Albert Park by Alice Miller

I hear the sea how we come back                                claiming to be altered when    

the painting of the barracks shows                  once we were never    

live in what’s                           now owned by us, round trees curled

down to hear                           your thoughts starred

bold but let’s walk unscripted             to the bar where we sang

when we knew where we were                      where the baby grand played

her high chalked notes and we                                     cried ourselves to water

(Shared with permission. Previously published in  IKA 2, Manakau Institute of Technology.)

Alice Miller was a finalist for this year's Sarah Broom Poetry Prize, the winner of which was announced on Sunday at the Auckland Writers Festival. 'Albert Park' was part of her submission for this.

I had all the best intentions in the world to attend the Sarah Broom Poetry Prize event at the festival and to visit Albert Park in between times, but festivals can be crazy places. However, I was delighted Alice gave us this poem and although I initially thought of the wonderful Albert Park in central Auckland - the curled trees and being framed by water - I also like the generic name of the park that you could find anywhere in the world. Alice Miller is a universal presence herself, having lived and written in New Zealand, North America and Europe.

The line breaks intrigue me and I'm inclined to read them in several different ways as they curl about the page like the leaves and branches implied. The lines also create a sense of movement - the "unscripted walk" to the bar perhaps, the sea or the claim of having been altered as "we" return. 

The "round trees curled / down to hear / your thoughts" echoes so clearly a Charles Simic poem I love, 'Evening Walk' that I can't escape marrying the "high chalked notes" and crying at the end of Miller's poem to the sound of nightbirds like lost children at the end of Simic's. "Once we were never" is an absolute truth of this poem, again evoking the "other evening strolling ahead" in Simic's world. The past is just so damn present.
   

'Albert Park' is dynamic and subtle. I urge you to read it again.

Alice Miller is a poet, essayist, short story writer and playwright. Her first book The Limits was published by Auckland University Press and Shearsman in 2014. She has been the Grimshaw Sargeson Fellow, a Visiting Writer at Massey University, and a resident at the Michael King Centre. These days she calls Vienna home.

http://ackmiller.com/

This week's Tuesday Poem was selected by Saradha Koirala, a teacher and poet based in Wellington. 
http://saradhakoirala.com/

Check out the other Tuesday Poems in the sidebar to the left.

Tika by Saradha Koirala

Goodbye takes the form of a blessing.

My family press tika on our foreheads

rupees into my palm.

Mountain-high through time and air

the red paint dries, the rice grains fall

leaving a trail that could surely lead us home.

But sometimes you can't tell what you've seen

until you close your eyes

and the imprint reveals

an inverted world of darkened brights

and a pale sky

a halo around the ones I'll miss.

Tika stayed with us for each part of the journey

and at last we were hurrying

to our final connection.

Back home I find red smudges on my notebook

like gilt edges of a Bible

indelible tika

staining my most sacred things.

Editor: Harvey Molloy

'Tika' is the final poem from Saradha Koirala's magnificent second book of poems Tear Water Tea. In India and Nepal a tika is a blessing received at the end of a puja ('worship'); the person performing the puja places their forefinger into the dye and makes a single red vertical mark on the recipient’s forehead.  During the puja, offerings are made of light, scent, flowers, rice, and sweets.

I have lived in an Indian family for over twenty-five years and know that to assume that puja is just about 'religion', 'belief', 'worship' -- all very conceptual, very intellectual, and quite slippery, especially in Hinduism and Buddhism  -- is  to miss the event of Tika; Tika marks a passage or transition.  Something is about to change, to journey to become something else and  'Goodbye takes the form of a blessing.' That wonderful line also resonates with me because I share with Saradha, and my wife Latika, and with many others, the 'Goodbye' at the heart of the immigrant experience.  Our families are elsewhere, to visit them is to arrive finally at goodbye as we return to our homes elsewhere.

Saradha's poems often include the experience of a complication.  The visitors leave, the tika drying on their foreheads, but the possibility of remaining lost, even abandoned, without any chance of return comes  through in that ambiguous could surely, with all its German märchen hints of Hansel and Gretel left in the woods. It's not would  nor will.  There's an uncertainty after leave-taking as loved ones pass into memory and it's only in this memory that a recognition can take place: 'But sometimes you can't tell what you've seen.'  'Tell' necessitates the work of poetry -- all of Tear Water Tea remains committed to a sustained reflection on experience. 

How does one measure courage in poetry?  It's a difficult question.  One sign of courage is to remain true, though not unyielding to reflection, to the sense, perhaps even the hunch, of an experience and its value or significance.  This courage means not by necessity or habit adopting a mask (although it’s all a mask in the same way that drama is all characters) or to remove the intensity of the significance through ironic distance (unless irony is integral to the sense or hunch).  

Writing this I am struck by the many words I have at my disposal to name literary tropes and rhetorical figures and the less specific words I find for the special, the unique, the marvellous, the miraculous, the fortuitous, the valued, the spiritual, the 'souled', the sacred: the experience of unique moments that confer value and which are somehow part of a vastness.  The experience of tika lingers and stains the present through memory and this staining is now a hallmark of the 'sacred things.'  The image of the gilded pages of the Bible is both courageous and perfect: the stain is on the edge or margin of sacred things and is bound in some mysterious way with writing and belief. I don’t belong to any religion but I have a hunch that one of the great taboos for many poets of today is faith. 

Zen aficionados might urge us to just live in the moment but Saradha’s poetry suggests that an appreciation of our own experience is not immediately apparent but rather requires memory, reflection, perhaps even the act of writing, to make sense.  Saradha’s work is both personal and thoughtful—there’s much to discover with each reading.

The Poet

Saradha Koirala lives, writes and works in Wellington, New Zealand, and is of Nepali and Pākehā descent. She has a Masters in Creative Writing from Victoria University’s International Institute of Modern Letters and her poetry has been published in The Listener, broadsheet nz, Hue & Cry, Turbine, Sport and Lumiere Reader. She is also a Tuesday Poet who blogs here and her book is available here. 

This week's editor, Harvey Molloy, is a writer and teacher who lives in Wellington. His first book of poems, Moonshot, was published by Steele Roberts in 2008.  He is the current poetry editor of Jaam magazine.

When you've read and enjoyed Tika - do check out the other Tuesday Poems in the sidebar. 

The night I pierced my own belly button by Maria McMillan

Can’t wait to get out

of this hole of a town

she said. For years

we’d been planning

our escape. Had compiled

a list of compulsory

adventures involving

our own brilliant selves

and various disposable

sidekicks in locations

ranging from the giant

aquarium tank in

downtown Monterey

to a moonlit bridge

in Vietnam arched like a

bony cat’s back, to mountains

with names only we knew.

Our mothers, who were sisters,

would look from her to me

and sigh, letting breath out

slowly through the gaps

between their teeth like they’d

been forced to eat something

horrible. Emily

had a blonde bob, perfect

as a politician’s. Eyebrows

plucked exactly so they

lined up with the edges

of her eyes. Skinny.

They kept us close

hoping she would rub off on me.

C’mon, she said, our parents were out

she’d called a taxi. I’ll

do your make-up – like

it was another game or dare,

and when I wouldn't gave me

her practised lopsided smile

like I was a kid putting off

the inevitable. Really,

it’s nothing and left smelling

young and sweet looking

like a favourite daughter.

I was alone. Took

the biggest needle I

could find, poured boiling

water over it. It was

like getting into a

river on a hot day,

the pain, it was like laughing

until you couldn't stop

Everything folded tight

in a moment, hidden

in the seam of a dusty

pocket. Emily. Our mothers

out with their husbands.

Being eleven, being told

why I couldn’t wear shorts.

The bulbous staring eye

of a giant orange fish.

How I’d known

sterilising the needle

wouldn’t stop the pus but

I’d done it anyway.

Editor: Saradha Koirala

The night I pierced my own belly button is from Maria McMillan's much anticipated first collection 'The Rope Walk' published by Seraph Press and is reprinted here with permission. 

I have never pierced my own belly button, but I have definitely laughed until I couldn't stop. What strikes me about this poem is the disconnect between the fantasy of leaving  - "Can’t wait to get out/ of this hole of a town" - and the ultimate desire to be alone. When Emily leaves "smelling/ young and sweet looking/ like a favourite daughter." a space is created for the speaker of the poem to attempt something much more daring. The last lines, "I’d known / sterilising the needle / wouldn’t stop the pus but / I’d done it anyway." is a fantastic ending for this poem and a metaphor I'm left pondering.

Maria has described 'The Rope Walk' as "intergenerational persona poetry sequences that feature aerial performers, 19th century ropemakers and gloomy mountain cribs." Characters reoccur throughout the sequence and a story is woven across generations. The poems are about grieving, moving on and being bound to family and place. The books too are hand-bound - a limited edition of 150 hand-numbered copies - with a letterpress-printed cover designed and printed by Joe Buchanan. It will be launched this weekend.

Maria has studied politics, trained as a librarian and has a long history as an activist. Originally from Christchurch, she now lives in Wellington with her partner and daughters. She blogs at http://mariamcmillan.weebly.com.

Do check out the poems in the sidebar when you've read about Maria and her fine poem.

This week's editor, Saradha Koirala, lives in Wellington and teaches in Porirua. Her second collection of poetry, Tear Water Tea, will be available this month from Steele Roberts Ltd and all good bookshops.

just a point man in the ocean by Vaughan Gunson

just a point man in the ocean

holding a piece of rope

which starts at one point

on the shore, arcs out towards

the black island rocks, their skirts

of white foam billowing up

like Marilyn Monroe’s dress

long ago, or yesterday

distracted by what’s beneath

the ocean, to go down diving for

                 – screams of children

bring me back, a chorus
rising high with each wave.

I stand with my fellow guardians

staunch against the waves

breaking cold on our backs.

we speak, only about the ocean,

the next wave coming towards us,

reaching its tipping point.

the line holds, the children scream

claiming all the world.

I’m there to see it: a point man

in the ocean, going down.  

From this hill, all it's about is lifting it to a higher level, Steele Roberts Ltd 2012

Posted here with permission from the author.

Vaughan Gunson lives in Hikurangi, north of Whangarei. He is concerned about the ecological, economic and political challenges facing New Zealand and the world, and has been active in a range of organisations and campaigns.

His poetry has been published in Blackmail Press, New Zealand Listener, Poetry New Zealand,
Side Stream, Takahē, the Lumière Reader, UNITY Journal, Workers Charter and 52/250 A Year of Flash. "just a point man in the ocean" is from Vaughan's poetry collection this hill, all it's about is lifting it to a higher level, published last month by Steele Roberts Ltd.

What intrigues me most about this poem is its movement and ambiguity. The poem follows the arc of the rope of the second line, out across the frivolous and nostalgic – "foam billowing up// like Marilyn Monroe’s dress" – and the dangerous “black island rocks." We seem to enter the mind of the "point man" as he contemplates "what's beneath" but are snapped back out, as he is, to the populated world.

There are ideas of protection here, perhaps against the unknown – “just” suggests the solitude of one man holding the fort against nature but “screams of children// bring me back, a chorus/ rising high with each wave.” jolts us into a much livelier situation filled with the rise and fall of voices; the crash of waves. Then “my fellow guardians” again populate the scene and we are witness to an unfolding world or uncoiling, like the rope that leads us. 

My favourite line is "the children scream / claiming all the world" which brings each image back into focus for that moment: the people, the rocks, the foam, the mysteries beneath before that final submergence.

this hill, all it's about is lifting it to a higher level has been described as “Poems about the beauty of the everyday, parenting and childhood, the creative process, death, moments of transcendence, social justice, and hope."

It can be purchased online from Steele Roberts or by sending a cheque for $20 (includes postage) to: Vaughan Gunson, 71A George Street, Hikurangi, Whangarei (with a return address).

You can read more of Vaughan's work at his website,  Falling Away From Blue and "like" his poetry on his facebook page, Vaughan Gunson: Poetry.

Now take a look at the Tuesday Poems in the sidebar here - written or chosen by our 30 Tuesday Poets from around the world. 

This week's editor is Wellington writer, Saradha Koirala. She is the author of the poetry collection Wit of the staircase, and has recently finished a second collection, with the help of some serious time away from teaching. SaradhaKoirala.com

Wadestown, by Bill Nelson

There is a hand asleep
under a heavy hip bone.
There is memory of love,
a pip and soft bruises.

I'm not sure how we fit
but it seems this dead hand
is my hand, this angular
body is your body.

All night we lie this way
and I am jerked awake
by a bird I can hardly
remember. I pull out

my lifeless arm and drape it
over your shoulder. It’s okay,
you say, as if I have asked
an impossible question.

In a few moments the numb
goes and you drift off
and I'm not sure you ever were
actually here. The blood returns

to my fingers, along with
the sticky branches of a
spring wind tapping
its slow code into the wall.

                                         Editor, Saradha Koirala

So much and so little happens in this poem. I love the mystery surrounding who is really present, played out in the dead hand coming back to life. Sleep and memory intermingle and I especially like the lines “I am jerked awake / by a bird I can hardly/ remember”, as they link so perfectly the two elements working together here: a definite, palpable physicality of body parts and the intangible, inexplicability of not quite speaking, not quite remembering; a “slow code” tapped out by something solid.

Bill Nelson seems to be a favourite of Tuesday Poets, having previously appeared here and here. In 2009 he won the Biggs Poetry Prize for best MA poetry portfolio at the IIML and has had writing published in Hue & Cry, Sport, The Lumière Reader, Blackmail Press, 4th Floor and Swamp.

I have only recently met Bill but look forward to reading more of his poetry, in which he seems to be able to turn the gritty truth into something much more surprising, more elusive.


Wadestown is published with permission. 

This week's editor, Saradha Koirala, is a Wellington poet. Her first collection wit of the staircase was published by Steele Roberts in 2009. Her work has also appeared in literary magazines including Hue & Cry, Sport, broadsheet and The Listener. When she's not teaching at a local secondary school, Saradha is working on her second book.

For more Tuesday Poems from our Tuesday Poets and others they admire - look into the right hand sidebar. When it says 'Tuesday Poem' in the title, click to enter. 

'The Moonmen' by Anna Livesey

On the last night the moonmen came.
We woke at an unaccustomed time and knelt by the window.
The moonmen pushed lines out in front of them,
they marked off their territories with orange markers.
The moonmen made a regular thud thud like a generator.
They walked in spaces we were used to seeing cordoned off.
It was a strange light the moonmen moved in -
a greeny glow they brought themselves, a glow that reflected
off their white suits and off the shiny visors curving stiffly
across the front of their heads.
We were leaving in the morning and so we said
'the moonmen need not concern us', and
'we will pack up the kitchen and say goodbye to the cat'.
Still, it was a funny thing they came at just that time -
I thought perhaps they were acting something out for us
while we crouched below the windowsill
and our knees grew tired and stiff.


From 'the moonmen' (VUP, 2010)



This poem has such a strong sense of mystery, but remains grounded in the real world with references to the cat, kitchen and windowsill - the solid reality that protects the poet from the 'green glow' and deliberate yet dream-like motions of the moonmen. I don't know what's happened here - it could be as simple as roadworks or as devastating as nuclear war - but the image of the crouched observers and their apparent relief at the presence of the moonmen (are they here by coincidence or necessity?) is such a perfect note to end on.

Anna Livesey's first collection of poetry, Good Luck, was published by VUP in 2003.

This week's editor is Wellington poet and teacher Saradha Koirala whose first collection Wit of the Staircase (Steele Roberts) was published in 2009. Saradha has a Nepali father and Kiwi mother who, she says, encouraged her to get out of sticky situations with wordplay and well-timed wit. 

Visit her blog, and then take time to visit the other Tuesday Poets on our live blog roll. 

This poem is published with the author's permission.