imagine            It’s unimaginable
Free phone calls to Samoa             (But only one Samoa)


2.
God’s minister says
God’s children say
God says

The wave was God’s way
We can’t concentrate on our assignments
I prepared a speech but I will not be reading it


3.
Surfer says
Waiter says
Sean says

The sea got sucked down below the reef
What’s one metre of water going to do?
Stupid


4.
Teddy Bear says
Ute says
Baby says

Hello to the pole
Hello to the tree
Hello to strangers on the beach



5.
Solomon says
Viti says
Niue says

Gizo
Floods
Heta


6.
New Zealand is scrambling
An Air Force Orion

New Zealand is scrambling
Hercules             staff and supplies

New Zealand is scrambling
Deputy Prime Minister Bill English

New Zealand is scrambling
More Kiwi casualties feared


7.
A depression moves
with a weak ridge extending

Then, late in the day,
a cold front sweeps


Strengthening westerly
in the moist westerly

Slow moving over
a cold southwest flow

Cold southerlies spread over
high over, ridge over


Then, late in the day,
a cold front sweeps


Credit note: "Pacific Tsunami Found Poems" was previously published in Going Down Swinging No.30, 2010, and is published here by permission of the author.

Editor's Note: Ever since I heard and enjoyed Teresia reading at one of the monthly Ballroom Café poetry readings in Wellington, I have wanted to post one of her poems on the Tuesday Poem blog, and she kindly agreed to my doing so.

Poets in the Asia-Pacific region have had all too many opportunities to write poems in response to natural disasters in the last few years. This is one of the best I've read.
 

Teresia Teaiwa teaches at Victoria University of Wellington in the Pacific Studies programme.

Her literary publications include a collection of poetry titled Searching for Nei Nim'anoa (available for sale here), and two CDs -- I can see Fiji  and Terenesia: Amplified Poetry and Songs by Teresia Teaiwa and Sia Figiel

Tim Jones is the editor of this week's Tuesday Poem. Tim is a poet, author and editor who lives in Wellington, New Zealand. His third poetry collection, "Men Briefly Explained", will be published by Interactive Press (Brisbane, Aus.) later this year.

To see this week's other Tuesday Poems, please visit the links labelled "Tuesday Poem" in the sidebar.


Tuesday, April 12, 2011

Tuesday: A Poem






... all laughed except Tyr: he lost his hand. 
The Poetic Edda on the god Tyr hence Tuesday -

A 6.3 quake devastated Christchurch NZ  Tuesday, 22 February, 2011  

Two planes struck Manhattan New York Tuesday, 11 September, 2001 

__________

He puts his hand in the wolf's mouth, the wolf
swallows. Let's start with this. A god not gone
but waiting; his sacrifice a gesture of surrender
and determination. And what of the tricked wolf?
A god's fingers stuck in his narrow throat – no chance to spit out.
It happens as it must. A handy
guarantee. Let's start with the price of order: 
the lean, worst place for a deity.
Sink in. Obeying destiny the wolf bites deep
and dreams of mocking laughter; Tyr of
the prize.

Let's start before this even, in the dark waiting
for the beginning, is it always the same?
The growl of night: descending, distending
like a rope woven with footfalls and hair,
bellowing storm and bee-wolf alike
embroidering new darkness with stories,
threaded like constellations in the sky's
blanket. A man has two hands, and no idea
he's about to give one up – a lesser sacrifice than the six
fabled elements entwined to order chaos. He lets go
his hand so the biter can be tied.

A yielding then. No runic miracle, no digits
carved into steel as Mahuika's fingertips ignite
fire from winter's heart to illuminate
the day of grace. Yet, here’s a bit of madness, a
lunar dream: the vulpine tether binds the gods
to the one-fisted man. The wolf-wrist twitches; light
pinkens the dawn, and a shoulder shove, a broad
back, a strong trunk separating day from night, 
earth from sky.

Everybody laughs, the bitterness of sacrifice:
blood's iron taste exploding on the tongue
licking air, trading war for chill slippers,
marking Tyr's day as one not of trust,
hope or faith, but the righteousness of battle;
a sinister champion of single-armed combat
under the sky. A day when the earth itself heaves up
as if to throw off the wolf's shadow.
Let's see it as a day of arms, then,
a duplicity of protection and loss
from a silken ribbon of footfalls, sinew, spittle and breath.

____________________________
By the Tuesday Poets April 2011 
Mary McCallum, Claire Beynon, Catherine Bateson, Janis Freegard, Bernadette Keating, Belinda Hollyer, Helen Heath, Orchid Tierney, Tim Jones, Kathleen Jones, Eileen Moeller, Andrew Bell,  T Clear, Harvey Molloy, Saradha Koirala, Helen Lowe, Susan T. Landry, Helen Rickerby, Jennifer Compton, Renee Liang, Robert Sullivan, Emma McCleary, Alicia Ponder, Catherine Fitchett, Elizabeth Welsh, and Sarah Jane Barnett.
In spirit : Zireaux. 

Written communally in celebration of Tuesday Poem's first birthday. Begun just past midnight Tuesday April 5 2011, completed 10.45 am, Sunday April 10 2011, and edited by curators Mary McCallum and Claire Beynon. 
____________________________

Well. we had a blast. It started a week ago on Tuesday, at one minute past midnight. The first lines were posted and off we went - a tag team of poets in NZ, Australia, the US, the UK (and one unexpectedly in Italy), across time zones and countries  - passing the baton. One by one we wrote 1-2 lines in our allotted slot between 8 am every morning and midnight every night.

Day One there was a small technical hitch that promised to unhitch the whole thing - easily sorted. Day Two, sadly one of our poets - T Clear in Seattle - had a personal crisis that forced her to withdraw. Not so easily sorted. We keep T's name on the list above in solidarity, and because she baked our delicious birthday cake. 

Astonishingly, 'Tuesday' the poem unfurled at its own pace and with its own heartbeat. Every four hours we'd check in to find a line or two - - - -  of new words - - - -  like the tiniest stitches discovered in the shoemaker's fairytale shoes. 

It was such a pleasure to see a word or phrase bouncing off another one, a line break leading to a new stanza, a long line stabbing out into whiteness, a short pithy sentence tucking up in a corner. Fun to read a colloquial turn of phrase or a pun or a word scooped out of another time.  Incredible to see the story of Tyr tugged and stretched and rolled into another shape with new threads. 

All the Tuesday Poets appear delighted by the coherence of the poem, and the way it's come together, and has something gorgeous and layered and powerful to say. None of us could have written it individually, let alone imagined such a thing, but together we could. We did. Little editing was needed, too, just some tidying up of stanza lengths, enjambments, the odd word, so the poem worked as a whole. 

As one poet said, opening up the finished poem was like Christmas morning. 

And what's it about? 
The first lines opened with the myth of Tyr - the god who gave us the word 'Tuesday'. Known also as Tiw, he is  - at one level - the Norse equivalent of Zeus or Jupiter. He was the god of both battles/war and justice/legislation/public assembly. He was courageous, fearless, a master tactician and skilled leader/diplomat. 

As a 'sky god', esotericists consider him 'not gone, but merely waiting to be called forth'. He is seen as protecting humanity and the gods from the destruction that would come if the heavens and earth should collapse into one another. In the northern mythology, it is Tyr who comes closest to a transcendental quality. The rune attached to his name summons religious belief and great leadership. 

The myth of Tyr is written up in the collection of Norse sagas called the Poetic or Prose Edda. It tells the story of how Tyr allowed the great wolf Fenrir to bite off his right hand in order to bind the wolf's chaotic force and protect others. The gods asked the dwarves to craft a magic leash or silken ribbon called Gleipnir to restrain the wolf. But Fenrir suspected a trick because the ribbon was made of elements that didn't exist. He wouldn't let the gods bind him unless one of them stuck a hand in his mouth. Tyr, known for his courage and honesty, agreed to do it.


The Prose Edda describes Gleipnir:


It was made of six things: the noise a cat makes in foot-fall, the beard of a woman, the roots of a rock, the sinews of a bear, the breath of a fish, and the spittle of a bird. And though thou understand not these matters already, yet now thou mayest speedily find certain proof herein, that no lie is told thee: thou must have seen that a woman has no beard, and no sound comes from the leap of a cat, and there are no roots under a rock.


Each Tuesday Poet has developed the Tyr myth, weaving in other myths and references to Tuesday in popular culture and that old chestnut 'the human condition', slowly building on the underlying rumble of the Christchurch quake and 9/11 - both on Tuesdays nearly ten years apart. The rumble grew and by the final stanza is a roar.


We're so proud of what's been achieved here. Could it possibly be a world first? 



Thanks to all the Tuesday Poets who are part of the Tuesday Poem this birthday week, and to all those who have come before and are waiting to return. Check out the sidebar to find out where these poets reside with their own poems and the poems they love. 


To you, the blogreader and appreciator of poems, we proffer our right hands. Do with them what you will. We will continue to write. 



Artwork: Tyr and Fenrir by John Bauer
Editors: Mary McCallum and Claire Beynon 

Tuesday, April 5, 2011

'Tuesday': an unfolding communal poem for a birthday

... all laughed except Tyr: he lost his hand. 
The Poetic Edda on the god Tyr hence Tuesday.


He puts his hand in the wolf's mouth, the wolf
swallows. Let's start with this. A god not gone
but waiting; his sacrifice a gesture of surrender
and determination. And what of the tricked wolf?
A god's fingers stuck in his narrow throat – no chance to spit out.
It happens as it must. A handy
guarantee. Let's start with the price of order:
the lean, worst place for a deity.
Sink in. Obeying destiny the wolf bites deep
and dreams of mocking laughter; Tyr of
the prize.

Let's start before this even, in the dark waiting
for the beginning, is it always the same?
The growl of night: descending, distending
like a rope woven with footfalls and hair,
bellowing storm and bee-wolf alike
embroidering new darkness with stories,
threaded like constellations in the sky's
blanket. A man has two hands, and no idea
he's about to give one up – a lesser sacrifice than the six
fabled elements entwined to order chaos. He lets go
his hand so the biter can be tied.

A yielding then. No runic miracle, no digits
carved into steel as Mahuika's fingertips ignite
fire from winter's heart to illuminate
the day of grace. Yet, here’s a bit of madness, a
lunar dream: the vulpine tether binds the gods
to the one-fisted man. The wolf-wrist twitches; light
pinkens the dawn, and a shoulder shove, a broad
back, a strong trunk separating day from night,
earth from sky.

Everybody laughs, the bitterness of sacrifice:
blood's iron taste exploding on the tongue
licking air, trading war for chill slippers,
marking Tyr's day as one not of trust,
hope or faith, but the righteousness of battle;
a sinister champion of single-armed combat
under the sky. A day when the earth itself heaves up
as if to throw off the wolf's shadow.
Let's see it as a day of arms, then,
a duplicity of protection and loss
from a silken ribbon of footfalls, sinew, spittle and breath.

____________________________
By Tuesday Poets April 2011
Mary McCallum, Claire Beynon, Catherine Bateson, Janis Freegard, Bernadette Keating, Belinda Hollyer, Helen Heath, Orchid Tierney, Tim Jones, Kathleen Jones, Eileen Moeller, Andrew Bell,  T Clear, Harvey Molloy, Saradha Koirala, Helen Lowe, Susan T. Landry, Helen Rickerby, Jennifer Compton, Renee Liang, Robert Sullivan, Emma McCleary, Alicia Ponder, Catherine Fitchett, Elizabeth Welsh, and Sarah Jane Barnett.
In spirit - Zireaux.

Poem completed 10.45 am, Sunday, April 10 2011 - final edit on Monday to be published Tuesday April 12, here on Tuesday Poem. 



Welcome to our First Birthday Party! We're celebrating with a communal poem that will skip backwards and forwards across the world and between time zones over the coming week (NZ, Australia, UK, US), with the finished poem posted next Tuesday.

Our tag team of Tuesday Poets who live in the land of the sidebar (eyes right!) will add their lines to the unfolding poem at the rate of four or five entries a day until Sunday, and then the full poem will be up for a week. Check out the Birthday page in the toolbar for details.

In our vision we say: 'Tuesday Poem is designed to encourage poets to write poems and people to read poems, and to nurture a poetry community without borders.' It has done that.

Fifty-four poems have been posted at the Tuesday Poem hub alone, and an average of 25 poems a week written by Tuesday Poets, or chosen from work they admire, have been posted on their own blogs. At our reckoning - and allowing for some repeats - that's around 1400 poems. Some are by the famous, others by unknowns.

One of the joys of TP is discovering a new poet. Another is showcasing one. Then there's the pleasure of finding yourself writing a poem for a Tuesday, or digging one out of a forgotten collection to bring it into the light again.

Like all good blogs and websites, Tuesday Poem functions because its members are generous with that thing they love. It's been extraordinary the stimulation, warmth, support and fun generated by this wide-flung group of people, many of whom have never met.

We thank all our Tuesday Poets - including the alumnae, those on sabbatical, and Harvey McQueen who passed away - our guest editors, blog visitors and supporters for being part of this.

Now, check out the blogs in the sidebar, as it's a birthday the poems may be celebratory, but you can't count on that.

Happy Birthday Tuesday Poem!


Mary McCallum and Claire Beynon, Tuesday Poem curators.


More on the history of TP here.