Sonnet for a Hunter by Marisa Cappetta

He catches rabbits

in the paddock

with spotlights.

He catches frightened

sand coloured luckless

bundles, quivers of musk.

He catches them alive

with his hands. I thrive

on this, complex and complete,

like Australian heat.

He makes our den

with the foxes. We rest

with eyes alert

like spinifex, like silent red dirt.

                           
Editor: Andrew M. Bell

Marisa Cappetta won the 2011 Hagley Writers' Institute of Christchurch Margaret Mahy prize. Marisa's poetry has been published in anthologies, e-zines and journals including Crest to Crest, Takahe, InterlitQ, Enamel, Voiceprints 3, Snorkel, Blackmail Press, Turbine and Landfall. She is the recipient of a NZSA mentorship, and is on the boards of the Canterbury Poets Collective and Takahe magazine.

I first heard Marisa reading her poetry at a Canterbury Poets Collective reading when the readings enjoyed a warm and cosy home at the Madras Bookshop and Cafe, sadly now replaced by a bustling Cafe sans bookshop. I've heard her read a couple of times since, most recently at the WomanSpeak event at the Pallet Pavilion in central Christchurch. Her work is always a joy to listen to, drawing, as it often does, on her rich ancestral heritage.

"Sonnet for a Hunter" holds a special appeal since I lived in Western Australia for eight years. The images speak to me. I must confess that I don't entirely understand the poem, but I enjoy the ambiguity. Is the "he" of the poem a man or an animal? Does it matter? The couplet "sand coloured luckless/bundles, quivers of musk" is a striking image of a helpless ensnared rabbit and the final line locates it succinctly in the arid landscape of inland Australia.

You can read more of Marisa's poetry at http://marisacappetta.com

"Sonnet for a Hunter" is published on Tuesday Poem with permission.

For lots of other wonderful poetry, go to the blog roll of our Tuesday Poets. This week's editor Andrew M. Bell is Christchurch poet who also writes screenplays, fiction and non-fiction. His work has been published in NZ, Australia, Israel, US and the UK. You can find his poems here.

New Zealand Post Book Awards Poetry Finalists 2012

To celebrate the upcoming National Poetry Day in New Zealand, Tuesday Poem is presenting a poem selected from each of the three Poetry finalists for the New Zealand Post Book Awards - the winner to be announced August 1. National Poetry Day on Friday July 27 has events all over the country and will involve a number of Tuesday Poets.

But first, one of this country's most magical of poets and storytellers Margaret Mahy died in Christchurch yesterday. The Booksellers NZ blog has posted The Fairy Child as a tribute to a remarkable writer who has touched so many around the world. It begins: 'The very hour that I was born/I rode upon a unicorn' - yes, Margaret Mahy, you did. RIP. [More tributes in our sidebar]

Now the poetry finalists ...

Editor: Andrew M. Bell.

Unknown Unknowns 

Maybe one day we will even teach in schools,
along with Homer again, and the Aeneid,
the equally complex songs of the whale,
graduate students composing theories 
about the mysterious bass shift
in song latitude 61˚ longitude 15˚
towards the end of 1971 –
still, we will never know the secret song
the whale sings to himself,
the heretic variations,
the secret pleasure
he allows himself in the silence and the dark;
any more than the poet’s biographer,
revealing everything he’s told,
accounting for contradictions
in accounts, gaps in the paper trail,
can know where the poet goes at night
when even his wife, lying beside him
in the dark, can’t know where he goes
in the privacy of his mind;
any more than we can know
what other worlds God might have dreamed up
too secret, too sentimental,
too erotic to be manifest
in the universe
of dust and light;
any more than we can know
it isn’t this one after all
that is the imaginary world 
too sentimental, too beautiful,
too privately pleasurable
really to be real.

(from Thicket by Anna Jackson, published by Auckland University Press)


More erudite and scholarly readers could tell you more about the literary features of this poem than I can, but I can tell you that it appealed to me because it manages to be playful and profound simultaneously.

I love that it explores magical possibilities, the "what ifs" that are the jumping off point for so much creative endeavour. I admire how Anna Jackson has woven the secret lives of whales, poets and God together so seamlessly.







Blood Work 

Sheep and cattle arrived by lorry,
the lorries were like yards on wheels.
It was a big deal, my father’s work, the smell
was stronger than the brewery.
I took wide paces in my gumboots,
matching his steel-toed stride, I followed him
into the killing room
and spoke my name to the other men.

Nothing stopped, the chain ground on,
sheep hung from hooks, each man with a knife
had his own bit of flesh to deal with.
My lungs ached, my eyes watered
as if there was a fire, the blood everywhere,
red and red over their white cover-alls.

My father handled the aftermath, the sheep
with no head, or feet, or skin, or gut.
Dead cold carcasses coming down a ramp
like fallen angels. He shouldered and stacked.

When the whistle blew
we sat drinking tea from tin mugs.
I was spoken of as his girl,
strong as his strong,
that’s when it started
in the blood: this was his life.
I felt the join no knife could part
and I couldn’t see
how I’d make the journey
going away and away from him.

(from Shift by Rhian Gallagher, published by Auckland University Press)

Regardless of the dynamics, families are a subject everyone can relate to. I love the richness of this poem, the finely wrought nuances and the way the poet strikes a balance between the visceral nature of her father's workplace with the love and tenderness she feels for her father.


The repetition of "the blood everywhere,/red and red" is beautifully echoed in the final line "going away and away from him." This is a poem with a huge, beating heart.

Elsa 
November, 2009 

There is a little girl whose head
fits into my hand and whose spine
you can finger like a row of pearl buttons.

Her breathing is brisk and she startles
—like a skink in a beach garden—
even when she sleeps.

Each hair on her head is fine
and soft and her eyebrows
are two raised dashes on a pale page.

They are dark blue, oval, and new
—her open eyes. Her mother looks into
them and calls her ‘sweet pea’, ‘tree-frog’

or ‘mouth’, which is a lovely one
especially when the bottom lip
comes out from somewhere and quivers.

It is smaller than a wallflower,
a daisy or a miniature rose.
It could be a little walnut
except it is always opening
to fit around a nipple.

Her body is the length
of my forearm and her long
oblong feet are shoving the air.

Everyone asks to see her fingers
and their tiny mirrors but look, the nails
are like pruning saws—they flail
and catch across her face.

You cannot imagine or even dream
what a little face will be
until it is here named Elsa
and the centre of everything.

(from The leaf-ride by Dinah Hawken, published by Victoria University Press)

It is often an extremely difficult thing to write an intimate poem which expresses joy and celebration without tipping over into mawkishness. That Dinah Hawken seems to achieve it so effortlessly speaks volumes for her experience, her precision and her artistry. I presume she is writing about a newborn grandchild and she builds her description of Elsa with such delicate craftsmanship, detail by startling detail, until the scene is intensely vivid in the reader's mind.

The above three poems are reproduced here at Tuesday Poem with the permission of the respective poets and publishers. On a personal note, I would like to thank the poets and the publishers of these three fine collections, each one richly deserving of its place as a finalist.



This week's editor, Andrew M. Bell, writes poetry, short fiction, plays, screenplays and non-fiction. His work has been published and broadcast in New Zealand/Aotearoa, Australia, England, Israel and USA. His most recent publications are Aotearoa Sunrise, a short story collection, and Clawed Rains, a poetry collection. Andrew lives in Christchurch with his family and loves to surf. 

After reading the poem at the hub, try the 30 Tuesday Poets in the sidebar, and the poems they've written or selected - you won't be disappointed!

Yippee by James Norcliffe

When the podiatrists escaped we immediately set up roadblocks. But they were apparently wise to us and kept to the footpaths. Somewhat unfairly, too, they must have been wearing orthotics with rich crepes soles, which allowed them, well after dark, to ripple right past our defences in a distinctly crepuscular manner and make for the safety of the park.

In this way the podiatrists taught us the meaning of frustration.

There was no way, especially in the darkness, that we could retrieve the podiatrists from the park. The powerful sequoias hid and comforted even the bravest of them in a scent of turpentine, made sharp by the moonlight, whereas the more timid lay pressed into the gaultheria where they were wrapped about with wintergreen.

We could do nothing. We did joke that the iron railings around the park meant that the podiatrists had simply caged themselves in, but we were equally aware that the railings with their fearsome spikes kept us out just as effectively.

In this way the podiatrists taught us the meaning of irony.

All night the podiatrists hid there, out of sight, out of reach, but not out of hearing, and eventually safety overcame them and they grew cocky and footloose and realising our powerlessness began to cry Yippee! Yippee!

Thus the podiatrists taught us the meaning of scorn.

We could almost have tolerated this had it not been for the uncomfortable realisation that somehow in the night tinea had been set loose. We could feel it burning and insinuating itself all over our feet, between our toes. Burning and burning. Itching fearsomely.

And all the while the podiatrists, behind the iron rails and hidden in the dangling embrace of the redwoods, cried Yippee! Yippee!

As the burning sensation all but overcame us it seemed almost as though we could hear the tinea joining in the chorus: Yippee! Yippee! in tiny subsonic harmonies.

When dawn broke we were in a really bad way, jumping from foot to itchy foot. The light, perversely, had made the podiatrists even cockier, more sure of themselves. They broke free of the shaggy trunks, the perfumed ground cover and sported, gambolled. They flaunted their tubes of fungicide. They played touch rugby with them, flinging the crème of our desire from player to player, coming at times infuriatingly close to the railings. Every so often one would cry Yippee! as if unable to help it. Would leap into the air clapping his crepe soles.

In this way the podiatrists taught us the meaning of hate.




                                         Editor: Andrew M. Bell


I heard James Norcliffe read this prose poem at a book launch organised by 'Gap Filler' a few months ago. 'Gap Filler' is a wonderful group that sprung up like a colourful, sweet-scented flower from the rubble and dust of the Christchurch earthquakes. Its members organise a wide variety of artistic events on the vacant sites of demolished buildings in order to boost the morale of the Christchurch citizenry.


James was one of the guest readers and, as the audience sat on wooden school chairs on the now rubble-strewn former site of 'The Herbal Dispensary', he read this poem from an improvised stage with a backdrop of a display refrigerator of the type found in dairies, now unplugged and filled with books to exchange. The tragi-comic setting seemed to match the Monty Pythonish absurdity of James' poem perfectly.


I have heard James read a number of times and I always enjoy the subversive, mischievous humour that runs through many of his poems. James is an experienced reader of his and other's poetry so his dry and droll delivery enlivens and enhances the poem. I love the way the poem is layered with a series of "punchlines" that build to a perfect ending.


James Norcliffe has published six collections of poetry, most recently Villon in Millerton (AUP 2007). A new collection, Shadow Play, is currently a finalist in the Proverse International Writing Prize. He has also written a number of fantasy novels for children including The Loblolly Boy which won the junior fiction award at the NZ Post Children's Book Awards in 2010, its sequel The Loblolly and the Sorcerer (2011) and a new novel The Enchanted Flute (2012). 


James Norcliffe lives in Church Bay, Lyttelton Harbour, and teaches in the Foundation Studies Division of Lincoln University. “Yippee” was first published 2002 in Gargoyle 41 in the US and in Sport in NZ and collected in Along Blueskin Road (Canterbury University Press, 2004).


"Yippee" is published with permission.


The editor this week, Andrew M. Bell, lives in 'The City that Never Sleeps Soundly', Christchurch (NZ). He was chuffed when one of his short stories, 'It's Only Rock'n'Roll', was Highly Commended by judge, Owen Marshall, in the 2011 Katherine Mansfield Award. This helped to feed his delusion that literary fame and staggering riches must be just around the corner. His recent poetry collection is 'Clawed Rains', in which the title poem attempts the seemingly impossible task of marrying a litany of global disasters to the understated but sublime performance of actor, Claude Rains, in 'Casablanca'. He blogs here. 


Do read the Tuesday Poem contributions in the right sidebar - our up to 30 poets post poems by themselves and others they admire. Some gems in there...