A Birthday Poem by Kendrick Smithyman

This

rather small goat was kneedeep in a paddock.

The paddock entirely was fescue/rye/and clover green.

Also, bushes were there, which are good

for nibbling. Also, for hiding behind.

This small goat was white, like nothing but promise.

She didn't always come when they called her

home, she had her reasons. Families

are like that. Sometimes she came - not announced

through a fence or over a fence - just to see

what was going on. She was, after all, family.

So, I make her, this little ivory would-be nanny,

stand out in a falling dark, twitching her ears,

pricking her lively scut,

at sounds of party

and whether or no she is

at the table she's with them otherwise,

wishing most birthday wishes and that

all manner of things (as surely they will) go well.

This poem is found within the highly recommended pages of Kendrick Smithyman's Selected Poems, published in 1989 by Auckland University Press. It is reprinted here with the kind permission of the copyright holder, Margaret Edgcumbe.

Editor: Elizabeth Welsh.

I first encountered New Zealand poet Kendrick Smithyman's writing five years ago when I enrolled in a 'New Zealand poetry' paper, taught by Peter Simpson, during my Masters at Auckland University. I had no clue who Kendrick Smithyman was, or what his poetry was like, but I did that thing that students often do (and which, incidentally, has driven me crazy since, teaching at University myself) - I liked the sound of it and so committed six months of my year and my degree to learning about him.

It feels rather foolish now to admit such a 'stumbling upon' an author, but I often find, particularly with poets, that this haphazard way is often the best. I found a poet that I loved, such is the way. I spent weeks in the special collections part of the Auckland University library looking over Smithyman's visions and revisions of his work (constant editor and tinker, that he was), intrigued by his dedication and constant belief in Paul Valery's dictum, 'A poem is never finished; it is only abandoned'.

As you can imagine, it took me some time to decide which poem to post this week as the lucky Editor of the Tuesday Poem hub. I was sorely tempted to post 'Communicating' or 'Walk Past Those Houses on a Sunday Morning' - both iconic pieces of New Zealand verse - but instead I opted for a slightly less well known, but, to me, infinitely endearing poem about birthdays and a goat. I must admit, I had a slightly selfish aim in mind, given that this lucky Tuesday is my birthday.

Please click on this link provided and visit the incredible online resource of Kendrick Smithyman's works - Smithyman Online. It boasts the Collected Works 1943-1995, edited and with notes from Margaret Edgcumbe and Peter Simpson, as well as a chronology, reviews, etc. It is a veritable treasure trove!

Elizabeth Welsh the editor of this week's Tuesday Poem. Elizabeth is an academic editor, Katherine Mansfield scholar and poet. For more information about her, please visit her blog.

For more Tuesday Poems, please check out the other blogs in the sidebar where Tuesday Poets post poems by others they admire or poems by themselves. Either way, it's a treasure trove.                      

The Force of Things by Majella Cullinane

 I have tapped the arch of the scapula
     where the skin dips
to the breastbone.


Your breaths
     are the quivering feathers
     of birds
rustling eucalyptus, macrocarpa, pine.


It’s a question of listening:

the guttural call of your dreams
     a kind of offering
I nestle in the cup of my hands.


     I snatch the ghost of things
     you cannot see.

It is this that frightens you.


     The wind holds its blade
against the night’s throat,
but like you, it too will soon forget –

the taste of my lips
     buoyed in a gully of dreams.


"The Force of Things" first appeared in Takake 71, ed. Siobhan Harvey, and was published in Majella Cullinane's collection Guarding the Flame (Salmon Publishing 2011). It is reproduced here by permission of the author.

                                                             Editor: Tim Jones


Majella Cullinane is an Irish poet who has recently emigrated to New Zealand. I heard her read her poetry at September's New Zealand Poetry Society meeting in Wellington, enjoyed hearing her poems very much, bought her debut collection Guarding the Flame, and am very pleased I did.

There are a lot of fine poems in this book, and I had a hard time deciding which of them to ask Majella for permission to publish as a Tuesday Poem, but I kept coming back to "The Force of Things". I like the way it takes the images of the natural world that recur through the collection and makes them both intimate and ominous. Restlessness without and restlessness within...

The poems in Guarding the Flame cover the poet's old life in Ireland, her new life in New Zealand, and the transition between the two. It's well worth reading if you like Irish poetry or New Zealand poetry - or if you just like poetry.

Guarding the Flame is available from the publisher, bookdepository.co.uk, impress.co.uk and fishpond.co.nz. The Salmon Publishing page for Guarding the Flame includes Majella's bio and two sample poems.

Tim Jones is the editor of this week's Tuesday Poem. Tim is a poet, author and editor who lives in Wellington, New Zealand, and won the NZSA Janet Frame Memorial Award for Literature in 2010. He is about to embark on a book tour with Keith Westwater, to launch Tim's new collection Men Briefly Explained and Keith's debut collection Tongues of Ash. This week, one of Tim's poems from Men Briefly Explained is Mary McCallum's Tuesday Poem, and next week Tuesday Poet Helen Lowe will post one on her blog. 


Do check out the other Tuesday Poets in the sidebar.

128 Abel Smith Street, by Vivienne Plumb

the high wind has stirred thousands of dust particles that have become a mist

hanging over the city in the early morning light that is a fragile pale blue similar to
that of transparent bone china teacups/ the police have raided 128 looking for
terrorist firearms and balaclavas/ 128 opposed the notorious traffic bypass they fix
bicycles and grow vegetables and rent out their front room for community and
political functions/ i was invited there once to read poetry and to listen to a musical
concert/ like the old days of the salon/ and my friend Jackie Williams told me she was
born in 128 when it was a nursing home/ many years ago/ and now Jackie has gone
to the big salon in the sky/ the dust particles refuse to settle all morning they dance
above the harbour making it look as if there are fires out at sea/ the police raid is in
the news and has even reached the newspapers in Bangkok in London and in
Istanbul/ a city council street cleaner wearing a fluoro orange waistcoat tidies up
debris that came down onto Abel Smith Street in the high wind/ probably a security
intelligence officer

from The Cheese and Onion Sandwich and Other New Zealand Icons (Seraph Press, 2011)

Editor Janis Freegard

With a New Zealand mother and an Australian father, award-winning writer Vivienne Plumb has one foot on either side of the ditch. She's one of literature's all-rounders. As well as six previous collections of poetry, she has written plays, short fiction and a novel. Her recent play The Cape, which has been performed throughout New Zealand, has been translated into Polish and published in Warsaw.

I was delighted to hear that Helen Rickerby's Seraph Press is publishing Vivienne Plumb's brand new collection (The Cheese and Onion Sandwich and Other New Zealand Icons). I'm a big fan of Vivienne's work, particularly her prose poems, and this collection is all prose poems. Vivienne celebrates and satirises such New Zealand icons as ferry crossings, sly grogging, crockpots, whitebait, weather, gambling, tramping, motels and (of course!) cheese and onion sandwiches.

The poem I've chosen (and it was difficult to choose from so many that stood out) is a great mix of the lyrical ("the dust particles refuse to settle all morning they dance above the harbour making it look as if there are fires out at sea"), the satirical ("probably a security intelligence officer") and the political. New Zealand is still dealing with the aftermath of its so-called "anti-terror raids", with several people still awaiting trial and a new "search and surveillance" bill recently introduced into parliament.

I was also drawn to this poem because I have a personal connection to the house at 128 Abel Smith St - a friend used to live there years ago, before it became an anarchist/community house. It's a lovely old place and I'm pleased to see it's still being used and appreciated.

Janis Freegard is this week's TP editor. Based in Wellington, New Zealand, her poetry is widely published including at the Tuesday Poem hub and the US-based Anomalous Press. Her collection Kingdom Animalia: the Escapades of Linnaeus (Auckland University Press) was released earlier this year.
For more Tuesday Poems, please follow the links in the side-bar to the right.

Curtains by Aileen Kelly

i could be Mother
Christmas i could slide easing
down your chimney be your pleasant
present dropping on your hearth gift-
wrapped to your order in my sad sack and
ashes and You'd only think You'd
barely got your own back

i could crouch in my box You'd
scratch at my windows and i'd close
the curtains i'd phone out for life
and You'd come as
the van-man plumbers gasman police
ambulance all badges and your fists
and if the door didn't
open You'd be sure
i still wasn't small enough

Well I could ride a new broom
through the night streets
mash a toad in your mailbox
put a pox on your willy
take a hard fingernail and carve
on your door Mind
your own
bloody
business
and cutting me down
and boxing me in
and cutting me up
would still be your business


from Aileen Kelly, The Passion Paintings, Poems 1983 - 2006, John Leonard Press, 2006.

                                                            Editor: Catherine Bateson 

Aileen Kelly was born in England and graduated from Cambridge. She has lived in Melbourne since 1962 where she has worked as an adult educator. Her first collection, Coming Up for Light, 1994, won the Mary Gilmore Award for best Australian first book of poetry and was shortlisted for both the Anne Elder and Victorian Premier's awards.

I've posted about Aileen Kelly's work and my personal and professional friendship with Aileen before on my own blog, so I won't repeat what I wrote there.  I do want to say that I believe Aileen Kelly to be an excellent poet whose work has sadly been under-valued in Australia. I have some theories about this, but I'm more interested in hearing what people think of this poem.

What I love: the rhythms of the poem which create the dialogue between the speaker and the silent 'You', the ambiguity of the 'You' to whom the poem is addressed, the pungent vernacular and the tension this creates with the poem's content. There's nothing predictable about this poem. Over to you - what do you think?

This week's editor Catherine Bateson is a poet and children's writer who lives in the hills outside Melbourne. You can find more information about her on her webpage.


For more Tuesday Poems, please follow the links in the side-bar to the right of this page.

Crossed Cultures by Renee Liang x Dylan Horrocks + Allan Xia

Due to sickness in our ranks (and a server issue), there was no official Tuesday Poem this week - at first - so I posted a link to something in our sidebar: a dynamic, thought-provoking, 'webcomic' of a poem by one of our Tuesday Poets - Renee Liang - blended with the work of comic artist Dylan Horrocks. The remix is by Allan Xia, and it won the literature award in the just-announced mix and mash competition.


This week's editor Catherine Bateson managed to post 'Curtains' after all but you may as well check out 'Crossed Cultures' anyway, it's rather good. 

HERE it is. 



Curator: Mary McCallum

Miner's Cook by Meliors Simms

Flying in, the sea is dark and demanding.

Our island appears like a jewel and grows

green until we circle to land, 

then I see the red sore gouged at its centre

and my bile rises as the plane drops.

On the ground I am lost in the chaos

of unloading in a sudden dark that hides everything

beyond our beams. I’m looking for the bread,

fresh bread brought to last this first week

but by the time I’ve found it the loaves are gnawed to stale crusts

and I’m in despair with a hungry crew to feed.

I must push my fear and sorrow

out into the dark and be grateful when our neighbours,

the whalers, come over the hill with roast meat.

I stumble asleep among crates of food

and dream of home but when I wake up I’m still here

and a relentless dawn calls me to breakfast for thirty. 

For days of sorting supplies and learning a new kitchen,

fuelling men between their shifts,

all I ever see is the grassy slope sheltering our camp,

a wink of water behind us and a sky full of strange stars.

Finally there is time for a walk, up the hill

I see again the bleeding gash I am feeding,

and vomit into the grass.


Meliors Simms

No Mine is an Island - Meliors Simms 

Blanket-stitched, needle-felted recycled wool blankets 2011

                                                               Editor: Claire Beynon

Meliors Simms (NZ) is a woman of diverse talents; a 'radical crafter'*, environmental custodian, creator of exquisite hand-made and altered books, poet and fine artist of high integrity. 


I first encountered Meliors's books and meticulous needle-felted artworks about two years ago when a friend, knowing my passion for Antarctica, directed to me to Meliors's blog, Bibliophilia; I was awed and delighted by the familiar yet entirely 'other' world I encountered there. Crocheted coral reefs, embossed paper fossils, blanket-stitched oceans contaminated by woollen droplets of rust-coloured oil; a finely-contoured relief of a pristine Ross Island. . . I felt an immediate resonance with Meliors's work and with the ethos underpinning it.

In her artist's statement for You are an agent of change, Meliors explains her process in the following words - "The slow, accretive nature of my artistic practice is an analogy for both the natural world and human society. . . These ‘domestic arts’ also signify apparently unrelated individual human choices regarding food, housing, transport and energy; and their cumulative environmental impact. . ."

I chose Meliors's poem Miner's Cook for this week's Tuesday Poem for the way it exemplifies so much of what I understand her creative process to be about - namely, a call to re-establish the right relationship with our earth; a plea to wake up to the many covert and overt ways in which we cause our planet harm; in this poem and the accompanying artwork, No Mine is an Island, Meliors quite literally stitches into relief our blind disregard and wilful mismanagement of our natural resources. 


Miner's Cook - an image that might or might not have appeared to her in a dream - is a no-holds-barred poem of protest, lament and advocacy. This is work that is at once subtle and provocative, lyrical and confrontational. It serves as archive of our times.

"Look across the surface and down a mine that bleeds toxic tailings into the sea. Look within, beyond the obvious, behind the scenes. There is a complicated story underlying every thing we buy and all that we reject. The consequences of our consumption extend far, and sustain long, beyond our individual use. We cannot fence off ourselves from each other, or from the air, the earth, the waters of our world. Whether careless or deliberate in our choices, whether in denial or awareness, we do not stand alone. Let there be no mistaking: each imperfect stitch of cotton thread was made by hand, every layer slowly needle-felted from recycled blankets and un-spun wool. My materials are plants and animals but my finger tips became calloused from hundreds of hours pushing needles of steel, tempered from iron, mined from an earth left as scarred as my skin. . . " Meliors Simms

*Fellow blogger and Tuesday Poet Tim Jones posted an in-depth interview with Meliors in August. 

Claire Beynon is this week's TP editor. An artist, writer and novice filmmaker, Claire's blog - www.icelines.blogspot.com - is about to turn three; her first entry was written in October 2008 en-route to a field camp in Antarctica. 


For more Tuesday Poems, please follow the links in the side-bar to the right of this page.

CelebrationNEWSnewsNEWSNEWScelebrationNEWSNEWSnewsNEWSNEWScelebration

Tuesday Poem now has 100 followers!

The 100th person to join our TP community is Salaq. 

 We will be sending Salaq a package of poetry books in celebration. 

Rives controls the internet by Rives

                                                       Editor: Sarah Jane Barnett

Apparently the words woot, sexting and textspeak have been added to the latest edition of the Concise Oxford English Dictionary. Personally, I try to slip woot into casual conversation. It is up there with squeegee in terms of pleasurable language. It's commendable (essential!) that the Concise OED keeps up with new words, because that's the great thing about language, it changes as we do. I am sure that someone said reading old English is a form of linguistic archeology.

For my turn editing the Tuesday Poem hub I wanted to feature a poet who makes everyday, or even ugly, language beautiful. Why? My high school photography teacher once said to me that it was easy to make a beautiful image of a beautiful object, but hard to make a beautiful image of an ugly object. That conversation stuck with me, and it's been my creative philosophy ever since. This is why I've posted a poem by Rives.

So, who is this Rives guy? John G., to be precise, is an American performance poet and children's author. He is a whizz at pop-up books, has been the US National Poetry Slam champ, and holds a patent for paper engineering. I first discovered him through TED where he performed the poem, "Rives controls the internet." He also appeared at the Auckland Readers and Writers Festival this year, so some of you might have seen him.

You can find out more about Rives on his website: http://shopliftwindchimes.com/

---

Sarah Jane Barnett is this week's Tuesday Poem editor and a regular contributor to the Tuesday Poem community. She is a writer and reviewer who lives in Wellington, New Zealand. At the moment Sarah is halfway through a PhD in Creative writing, with a focus on ecopoetics.

Once you have enjoyed "Rives controls the internet", take some time to enjoy the other poems posted this week by members of the Tuesday Poem community. You will find them all listed in the right-hand sidebar.

Four New York Poems by Deborah Garrison

I saw you walking through Newark Penn Station
in your shoes of white ash....
                                               [extract from 'I Saw You Walking', Deborah Garrison]
______
Editor Mary McCallum

In recognition of the tenth anniversary of 9/11 this week, I am posting a 2008 film of New Jersey poet Deborah Garrison reading four poems related to the attacks, from her second collection The Second Child (Random House, USA, 2007; Bloodaxe Books, 2008).

The first poem in the film is 'Goodbye, New York' - a pretty enough if familiar sort of ditty about a beloved city, but if you're in a hurry skip to 'I Saw You Walking' at the 1'30 mark on the timer - a poem written from the appalling events of 9/11, followed by 'September Poem', written a year later, after the birth of a child. Lastly, 'Into the Lincoln Tunnel' describes how a daily commute is still shadowed by thoughts of what happened in New York in 2001.



Garrison's poetry is new to me and on first listening, it feels wildly uneven, one minute using language squarely anchored in the ordinary and domestic and such frank and unexpected juxtapositions that they can feel like collisions, and the next moment falling back on tired abstractions and trite rhymes. But somehow, of all the 9/11 poetry I've trawled through to find something to post here, her poetry seems to me among the more interesting for its unevenness, for its frankness and willingness to speak up, for its reminders that humanity is something hauled from blood and guts. She makes me think of a woman in a Greek legend wailing from the wall after the invaders have left.

'I Saw You Walking' can be read here with the other poems that appeared in the New Yorker in the months following the attacks, including Polish poet Adam Zagajewski's 'Try to praise the mutilated world' which appeared on September 24, 2001, and while not about 9/11, expressed for many Americans what had happened to them, and is discussed further here: 'Can Poetry Save the World? Zagajewski, Auden: the poets of 9/11'. W H Auden's poem - 1 September, 1939 - was also 'an affirming flame' for the Americans in 2001, along with Poet Laureate Billy Collins' commissioned poem The Names. Garrison's I Saw You Walking was published in the New Yorker on October 22, 2001.

Deborah Garrison worked on the editorial staff of The New Yorker for 15 years, and is now the poetry editor at Alfred A. Knopf and a senior editor at Pantheon. Her poetry has been both criticised and praised as being hip and accessible - her first collection The Working Girl sold an astonishing 30,000 copies -- and then, as the New York Times said, "just as she was being lauded as one of those hip young postfeminist urban women portrayed in “Ally McBeal” and “Sex and the City,” Ms. Garrison gave birth to her first child and moved to New Jersey. For several years, she did not write a poem." Then along came her collection The Second Child.

The publisher blurb says of it: "Her recent poems explore many facets of motherhood - ambivalence, trepidation and joy - coming to terms with the seismic shift in her outlook and in the world around her. She confronts her post-9/11 fears as she commutes daily from New Jersey into New York City, continuing to seek passion in her marriage and wrestling with her feelings about faith and the mysterious gift of happiness."

More on Deborah Garrison here. Pamela Robertson-Pearce filmed this reading in New York on 11 September 2008.

Once you're heard what Deborah Garrison has to say, enter the world of the sidebar and find up to 30 Tuesday Poets from the US, the UK, Australia and NZ with poems they've written or by others they like, all posted on a Tuesday.

Mary McCallum is curator of the Tuesday Poem, assisted in this by Claire Beynon. She is an author and poet, freelance writer, teacher and bookseller who lives in Wellington, NZ. She also likes to blog at O Audacious Book. 

Where thought goes by Helen Lehndorf

'Now, lift the heart' my yoga teacher always says.

I envision my heart levitating outside my body,
at eye level. Its heavy pulsing, a slight squelch
as I cup my hands under it, and guide it upwards,
trying not to recoil from the very meat of it, the
shudder of it as the aorta gapes air like a tiny mouth.

My yoga teacher tells us to imagine we have strings
attached to the tops of our heads. 'Imagine I am pulling
your string', she says. I imagine I am a flabby puppet
and she is trying to get a taut line so she can make me
jump and dance. She mimics string-pulling and I yank myself taller.

My yoga teacher says 'You are a baby, you are a flower,
you are stirring a giant pot.' I am a woman in a yoga studio
trying to remember I have a body. She says
'Where thought goes, energy flows'.
She is dying of cancer. Where does that leave us?
Maybe we will donate her to science.

Science will play her body like an instrument, strumming her veins,
blowing air between dermis and muscle. They will lift her heart,
gently, with surgical tools which look like two giant spoons.
But look at that, she is not dead yet. She is right here, in triangle
pose. My thoughts go west, go wayward. My thoughts are cul-de-
sacs. Dead ends. I am a sick baby, a cut flower. I am not safe
around a visual metaphor.

Editor: Emma McCleary

I met Helen Lehndorf on the internet. She was on Flickr, I liked her photos, she liked my blog, I liked her blog – it was all very 2008. Ignoring the first rule of meeting people from the internet (aka potential serial killers) in real life, I happily trotted around to Helen’s back yard where we ate chocolate cupcakes on a rug in the sun. We’ve been firm friends ever since.

Therefore, when it came to my Tuesday Poem editorship I knew I wanted a poem by Helen. I’m not very objective – I think everything she writes is fantastic and it thrills me no end that she’ll soon have her own book of poems. The Comforter is being published by Seraph Press later this year.

I asked Helen to send me three poems to choose from and this was my standout favourite. I always have a weakness for death references and I love the language and the imagery. For me this poem is strong, cheeky and relatable (and that last line sounds like a bad wine review).

I’m not a poet – I get to do this because I’m the Web Editor at Booksellers NZ and happen to like poetry, so we contribute to the Tuesday Poem every week. I’m really keen to hear what others – readers and poets - think too.

When you've read Helen's poem, try the other Tuesday Poems which pop up every week in the sidebar, including the Booksellers' Tuesday Poem.

This week's editor, Emma McCleary, is not only Web Editor at Booksellers New Zealand, she also blogs about her life in Featherston, runs her craft empire Emma Makes and is a printmaker.

Song by Peter Bland

The old Chinese lady
who lives next door
lays out her washing
on a red-tiled roof
as if she were back
in her childhood home.

She sings to herself
a song with long pauses,
a song passed on
full of comings and goings
like the sea on
a calm day when
it drifts in exhausted.

It's a song with no real
end or beginning. One
we still hear
even in the pauses
as she stoops
to water her money-tree
or reaches heavenwards
to collect her washing.


_____________

                                                   Editor Jeffrey Paparoa Holman

Yorkshire Godwit

Peter Bland at the launch of Coming Ashore  August 2011

We don’t have many godwits homing to New Zealand from Yorkshire, except for Peter Bland, a bird of poetic passage and many migrations between here and there since his first long journey south on an immigrant ship in 1954, bearing his precious copy of T.S. Eliot’s Prufrock.

Peter Bland has been fattening himself on these feeding grounds ever since, and enriching us with eleven collections of poetry on the way, as well as co-founding Downstage Theatre and acting in local film. Now 77 years old and a widower mourning his lost love, Beryl, he is back amongst us, living in Auckland and our most recent recipient of the NZ$60,000 Prime Minister’s Award for Poetry.

He deserves it, richly: and to celebrate, we have his latest collection, Coming Ashore, launched last week in Wellington by Steele Roberts. I was asked to speak to the book on the night: a rich collection of elegy and history, and sharply-observed images of the inner and outer life of the poet through his bicultural world views.

This poem, “Song”, is one of my favourites, of many choice pieces here: the viewing persona observes a next door neighbour, a Chinese woman, quite elderly it seems, singing as she hangs out her washing. In 21 carefully crafted and understated lines, Peter Bland brings her to life: the song, the strange quality of otherness and the keening for home its sounds evoke, “full of comings and goings/like the sea on/a calm day when/it drifts in exhausted”.

She sings as she waters her money tree, she sings as she looks up to heaven hanging the washing: here is an immigrant captured in print, somewhere between life and death: “It's a song with no real/end or beginning. One/we still hear/even in the pauses/as she stoops/to water her money-tree/or reaches heavenwards/to collect her washing.”

There is no moral, nor strain: simply the pellucid poise of the best of the ancient Chinese poets he so admires, the emotional ache that we can feel in the final lines of Ezra Pound’s “The River Merchant’s Wife”: “If you are coming down through the narrows of the river Kiang,/Please let me know beforehand,/ And I will come out to meet you /As far as Cho-fu-Sa.”

Bland is at one with his subject here because he has stood on similar ground: the immigrant, the man of two worlds with two sets of voices in his head, those from a childhood home, and those from New Zealand streets. This is why he can give her back to us with such simplicity and depth – but only a life of dedication to his craft can help us a little way in explaining the power of his art.

This poem is published with the permission of Steele Roberts and you can find Coming Ashore here. When you've absorbed "Song", take yourself into the right hand sidebar and discover up to 30 poems from the Tuesday Poets linked to this blog.

This week's editor Jeffrey Paparoa Holman is currently on leave from Tuesday Poem while he is writer in residence at Hamilton University in NZ's central North Island. Our thanks to him for his post on Peter Bland. Jeffrey is a poet and academic who normally resides in Christchurch and blogs here. His last post was an earthquake poem. 

Butterfly, by Rhian Gallager

We entered a year of slow burn
I stole a line from her eyes
She wrote by hand return

The body awoke to the act of yearn
Moisture met the heat of July
We entered a year of slow burn

A door ajar, could yield or close firm
From colleague to intimate ally
She wrote by hand, I wrote in return

Disclosure inched by turn
A long striptease of send and reply
We entered a year of slow burn

Shining and wild were in
Our lines, barely disguised
She wrote by hand in return

All grew from a pact of adjourn
Overwintering, waiting a sign in the sky
Fused on a year of slow burn
Word at the start became touch in return.

(c) Rhian Gallagher

.
About the Poem:
"Butterfly", first published in Poetrix, will be included in Rhian Gallagher's second collection of poetry, Shift (forthcoming from Auckland University Press.) "Butterfly" follows the form of the villanelle, although it reflects the contemporary trend of allowing variation in the wording of the refrain.

I believe this poem is representative of Rhian's work in terms of the beauty and delicacy of the writing, a delicacy that nonetheless enhances both the emotional depth of the poem and also the adherence to a demanding form.

I have revisited Rhian's first collection, Salt Water Creek, on several occasions now, enjoying the juxtaposition of intellect, interior reflection, and often profound emotion that characterises her work—and very much look forward to the publication of Shift next month.

"Butterfly" is reproduced here with the permission of Rhian Gallagher.

.
About the Poet:
Rhian Gallagher’s first poetry collection, Salt Water Creek (Enitharmon Press, London, 2003) was shortlisted for the Forward Prize for First Collection. Gallagher received the Janet Frame Literary Trust Award in 2008. Auckland University Press is publishing her second collection of poetry, Shift, in September 2011. Gallagher is also the author of a non-fiction book, Feeling for Daylight: The Photographs of Jack Adamson, (South Canterbury Museum, 2010).

—
Helen Lowe is this week's Tuesday Poem editor and a regular contributor to the Tuesday Poem community. A novelist as well as a poet, Helen's first novel, Thornspell (Knopf) is published in the US, while her second The Heir of Night, (HarperCollins, US; Little, Brown, UK) is also available internationally and recently debuted in The Netherlands, as Kind van de Nacht. She is currently working on her third novel.
—

Once you have enjoyed "Butterfly" do take some time to enjoy the other poems posted by members of the Tuesday Poem community for this week. You will find them all listed in the right-hand sidebar.

Shetland Ponies, Haast Beach by Tim Jones

Forest and sea have had their way

with memory. A few houses — silent,

locked — remain. Between car and beach,

a field of Shetland ponies, already

calling her by name. But I'm

facing inland, bush not far beyond,

mountains piled like thunderheads

across the morning light. Was this

our house, or this, or this now empty field?

For eighteen months, we lived here

while they built the road. I was two, then four.

What I have are barely memories:

my mother at the washing line. My father's

longed-for homeward stride. Grader drivers

lifting me onto their knees to ride.

Work done, we drove away, the new highway

bearing our fortunes south, over spilling streams,

across the Main Divide. Now I'm back, reclaiming

what may be reclaimed. The forest

has no answers. The sea lies past the ponies.

"Look," she says, "they're eating from my hand."

________________________

 Editor: Alicia Ponder

From the soon to be released collection Men Briefly Explained, I found Tim Jones' Shetland Ponies, Haast Beach instantly compelling. It's the first stanza deliberately filled with contemplative pauses - echoing those empty spaces of memories from a long-forgotten past - and the lovely shape in the way the poem moves between the present and the past, with glimpses of these, as if from a car window on a long journey to a pivotal destination. The poem as a whole has a real feeling of reclaimed memories in a solid and imperative now.  

Tim Jones is a poet, author and editor, and Men Briefly Explained will be his third solo collection of poetry, out in October.  I'm looking forward to hearing him read from it at a launch event at Rona Gallery, the bookshop my family owns in Eastbourne (Friday October 28, 6 pm), and at other venues around the country.  


Tim's support of New Zealand poets and poetry has been amazing, he was highly instrumental, along with co-editor Mark Pirie, in creating and keeping alive the dream of "Voyagers" a highly esteemed collection of New Zealand Science Fiction poetry and a real boost for many NZ Poets.  He also recently edited the Australian and New Zealand Speculative Poetry Collection in the second issue of Eye to the Telescope, published online here by the Science Fiction Poetry Association.  

 

Tim is a Tuesday poet who lives in Wellington NZ, and blogs at Tim Jones: Books in the Trees.  Some of his books can be found on his blog, including the short story collection Transported longlisted for the 2008 Frank O’Connor International Short Story Award.

Alicia Ponder is this week's Tuesday Poem editor.  She lives in Eastbourne, and loves poetry, and writing for children.  She is the co-author of two art books, and is published in New Zealand and Australia .  She blogs here at an Affliction of Poetry.  


After you've read the hub poem, try out some of the Tuesday Poem posts in the sidebar.