A poem of mine elsewhere

I was really delighted that Janis Freegard published my poem 'Stranded in Paradise' from Heading North as her National Poetry Day Poem yesterday. You can read it here: http://janisfreegard.wordpress.com/2011/07/22/national-poetry-day-poem-stranded-in-paradise-by-helen-rickerby/

In which Vana gets a website and blogs about Heading North

Vana Manasiadis – whose debut collection, Ithaca Island Bay Leaves, I was extremely proud to publish last year – has got herself a website: http://www.vana-manasiadis.com.

She's also written a wee piece, a musing, on Heading North: http://www.vana-manasiadis.com/1/post/2010/10/heading-north-and-sometimes-looking-out.html. Vana was one of the first readers of Heading North, and her encouragement was significant to me when I was wondering what to do with it, or, indeed, whether to do anything with it. Hooray for people who get what you're doing and believe in your work!

Two posts in one day! Why yes, I am procrastinating.

What I did on my holiday, or, my visit to Cape Reinga and what I found there

I recently wrote a bit about my latest Northland holiday on my work blog: http://blog.teara.govt.nz/2010/10/21/te-rerenga-wairua/. It's mainly about what an amazing place Cape Reinga – Te Rerenga Wairau – is, and how I have some pretty strong reservations about the landscaping and 'interpretation' they've done since I was up there last.

Northland has become a really special place for me. I wrote Heading North about the first trip Sean and I took up there. People have asked if I'm going to write another book about this trip. So far I haven't written any poetry about this, but I can see it being incorporated into a big epic poem/patchwork that I've been working on for a few months, alongside 'Cinema'. Actually, that's a lie. I have left 'Cinema' on the sidelines, was suddenly writing this new thing ('How to live'), while dealing with everything that was going on, and have recently abandoned both – temporarily, while I try to hurriedly finish off JAAM 28 and the thing I haven't quite finished, and think I'd better announce this weekend, before it's actually finished.

Tuesday poem: 'Finding the cracks' from Heading North

Finding the cracks

I needed to find the edges
of myself, prise a little
let some daylight in

It’s only when touched
that we know
the limits
of ourselves, where our skin stops
where our self ends

a breeze
a hand
a tear


I'm posting another poem from Heading North, partly because I hadn't gotten organised enough to get a poem off anyone else, but also because I had a wee launchy afternoon tea celebration for it on Saturday. It was kind of fun to do a wee reading in my own lounge, which, with the doors to the dining room open, and the dining table removed, becomes quite a large space. Maybe I should host poetry readings ...?

'Finding the cracks' isn't really a very typical poem in the book - most of them are longer and more narrative. But this is kind of the non-narrative heart of it - the emotional story I guess.

Anyway, you'll find more Tuesday poems over here: http://tuesdaypoem.blogspot.com/, check them out.

Tuesday Poem: 'Cape Reinga, New Year's Day', from Heading North

Cape Reinga, New Year’s Day

The yellow glow
through the roof of our tent
wakes us early

the sun is just peering over the hills
is still yawning and stretching
as we pack up and go

It’s only around the corner
where the tar-seal stops
and the gravel begins

from here, you must
slow down
you must prepare

When we get there
we don’t even speak

We walk down the seagrass slope to the lighthouse
I in my bare feet, feeling the prick and give

The sky vaults above us
the blue ocean glass
as the sun shines through

where the oceans meet
where souls depart

The light is brighter, whiter
thicker than anywhere else

We come together
photograph each other
holding my journal in front
with the date and time, as proof

CAPE REINGA
1/1/2004
7.15 AM

Back at the car park
We send a postcard to our southern selves
‘Remember this’


This is another from Heading North, because my copies of the book arrived today!! I had suspicions that they would be in most post box today, and so I went to check before going to work, and there they were! They are more gorgeous in the 'flesh' (or rather paper, card, cloth and ink) than in the pictures. The cover of each is also slightly different, slight individualised - the hill shape slightly different, the 'road' shapes wider or narrower.

This poem is probably the heart of the collection, for me at least. It's one of my favs. I read it tonight at the Poetry Society open reading to celebrate the books' arrival, and was very proud to be able to show some people my book. As a physical object it's a work of art, and I hope people will like the poems too!

Should you wish to purchase a copy, you can have a chat to me, or you can contact Parsons Bookshop in Auckland, who stock the books and do mail orders, or you can wait a short time and buy it from the Dunedin Public Art Gallery, who have an online shop. You might want the ISBN, which is: 978-0-9864616-6-8. It retails for $45, which is a lot for a book of poetry, I know, but if you have a look at a copy, you'll see all the hand work that has gone into it, and you'll understand why.

Ok, so that's my Tuesday poem - for more Tuesday Poems visit the hub blog: http://tuesdaypoem.blogspot.com/. This week is a really interesting poem by US poet Heather Davis, posted by US poet Eileen Moeller.

Tuesday Poem: 'Setting off', from Heading North

Setting off

When you travel so
far, you’re searching
for new breath
driving faster - - leaving
old air behind

feeling the pressure
of the window - - between
work and work
it was now
or never

it was now


That's the opening poem in my sequence Heading North, which is being published as a book by Kilmog Press. I'm very excited! It's all happened quite fast, so I hadn't blogged about it yet. But already it's becoming an actual book! A beautiful, hand-made, hardback, limited-edition book! You can see it in the below, but you can view it in more detail on the Kilmog Press blog: http://kilmogpress.blogspot.com/2010/08/helen-rickerby-heading-north.html.


You can read more about the book here on Beattie's Book Blog, which already has the blurb: http://beattiesbookblog.blogspot.com/2010/08/another-poetry-collection-for-tuesday.html (completed only late last night). Or you can just read the blurb below:

In Heading North Helen Rickerby takes us on the road. This playful and reflective sequence explores the tensions and connections between the narrator and her lover on a road trip towards the tip of the North Island. The place where two oceans meet, Cape Reinga, is the calm in their subtle storm. Heading North is an inner and outer journey through the geography of Northland.

Helen Rickerby is the author of two previous collections of poetry: Abstract Internal Furniture (2001) and My Iron Spine (2008). She is co-managing editor of JAAM literary magazine and runs Seraph Press, a boutique poetry publisher. She lives in Wellington, in a cliff-top tower, and works as a web editor.

I've been meaning to blog about Kilmog Press again for a while now, ever since I bought copies of Michael Steven's first two books (there's already another now, so that shows how slack I am!). And I will do a proper blog soon, but for now I'll just say that I've always admired their gorgeous, work-of-art books, and I'm so excited that mine is going to be among them.

And of course, check out the official Tuesday poem on the Tuesday Poem Blog, and you'll find more Tuesday poems in the sidebar of that blog.

Journey poems, and revisiting past self

Last Tuesday, while having a late lunch, I was rereading Martin Edmond’s chapbook, The Big O Revisited (Soapbox Press, 2008). The ‘Big O’ of the title is both Roy Orbison and Ohakune, the town where Edmond did his early growing up.

The poems in the book are about a trip he took around New Zealand when working on his book about artist Philip Clairmont. The poems are discrete – they work individually – but together they make up a journey.

I was thinking about this, and thinking that sometime I’d like to write a series of poems about a journey. Then I thought perhaps we’d better go on a trip soon, so I could write about it. But then I thought, why don’t I write about a journey I’ve already taken. And I knew immediately exactly which trip that would be.

So, by the end of lunchtime I’d already written several sections/poems for a poem/series of poems about a road trip around Northland Sean and I did a few years ago over New Year. It was a short but intense holiday – we only stayed in one place (Paihia) for more than one night, we drove for a lot of every day, and I visited Cape Reinga for the first (and, so far, only) time. (If you've never been there, it's way cooler than suggested in the pic to the left. But this is a Wikipedia Commons pic, and I couldn't be bothered finding another one I could use to brighten the blogpost)

So, later at night last Tuesday, after an evening of not doing too much (so far as I can remember), I sat down to write some more. By 11 o’clock I’d written 17 pages in my notebook, and decided that I’d written my first draft. I think that’s the most poetry I’ve ever written in one day. (Thanks Martin Edmond!)

That’s not to say it’s any good, but I think it will be a good basis for something. I haven’t read it over yet, but I think when I rework it I’ll want to pare it back a little, draw some of it out, and add more tension and subtext.

In search of the latter, I decided to have a hunt through my journals from that time (2003/2004). I found I hadn’t actually written anything during the trip – except the date and time of when we were at Cape Reinga (1/1/2004, 7.15 am), which we held up when taking photos of each other.

I also found that immediately after the trip I’d started trying to write a poem about it, but I’d abandoned it. There were some bits I really like now, and will be able to use in my new poems (I think I’ve just accepted that it’s a sequence), but I think it must have just been too soon for me to reflect on my experiences – too soon to mythologise it perhaps.

So I read in my journals about a year on either side of the trip – which didn’t actually take that long because I wasn’t writing all that much then. But I gained some really insights into what was going on with me then, what was going on with Sean, what was going on with us, what was bothering me, and how I was feeling – things I hope to incorporate subtly into the poems.

But it was also really good to see how far I’d come, how far we’d come. I was often unhappy, I was getting sick of my job, I was finding it hard to write and when I did I was usually disappointed with what I’d written. Looking back, I was actually writing mostly things I like now, and in fact that period was the beginning of what became My Iron Spine – I wrote more of it before I took time off work (2005) than I thought.

How quickly we forget our old selves – it’s good to be reminded sometimes. I’m glad I have this record (even though it often shows me to be a bit shallow and whiny). And now that I’m about to embark on typing up and reworking what I’m tentatively calling ‘Heading North’ (perhaps it will become a chapbook!), I’m hoping the journals will help me bridge then and now, the 2003/2004 me with the 2009 me.