Villon in Millerton by James Norcliffe

for Leicester Kyle 

1 

a plank bed in a gully 

and a woman there with 

a buckled mouth my hand 

plunged deep in her pigfern 

turpentine and tea-tree 

the sour-smoke smell 

of damp coal in the scuttle 

and flat beer on the bench 

once I stood so tall on 

a stolen Triumph 

       my hair streamed behind 

like a thousand freedoms 

now I stand two miles 

above flatlanders 

screaming so loudly 

no one can hear me 

earthbound beneath 

a high ocean of air 

I am a poisoned stream 

full of slippery words 

sliding underneath a broken 

bridge’s collapsed members 

her body is heavy and overgrown 

her laughter is desperate 

already my sons have gone 

there is nothing for me here 

2 

I am tired of the chipped Formica 

and its clouds of blood 

I am tired of stainless steel 

and its bleary reflections 

I am sick of the Feltex floors 

which stick to my feet 

the broken glass and crushed cans 

the rain the water the strangled drains 

my mind is a mixed miasma of 

smoke gathered on the ceiling  

cut through by angle iron and 

the jangling chords of a rusty guitar 

and I am tired of screechy voices 

of brotherhood and sisterhood 

I just want to curl like a frond 

of bracken into the silence of love 

Posted with permission from James Norcliffe

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Editor this week: Harvey Molloy

I’ve chosen the first two sections of James Norcliffe’s poem for this week’s Tuesday 

Poem because I want to share my appreciation of longer, more challenging poems. 

‘Villon in Millerton’ is a long poem composed of six sections in which the fifteenth 

century troubadour Villon, exiled from France for his crimes, hides out the West Coast 

town of Millerton.  Villon—who has been translated into English by Rossetti  and 

Pound—is perhaps best known for his 'Ballade des dames du temps jadis'  (Ballad of 

yesterday's women) which ends with the line "Mais ou sont les neiges d'antan?" ("Where 

are the snows of yesteryear?") and for the imaginary wills (bequeathing his soul, his stolen 

wine, his love, etc) of his Testaments. Sure, I had heard of Villon before reading James’ 

poem, but it was this poem that led me to read more of Villon and to learn more about 

his life, as well as to the life and work of the poet Leicester Kyle.  Long poems are still a 

great form of social memory. 

The opening stanza makes me reel as I am caught in Villon’s giddy, violent swagger.  The 

brutal objectification of ‘the woman’ (who may or may not be real or who may or may 

not be ‘the bush’) coupled with the perfect adjective of ‘buckled’ flows in the alliterative 

melody and ps and bs and the subtle assonance of ‘u’s .  The unadorned, exhilarating 

wild energy of this persona hooks me into the poem as we end the first section with a 

note of tenderness: ‘her laughter is desperate’.  A bad boy; yes, but Villon is surely no 

unfeeling monster. 

Norcliffe's Villon is the Kiwi man alone: "tired of screechy voices/of brotherhood and 

sisterhood"; he’s "tired of chipped Formica" and "sick of the Feltex floors." He's in exile 

from domestic life and on the run from the cops. Employing the imaginary wills of 

Villon's Testament, later in the poem he bequeaths a “thundering yellow fart” to the 

helicopters, “astigmatism arthritis” to the cops and the “crock of shit that is the past” to 

the future. Like Vincent O'Sullivan, Norcliffe has a great ear for New Zealand English and 

like O'Sullivan Norcliffe's poetry combines intellectual concerns with visceral impact.  It's 

a staggeringly good poem: bitter, humorous, middle-aged and angry.  The man alone 

myth ends with a wrecked kitchen, a failed encounter with ‘the woman’ (papatuanuku?) 

and memories of road trips past.  Yet the poem raises a question of the Kiwi bloke ‘man 

alone’ mythos: what does the loss of the bush man mean for how we view and treat the 

wilderness? It’s all very well to point out the sexist pitfalls and traps of the notion of the 

good keen man—fair enough, too—but what’s lost in the rush to buy formica and stainless 

steel?  Or is the persona’s resistance to domestication merely a bubbling, immature hostility? a residual masculine violence? There’s a lot to consider here. 

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New Zealand writer James Norcliffe has published eight collections of poetry, most recently Along Blueskin Road, Villon in Millerton, and Shadow Play, and several award-winning fantasy novels for young people. He publishes poetry widely internationally and regularly reads at festivals and occasions throughout NZ and overseas most recently at the XX International Poetry Festival in Medellin, Colombia in 2010 and the Trois-Rivieres International Poetry Festival in Quebec in 2012. Recent work has appeared in Gargoyle, The Cincinnati Review, Fourteen Hills and Spillway. With Siobhan Harvey and Harry Ricketts he has edited the new Essential New Zealand Poems anthology to be released by Godwit /Random House in August.

Harvey Molloy is a Wellington-based poet.

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Be sure to check out the other poems shared by Tuesday Poem members. Scroll down the left-hand sidebar and click on the links there to see what poems others are reading and reviewing this week. 

planchette by James Norcliffe

at night the rats
are bigger than rats

they race back and forth
like typewriters
across the lath and plaster

like good little rats
they have taken their poison
and now grow large with thirst

where are their pretty girlfriends
or love, the magician?

cannot one of these
offer them solace or slake?

oh qwerty they clatter
oh qwerty qwerty

as the night grows hard round them
desperate in their scrabble

and the stars
set like teeth


Editor: Keith Westwater

The poem

planchette first appeared in Psychopoetica 64 (UK) in 2000 and then in Landfall 201 in 2001 and in the New Delta Review (USA) in 2002. It was subsequently included in Contemporary Poets In Performance ed Jack Ross & Jan Kemp Auckland University Press in 2007 and in Nurse To The Imagination Ed Lawrence Jones Otago University Press in 2008.

This poem appeals to me on several levels. Initially, it had me searching for a thesaurus, as I didn't know that the title referred to a triangular-shaped scribble board mounted on two castors with a pencil mounted in the third corner. When lightly touched, it traces 'writing' with its movement. And, if I hadn't been tripping down to earthquake-ravaged Christchurch for the now nearly last three years, I wouldn't have known what 'lath and plaster' is - a type of ceiling construction prevalent in older Canterbury houses. So, with my education complete, I was able to relate to the poem my own relatively recent experience with poisoning rats in our ceiling. I had heard the same sounds that James describes in the extended typewriting metaphor he has used through this tight, taut poem with language that strikes home like a laser.

The poet

 

The New Zealand Book Council states that "James Norcliffe is a poet, fiction writer and educator. He has written collections of poetry and short stories, and several books for young adults. His writing has been featured in journals and anthologies, and he has also worked widely as an editor. Norcliffe has won awards and prizes, and has been the recipient of key fellowships, including the 2006 Fellowship at the University of Iowa."

The Council's biographical notes then go on to quote more extensively from The Oxford Companion To New Zealand Literature and provide additional information about James' writing career and impressive number of achievements.


James has published six collections of poetry, more recently Rat Tickling (Sudden Valley), Along Blueskin  Road (CUP) and Villon in Millerton (AUP).  His latest collections are: Shadow Play (Proverse), which was a finalist in the 2011 Proverse International Writing Prize and includes a CD of the poems; a book of selected poems, Packing a Bag for Mars (Clerestory Press), which is a collection for younger readers with writing prompts and illustrations by Jenny Cooper; and a new novel for young readers Felix and the Red Rats which has just been released by Longacre Press/Random House.

James lives at Church Bay near Christchurch and more about him can be found on his blog.

Two degrees of separation

I met James socially (once) through a mutual friend about 20 years ago, well before I started writing poetry, then re-met him again (through the same mutual friend) in 2011, a few years after I had been knocked on the head by the muse. It was only then I began to appreciate the quality, breadth and depth of James' literary work (see above). Since then, I have intermittently sought his advice on poetry-writing so now also greatly appreciate his sagacity and counsel which he has given unstintingly.


planchette is published on Tuesday Poem with permission. After you've read it do check out the other poems in the sidebar.

This week's  editor, Keith Westwater lives in Lower Hutt, New Zealand. His debut collection Tongues of Ash (IP, 2011) was awarded 'Best First Book' in the publisher's IP Picks competition. More of his poetry can be found on his blog 'Some place else'.

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...                                             

Push by David Gregory

He has found the green door at last,

in a faded, jaded street.

And, slightly askew, it reflects

the slant of his memories.

Behind it, there might be a childhood,

if he could only reach the handle,

and against the glass

(the sunlit blood of stained glass roses)

there is the shadow of his father.

And the hallway builds back

into those small rooms.

In that one the faces turned

like flowers to the sun of her entrance.

That beautiful woman who spilt his love

easily as tea, and he only 

the second best china.

But listen, there is his mother singing,

and a chorus of relatives rehearsing

their relatively small disagreements.

How much? He asks the scrap-yard dealer.

Well, the man says,

these things don’t come cheap.


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                                                    Guest Editor James Norcliffe

Push is the title poem of NZ poet David Gregory’s 2008 collection (Black Doris Press). He is a stalwart of the Christchurch poetry scene, most obviously in his involvement with the Canterbury Poets’ Collective organised readings each year and his work (with John O’Connor) with Sudden Valley Press and Poets’ Group publications. He publishes relatively sparingly, unfortunately. 

Doors and childhood are presiding themes of David’s work, so in many ways Push can be seen as an archetypal poem.  The “green door” of the opening line references, of course, the famous fifties song. In that song, you’ll remember, laughter, fun, and mystery were available to the initiates on one side of the green door; but the singer on the other side found only exclusion.  

David Gregory

When the poet finds the green door at last in a scrap yard, “in a faded, jaded street” it offers only the “slant of memories” and these are painful: the shadow of his father, the beautiful woman who spilt his love, the chorus of disagreeing relatives. Moreover, whatever possibilities this disembodied door offers, they are only contingent - “if he could only reach the handle” there might be a childhood to return to. Note the modal verb.

Instead of a welcome, the poet must reconstruct the world beyond this “slightly askew” portal. In the final three lines David reveals that the door is in fact in a scrap yard and available for purchase although he is told by the dealer that these things don’t come cheap...

It’s a neat resolution and typical of David’s technique: investing the demotic, the throwaway, with a significance and resonance built up previously. I like this poem a lot. Like so many of his poems it presents itself as a small narrative, but typically, it withholds as much as it gives. The poet hides behind the lamppost of the third person, a point of view that, paradoxically, allows for greater intimacy.

Note the craft and care with word choice; the street, in the context of the green door, is jaded – a word freighted with both greenness and disillusion. There is the detail of local colour: the stained glass roses, the second best china. These swift brush strokes summon up a time and place efficiently and are of course the kind of glittering details memory provides.

Above all, there is in this poem the playfulness always in David’s best work, at odds with the wistfulness; and as always in his best poems, these temper each other. It is a tightrope strategy. A misstep one way could plunge the poem into wordplay for wordplay’s sake; a misstep the other could land the poem in sentimentality. In Push that David negotiates the tension beautifully.

In addition to Push, David's books include Always Arriving (1997) and Frame of Mind (1999), both Sudden Valley Press. The covers of all three books feature doors. His work also features in the Aotearoa NZ Poetry Archive.

This week's guest editor is poet, fiction writer and educator James Norcliffe of Christchurch, NZ. His most recent poetry collection is Villon In Millerton (Auckland University Press, 2007). Last year James was invited to read at the XX International Poetry Festival in Medellin (Colombia) and this year has been invited to read at the Trois Rivieres International Poetry Festival in Quebec. 


The Loblolly Boy and the Sorcerer (Longacre/Random), the follow-up to 2009’s award-winning YA novel The Loblolly Boy, has just been released. James has a rudimentary website : http://jamesnorcliffe.com/ He has lived for extended periods in Brunei Darussalam and China.


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Thanks James! 


Check out the poems in the sidebar written and selected by our regular Tuesday Poets from NZ, the UK, the US and Australia.