Tuesday Poem: The new church, by John O'Connor

The new church

we drove all the way to Lincoln
to admire the new church

& I recall wondering (&
enquiring) why they made everything

so unlovely. this latter
ignored by embarrassed adults as

my plea to be allowed to be a
little girl. they were treated more warmly

you understand. across
the plains a line of snowy foothills

where the wind comes from, &
sometimes we would visit

Aunt Mag in her cottage
on Brougham St, the front room so

musty & small,
& Mag rocking before a banked fire

draped in shawls
her voice & nose just like a witch’s


John O'Connor is a Christchurch poet. He's published eight books of poetry so far.

This poem is from his most-recent book Cornelius & Co: Collected Working-class Verse 1996–2009. I had a similar reaction to Tim’s in that I had some preconceptions about what the subtitle could mean. It made mbe a little nervous at first, and I was geared up for some worthy, possibly rhyming (not that I'm actually against rhyme, just nervous of it), poetry. Well, I haven't finished reading it yet, but as soon as I got past the introduction about the working-class Catholic Addington of John O'Connor's childhood (which was really interesting), and got into the poetry proper, my fears subsided.

What I found was finely crafted poetry. In fact this poem, 'The new church', which is the second in the collection, made me feel 'Oh, this one!', like I was meeting an old friend. And indeed I was. I knew I'd read it before, and had a strong feeling I'd published it in JAAM. It took me a wee while to track down which issue it was, because it didn't seem that long ago, and I started worrying that I might have read it as a submission and rejected it (oh, how could I have been so stupid! - though I'm sure I've rejected poems I'd totally change my mind about in hindsight). But, after a bit more hunting, I found it! I'd published it in JAAM 9, all the way back in 1998.

My favourite part of this poem is the surprising and authentic sentence: 'this latter / ignored by embarrassed adults as / my plea to be allowed to be a /little girl.' Adults have drawn all those lines that divide things from other things, but children haven't drawn them yet. Why not become a girl?

You can buy Cornelius & Co: Collected Working-class Verse 1996–2009 from Madras Books, its New Zealand distributor, for $25.

And, as ever, you'll find more Tuesday poems via the blog: http://tuesdaypoem.blogspot.com/

Poetry Society - five poems by five poets and an AGM

I was sorry to not make it to see/hear Jennifer Compton read today at the Ballroom in Newtown. She's always an excellent reader. I'm sure it was popular, and I imagine that, like every month I think, there was standing room only.

I'm afraid I'm probably not going to make it to the Poetry Society meeting this month either, but you can! It's tomorrow night (Monday 21) at 7.30, upstairs at the Thistle Inn, 3 Mulgrave Street.

It will begin with the AGM, and then will feature five poets, reading five poems each: Jack Duggan, Anne Harre, Tim Jones, Sugu Pillay, and Mercedes Webb-Pullman. Free entry.

Tuesday Poem: Violet

Violet

The walls were a
deep
purple
the colour your eyes
never were we
used to talk
about eyes a lot you
really liked mine for some
reason cos my pupils were really
huge you said or maybe it was just
an excuse to shine torches in
my face but we wondered
whether violet eyes
really existed
or whether they were just a
figment
of some collective literary
imagination or a symbol
of female physical perfection
but one day on the
cable car
I saw a girl
whose eyes were
violet I think they
were a deep dark impossible
blue and I stared and stared
at her and thought fervently
of you


My, how quickly Tuesday comes around again. I failed to organise anything else, so 'Violet' is one of mine. It's from Abstract Internal Furniture.

I have a whole list of blog posts I'm meaning to write, or finish, but they will have to wait.

Oops, forgot to say that of course there are lots more Tuesday Poems to read over at: http://tuesdaypoem.blogspot.com

Tuesday poem: 'Ghosts of Saint James' by Harvey Molloy

Ghosts of Saint James

Yuri

I toured in the Ballet Russe
till I fell from the flies

now I slam doors
play havoc

with the electrics
race the stairs up to the gods.

We toured Paris
before the Saint James

my sharp-cut black suit
I stole from dear Coco.

I bring my own weather
an icy draft

rippling the border curtain
on a midsummer night

before the tumblers turn
in the main door lock

& I switch back on the lights
once the manager’s left.

I ignored politics but favoured
Bakunin over Trotsky

so take my current role
as a constant source of interruption

with good humour
trust me

I’d never mess with the flying system.


The woman in red

You don't want to meet me
I'm always returning

from my final
trip-filled performance

the boos of the audience —
my death sentence —

the dressing room's empty
but my mascara run face

stares back
from a grease streaked mirror.

I'm the cries you hear
from the mezzanine changing room

the lady in the red dress
at the end of a flooded corridor.

I'm not meant to be here
& I wanted to be gone for good

but some nights
I wake to find myself rising

from up under the boards
warping them just enough

for the bitch above to loose her step.

By Harvey Molloy

Note: These ghost stories are adapted from David McGill’s Full Circle –the History of the St James Theatre (1998).

Harvey Molloy is a Wellington poet and teacher. His first collection of poetry, Moonshot, was published by Steele Roberts in 2008. He blogs at http://harveymolloy.blogspot.com/.

I first heard Harvey read this poem at a Poetry Society meeting a couple of years ago, and was very taken with it. Soon after it was published in broadsheet 4. I think it's my favourite of Harvey's poems (though now that I've said that, 'Closer' and 'A walk on the moor' are vying with it for position).

Harvey and I are doing a bit of a poem swap this week - my 'Orpheus and Theodora Descend' is his Tuesday poem. And there are lots more Tuesday poems at the official blog: http://www.tuesdaypoem.blogspot.com/.

JAAM 27 reviewed

I've just published a post over on the JAAM site about two reviews of JAAM 27, both beautifully positive. You can read my post here: http://jaam.wordpress.com/2010/06/07/jaam-27-reviewed/, or you can go straight to the reviews, because both are online.

The first was by Zarah Butcher-McGunnigle, in A Fine Line, the Poetry Society magazine: http://www.poetrysociety.org.nz/aboutjaam27.

The second, which just came out last week, is by Julia Cooper and is on/in The Lumière Reader: http://lumiere.net.nz/index.php/jaam-27-wanderings/.

Tuesday poem: Saint

Saint

I can see
right through her skin
and into her heart.
It glows blue
like a sapphire
like a large block of ice.
She is draped in blue
and stands in a saint pose.
She holds out her arms
to welcome me.

And as I run
a flurry of white pages with
small black type
fall from the ceiling
blocking my path.
There is no way around
and it’s too far to jump.
Though I know it’s forbidden
I take careful steps across
on my socked feet
and leave only a few creases
as evidence of my escape.

I'm a bit late with my Tuesday poem this week, because I am ill (sniff sniff) and my brain wasn't working.

This poem was in Abstract Internal Furniture. I've always quite liked it because it's opaque, but people seem to see all kinds of things in it. There's a lot more in it than just this, but two things that were kind of prompts for me were my flatmate at the time and the fact that I was in the final stages of my masters thesis.

Read more Tuesday poems here: http://tuesdaypoem.blogspot.com/

Ithaca reviewed in Lumiere Review

Haven't had much time for blogging lately, but wanted to tell you about another great review of Ithaca Island Bay Leaves: A Mythistorima by Vana Manasiadis, and published by moi.

Julia Cooper has reviewed it in The Lumiere Reader. You can read the whole thing here: http://lumiere.net.nz/index.php/ithaca-island-bay-leaves/, but here are some highlights:

Ithaca Island Bay Leaves: a mythistorima ... is a beautiful atlas of real and fabled locales—mapped, charted, and photographed by a distinct poetic voice.

With poems like “Hectic Hector” and “King of Mycenae,” she fills the quotidian spaces of family and community with mythic abundance. In this abundance, a cross-cultural poetic voice emerges confidently and provocatively, inaugurating a text very much aware of its humour and the boldness of its manipulations.

Indeed, there is a sense of lightness throughout Manasiadis’s work, invoked no doubt by the gusty winds and cyclones of the poems, but also in the poet’s seamless and manifold transitions between cultures and lexicons.

This collection is a masterful debut, speaking with grace and candour to ancestry, migration, community, and love—well worth getting for that long, perpetual trip ahead of you.

Tuesday Poem: Biograph, by Scott Kendrick

Biograph

By Scott Kendrick

Chapter 1 – Early Days

First Name Second Name Last Name was born.
In that era, it was common practice.
A sickly, stunted child, Last Name quickly.
Even at school, the young First Name often.
Friends from that time say he was never the sort.
A teacher recalled a typical example.
In the holidays, a job in his uncle’s shop.

Chapter 2 – The Watershed

It was at university, however.
Here, Last Name discovered for the first time.
Inspired by his new-found freedoms, he completed.
But even then, the political climate.
Recalled Last Name, “It was a time.”
From that point on, Last Name’s mind was.
But for the ambitious young man, there remained the problem.
So Last Name returned.
It was a decision that was.
Would the future bring?
Or would it?

Chapter 3 – The Arrow Flies

The tensions were evident from the moment Last Name.
Despite these setbacks, however, he never once thought.
It was simply not his way to.
Disappointed, but more determined than ever, Last Name approached.
And so, at A Specified Age, First Name Second Name Last Name became.
Said Last Name at the time, “It’s simply not.”
But if he could have known then, would he still?
This is a question.

Chapter 4 – What Price Success?

The critical and commercial reaction was.
Although Last Name feigned indifference, it came as no surprise.
Family and friends found him.
It was during this time that the drinking.
In an interview, Last Name said “I”.
In A Specified Year, buoyed by his success, Last Name made the fateful.
It was to be the last time.

Chapter 5 – The Backlash

The public response was.
Hitting out angrily at his critics, Last Name accused.
Furiously, he began.
But the new work wouldn’t.
Again, Last Name turned to the bottle, but this time.
By now Last Name’s physical appearance shocked even.
Worried for his health, his friends tried.
“He just didn’t care,” said Footnote Friend, “no matter how.”
There seemed to be no way.

Chapter 6 – Final Days

On A Specified Date, Last Name visited.
The diagnosis was.
Last Name, however, was determined to.
Throwing himself into his work.
And there was to be another.
After A Specified Number of Years, Last Name and Footnote Friend at last.
Despite his rapidly declining health, Last Name.
A Specified Amount Of Time before he died, Last Name.
It was to become known as his finest.
On A Specified Date, First Name Second Name Last Name finally succumbed.
But even in death, Last Name.
As he said, just hours before.
“I was.”

Scott Kendrick is a poet who is, in my opinion, vastly under-rated. Some of this is his fault, some of it is mine, and some of it is just the way it is.

He' s a poet who isn't afraid to rhyme, and who knows how to do it in just such a way that it gets past my oh-my-god-it-rhymes-and-therefore-is-either-terrible-or-written-100-years-ago meter. Usually it does this through being brutally funny.

He's great on the page, and especially awesome in performance. He wins poetry slams. I like his work so much that I published his second book Cold Comfort, Cold Concrete: Poems and Satires in 2007. (His first book, Rhyme Before Reason, was published by HeadworX in 2001.)

The above poem is from Cold Comfort, Cold Concrete, along with poems about United States’ foreign policy, materialistic culture, love, student loans and cricket. Flip the book over and you have satires, originally published in the underground satirical newspaper The Babylon Express.

Around about the time I published Cold Comfort, Cold Concrete, he moved to Otaki and started having children, which has curtailed his writing somewhat, but he'll be back.

Tuesday Poem: Two sisters whisper after lights out

Two sisters whisper after lights out


drops of icy water
into the pool of dark
slick knife
a rush

The tap tap tapping of the keys
are little marching feet
are drops of icy water
pert and ordered

the other jumps straight in
submerged, surrounded
she drinks it all in
feels it against her skin
she doesn’t need saving

“I loved once
but not well
he never knew, and
I couldn’t understand
I jumped, I fell, I couldn’t swim”


“Do I have a voice?
The dead often do
talking louder from the other side
than ever before
I could even shout
if I wanted
but you quickly learn to forgive”

A dark, woody sound
like music in the room
next to the room
next to the room
next to where
you
are


This poem was published in the latest issue of Takahe magazine (no. 69), which is just out. And, despite my best efforts, I can't get this to display correctly even though I tried using correct html and all and my old friends - every second stanza should be indented, with other extra indenting. Have a look in Takahe 69, and it'll all make sense.

Anyway, I'm quite fond of this poem, because after I wrote it I completely forgot about it. And then I had the odd and, for me, uncommon experience of rediscovering this poem I had no recollection of writing, and no idea what it was about. I read it totally from the outside, which is so unusual for my own work. It seemed quite mysterious and haunty, and made some weird kind of sense to me, even though I couldn't remember what sparked it.

After reading it over a few times, some cogs in my brain started recalling things, and I eventually remembered that it was inspired by a movie I'd seen. I won't say which one, because then it might seem too bounded by literalness, but if you guess I might give you a chocolate fish.

Check out the other Tuesday poets here: http://tuesdaypoem.blogspot.com/.

Poetry events in Welly

It's poetry week this week in Wellington, perhaps...

Poetry Cafe
Tomorrow (Sunday 16 May), 4 to 6 om
Ballroom Cafe, junction of Adelaide Rd and Riddiford St, Newtown. The guest poets are going to be Gerald Melling and Geoff Cochrane, with music from Terry Shore.

Poetry Society
Monday (17 May), 7.30 pm
At the Thistle Inn, 3 Mulgrave Street.
This month's guest poet is Pat White, who is currently the Randell Cottage fellow. Entry: $5 (NZPS members $3).

Tuesday poem: 'Portrait: Pahiatua, 1942' by Kerry Popplewell

Portrait: Pahiatua, 1942

They pose for their portrait in summer.
(No bombers cross those blue skies.

When a siren goes, workers at the sawmill
break off, dusty, for lunch.)

The Man
He leaves as leaves begin falling
This is the photo he carries

Creased by a wallet’s fold
Each day he studies these faces

Each day they slide from sight
as his ship moves north

under strange stars. He stares
at the sepia print – his wife’s hair

so perfectly set in coils,
the tiny child on her lap,

his own face that he hardly knows –
faces silent as an empty wharf.

The Woman
She is learning an art long practiced
by women in time of war.

Like Penelope, she is waiting
for her stranger to return.

Straining to recall his voice,
she cannot unscramble the static

months, then years interpose.
She forgets the rough surface of serge.

Hope slumps into apprehension
She pulls her hair back in a scarf.

The Child
I was five when my father came home.
When he tried to hug me, I hid.


This poem is from Kerry Popplewell's debut collection Leaving the Tableland, which was just published by Steele Roberts. Unfortunately I wasn't able to get the formatting quite right (the limits of formatting on this blog) but you can have a look at the book itself to see how it is.

I went to the launch of this book a couple of weeks ago at the Mt Victoria Tramping club - a very cool, old hall, with charming windows - which was very appropriate because Kerry is a keen tramper, and many of the poems are set out in the landscape, often during a tramp.

I choose this one, because it's my favourite in the collection, and because it spoke to me. War stories are familiar to us all - and sometimes that familiarity turns them into cliche. But what I like about this poem is its specificity. When I read it I get a feeling of 'Yeah, it would have been like that' - these people becoming strangers.

Leaving the Tableland will most likely be available from Unity Books in Wellington, and probably some other bookshops around the place, and from the publishers.

You can read the official Tuesday Poem and find links to the other Tuesday poems here: http://tuesdaypoem.blogspot.com/.

Tuesday poem: Emily Dickinson at home

If you look through the hedge
you can sometimes catch a glimpse
A woman in white at the window
It would be a cliché were it not true

The pane of glass cool against her palms
as she pauses, mid-sentence —
to watch what the world is doing
then a turn — a return

to her desk in her room
her almost whole world
Her room, an embrace
an encasement

her blanket, her box
her shelter at the top of the stairs
rafters and panels
a corset, a comfort

the boundaries of her circumference
But from here she can navigate
further than she has travelled
further than she can see

My Tuesday poem last week was by Emily Dickinson, and so this week's is my own poem about Emily Dickinson. This poem and 'Passion', my Emily Bronte poem, bookended the main, middle section of My Iron Spine - Emily B at the front and Emily D at the end. I really enjoy reading this poem out loud, because I like the rhythms. Maybe I should record a sound file...

I'm also the editor of the official Tuesday Poem blog this week, so go there to check out the official Tuesday Poem I've selected for your poetry-reading pleasure: 'come here at once' by Emma Barnes. And there you'll also find links to many other fabulous Tuesday poems.

Tuesday Poem

This week I'm the editor of the official Tuesday Poem on the Tuesday Poem blog. Look out for it, I'll set it to publish sometime this evening.

I'll still also be publishing a Tuesday poem (an entirely different one) here on Winged Ink.

Vana Manasiadis interviewed by Tim Jones

About once a month Tim Jones interviews writers on his blog, Books in the Trees. This month it was the turn of Vana Manasiadis, author of Ithaca Island Bay Leaves: A Mythistorima, published by me. You can read the interview here: http://timjonesbooks.blogspot.com/2010/04/interview-with-vana-manasiadis.html.

I love this interview, partly just because it sounds like Vana talking, and she's back in Crete now and I miss her; but mostly because it's so alive and honest. I recommend it.

Also, if you missed her interviewed on National Radio by Lynn Freeman, you can listen to that here: http://www.radionz.co.nz/audio/national/art/2010/01/31/poetry_-_vana_manasiadis.

Tuesday poem: Because I could not stop for Death

by Emily Dickinson

Because I could not stop for Death -
He kindly stopped for me -
The carriage held but just Ourselves
And Immortality.

We slowly drove - He knew no haste
And I had put away
My labor, and my leisure too,
For his Civility -

We passed the School, where Children strove
At Recess - in the Ring -
We passed the Fields of Gazing Grain -
We passed the Setting Sun -

Or rather - He passed Us -
The Dews grew quivering and Chill -
For only Gossamer my Gown -
My Tippet - only Tulle -

We paused before a House that seemed
A Swelling of the ground -
The Roof was scarcely visible -
The Cornice – in the Ground -

Since then - 'tis Centuries - and yet
Feels shorter than the Day
I first surmised the Horses' Heads
Were toward Eternity -

I wish I were more familiar with the poems of Emily Dickinson, because what I’ve read I’ve really liked, but alas my large copy of The Poems of Emily Dickinson, with her original punctuation, quirky capitalisation and generously used dashes intact, remains mostly unread. I always find big volumes so unwelcoming. I much prefer small volumes of carefully selected poems, which fit nicely together, but given Emily Dickinson didn’t publish any books in her lifetime, I won’t be getting that from her.

I came across the above poem in my literary criticism textbook, of all places. I forget what literary-theory concept it was illustrating, but I loved its attitude and its rhythm. I’ve never been very good at remembering poems (least of all my own) by heart, but I hope to never forget the first two lines of this poem.

Next time I use an out-of-copyright poem for my Tuesday poem, I promise to not use another about death.

The Tuesday Poem movement is increasing. You can find the ‘official’ Tuesday Poem, and other Tuesday Poems on the blog: http://tuesdaypoem.blogspot.com/.

NaPoWriMo – almost there!

I'll actually be kinda sad when this month is over, because while there will be nothing stopping me from continuing to write a poem (almost) every day, I really can't see it happening. It's almost over, and I'm quite pleased and rather surprised that I've actually managed to write almost every day - I think I've missed four days (including yesterday), but I've more than made up for them on other days. I didn't expect to be this diligent.

When I wrote my last update, I was finding it a bit wearying - I was feeling like I was just writing a bunch of unnecessary words, with no real point and no real purpose. I had an inkling that I might get something out of this experiment though, I just didn't know what it might be yet.

I feel like I won't really know until it's all over and I've had a chance to read over what I've written, and have a bit of a think about the whole experience, but late last week something started dawning on me.

Last week was a fairly full-on week for me - a lot of stuff was going on, mostly with people I care about. I had a couple of shocks, and things that really sent me into some soul searching and some feeling and some worry. I have a pretty busy life, what with my full-time day job, my people, and other (often literature-related) commitments, so I don't have an enormous amount of time for writing (this seems to be a common problem), so I've mostly been writing my NaPoWriMo poems in my lunchtimes, which I also have to use for eating lunch and running errands and processing what's going on in my head.

On Friday, while writing a poem, I realised that my poems from last week were about things that really mattered to me, and people who really mattered to me. I was writing directly from my heart, kind of as a way of processing and exploring the things that have been going on - killing two birds with one stone.

I've been coming to terms with the fact that I'm a heart reader - of course I require art and skill and clever images and surprising metaphors and so forth, but what I really want from my art is to be touched, and so it makes sense that I should be mining my heart for my own work. It sounds so simple, to be writing from the heart, but I've been struggling with it, and I'll still struggle with it, for lots of reasons.

Whether the poems are any good remains to be seen, but yesterday I did give one to the person who inspired it, and she said that it articulated things she'd felt, but hadn't had the words to say. I'm feeling pretty pleased about that.

Tuesday Poem badge

I've just added the official Tuesday Poem badge, linking to the official Tuesday Poem blog, to my sidebar.

Thanks to Helen Heath for making it, using a picture from Claire Beynon. Should you wish to add it to your own blog, you'll find it here: http://showyourworkings.cybercorp.co.nz/badges.

Tuesday poem: Theodora's Adventures through the Looking Glass

Theodora’s Adventures through the Looking Glass

i threw myself
head first
into the mirror
i did not look
before i leapt
i watched myself
in awe

i dropped feathers
and daisies
behind me as i
walked
so i could be followed
so i could find my
way back when
the time came
but, miscalculating the
wind velocity,
the flowers and feathers
blew away, away

and so now i am stuck here
where ever this is
with you
who-ever you are


For my Tuesday poem this week I’m back to me. This poem is from my first book, Abstract Internal Furniture (2001). It’s one of a bunch I wrote about a character called Theodora, who was a kind of shapeshifting everywoman. Those of you who know me well, and who have been at parties with me, may recognise that I too drop feathers behind me when I’m wearing a feather boa, which I find, sadly, I do less frequently these days. In any case, it was an inspiration.

For other Tuesday poems, visit the Tuesday Poem blog, where you'll find the 'official' Tuesday poem, plus links to many others: http://tuesdaypoem.blogspot.com/.

Jennifer Compton returns to the Poetry Society

This is rather late notice if you don't already know about it, but poet Jennifer Compton is reading at the Poetry Society tomorrow night. The details:

Our guest poet this month is New Zealand-born and Australia-based Jennifer Compton, currently Writer-in-Residence at Massey University. Jennifer last read for us in 2008, as Randell Cottage Resident.

The meeting will open as always with an open mic and end with a Q&A session with Jennifer. Entry: $5 (members $3)

Monday, 19 April 2010
7:30
Thistle Inn
3 Mulgrave Street
Wellington, New Zealand

Tuesday poem: 'When I have fears that I may cease to be'

By John Keats

When I have fears that I may cease to be
Before my pen has glean'd my teeming brain,
Before high piled books, in charact'ry,
Hold like rich garners the full-ripen'd grain;
When I behold, upon the night's starr'd face,
Huge cloudy symbols of a high romance,
And think that I may never live to trace
Their shadows, with the magic hand of chance;
And when I feel, fair creature of an hour!
That I shall never look upon thee more,
Never have relish in the faery power
Of unreflecting love;—then on the shore
Of the wide world I stand alone, and think,
Till Love and Fame to nothingness do sink.

Rather than one of my own, I thought I'd share a poem that is well and truly out of copyright.

Over Easter I finally managed to go and see Bright Star, Jane Campion's latest movie, which is about the relationship between Keats and Fanny Brawn. I'd been meaning to see it for ages. I find Jane Campion's movies interesting (I can't say I always like them, but she definitely has a viewpoint), and I've known some people to be really quite batty about Keats, so was curious. I guess I'd hoped that it would help me 'get' Romantic poetry. I've never really got it - much preferring modern poetry instead - but for a long time I've been meaning to give it more of a go.

During the movie, and especially during the credits, there was quite a bit of Keats's poetry read out, but I have to say, it didn't really help me. I still find Romantic poetry fairly impenetrable. Sean described it as hearing someone speak in te reo - a language you understand bits of, but don't really know that well - we understood quite a lot of the words, but certainly not all of it. I felt like there were times when a spotlight was shone on a phrase, that would sparkle and make sense, but in between was all these words that just didn't add up to much.

But anyway, this poem makes perfect sense, is short, and I like it.

For more Tuesday poems, visit the Tuesday Poem blog: http://tuesdaypoem.blogspot.com/