Christina Rossetti poem: In An Artist's Studio

In An Artist's Studio

One face looks out from all his canvasses,
One selfsame figure sits or walks or leans;
We found her hidden just behind those screens,
That mirror gave back all her loveliness.
A queenin opal or in ruby dress,
A nameless girl in freshest summer greens,
A saint, an angel; -- every canvass means
The same one meaning, neither more nor less.
He feeds upon her face by day and night,
And she with true kind eyes looks back on him
Fair as the moon and joyfull as the light;
Not wan with waiting, not with sorrow dim;
Not as she is, but was when hope shone bright;
Not as she is, but as she fills his dream.






Christina Rossetti

Seamus Heaney poem: Mid-term Break

Mid-term Break

I sat all morning in the college sick bay
Counting bells knelling classes to a close,
At two o'clock our neighbors drove me home.

In the porch I met my father crying -
He had always taken funerals in his stride -
And Big Jim Evans saying it was a hard blow.

The baby cooed and laughed and rocked the pram
When I came in, and I was embarrassed
By old men standing up to shake my hand

And tell me they were "sorry for my trouble,"
Whispers informed strangers I was the eldest,
Away at school, as my mother held my hand

In hers and coughed out angry tearless sighs.
At ten o'clock the ambulance arrived
With the corpse, stanched and bandaged by the nurses.

Next morning I went up into the room. Snowdrops
And candles soothed the bedside; I saw him
For the first time in six weeks. Paler now,

Wearing a poppy bruise on the left temple,
He lay in the four foot box as in a cot.
No gaudy scars, the bumper knocked him clear.

A four foot box, a foot for every year.






Seamus Heaney

Kate Camp poem: Offer

Offer

Lime milkshakes, double bacon
cannot last.

The special is always
finite.

So when I found you like a free
Mobil dollar in the letterbox

I did not slip you
into the leather grave

of the forgetting
section of my wallet

or pin you in the kitchen
to be splattered

but redeemed you instantly
knowing such things

are available
for a limited time.




Kate Camp

Glenn Colquhoun poem: To the girl who stood beside me at the checkout counter of Whitcoulls bookstore in Hamilton on Tuesday

To the girl who stood beside me at the checkout counter of Whitcoulls bookstore in Hamilton on Tuesday

For ten seconds I fell
in love with you.

The first second we met.

You were buying recipes.

The second second we turned,
Taking pieces of each other out of our eyes.

The third second we held each other gently.
Your skin was a small kitten playing with a curtain.

The fourth second we kissed.

Front gates clicked against our fence.

In the fifth second we married.
Your dress was made of Nikau palm.

The sixth second we built a house beside a lake

It was never tidy and the grass was up to our knees.

The seventh second we argued:

About toothpaste and poetry
and who would put out the rubbish.

The eighth second we grew fat and happy
and laid on the ground after eating.

Your stomach wriggled with a round child.

In the ninth second we were old in the same garden
of the same house by the same lake in the same love.

The tenth second we said goodbye.

Your hand slipped away from mine but
seemed to me like something I could feel.

We passed again beside each other without turning

As though we had somehow only met at the checkout
counter of Whitcoulls bookstore in Hamilton
on a faintly blue September Tuesday.



Glenn Colquhoun

Timing (published poem)

Timing

my shoes off & feet up on the dash
driving along in the dark
enjoying the ribbon of open road
feeling like a spaceship
moving between planets
you & me being careful with our oxygen

wanting you to reach over & take my hand
holding my breath every time
you change gears

This poem was published as part of a ragtag collection that was called '50c Mixture' for an online journal, Intersection.
After a few issues being published by the esteemed Eds. McGeady & Schott, the site now looks like its under construction, so I thought I'd take the liberty of putting it up here.
The poem has been 'under construction' too, with extra stanzas pruned and grafted elsewhere, plus the rearranging that has gone on with what's left within.

Hass Blew My Mind

I realise the headline looks like a typo (speshly after the overexcited, rather tipsy post of early this evening), however I can assure you its not. The US-based Poetry Foundation website has a feature on Robert Hass, with five poets each introducing their favourite of his poems.

The name Robert Hass might be familiar, as he got a bit of press when visiting here for the Readers & Writers Week during the Intl Arts Festival earlier this year. He has some amazing books of poetry out and was the US Poet Laureate in the mid 1990s, I believe.

This link is a great intro to his writing - and I can tell you from attending some of his readings that he is just the loveliest guy too, so adorable and a soothing SoCal accent. My favourite poem of his is probably actually is a long, strange prose-y piece from Sun Under Wood - you'll have to get the book out, as it needs re-reading and absorbing, its called 'My Mother's Nipples'.

To finish with, I'm gonna include this little snippet i found while googling to try see if there were any stanzas of 'My Mother's Nipples' online [note to self: be careful with googling the words: 'my' 'mothers' 'nipples']. Its come from some kind of interview where members of the public have been allowed to interrogate Hass on whatever they wanted.

I love it because it makes me think of those Q&As you get (I've seen them happen in both film and poetry related events) when some wanker in the crowd just wants to make themselves seem cool and the distinguished guest has almost nothing to do with it.
Also, his answers are even funnier if you know a bit about the kind of poems he writes, or just poetry in general. So yeah, I'm geeking out a little. This whole post is about an Poet Laureate fer goodness sake, what did you expect!?

Susan M. Williams, Nashville, TN:
First, thanks for your poetry. I'm probably taking advantage of the offer to ask "a question" by my request, but having fallen in love with the way you use words, especially your poem, "Meditation at Lagunitas," I'm curious to learn your responses to the Bernard Pivot quiz, made famous by James Lipton of the "Inside The Actor's Studio" show on the Bravo TV channel. So here goes.

Robert Haas, what is your favorite word?
your least favorite word?
What turns you on?
What turns you off?
What sound or noise do you love?
What sound or noise do you hate?
What profession, other than yours, would you like to attempt?
What profession, other than yours, would you not like to participate in?
Finally, if heaven exists, what do you expect to hear God say when you arrive?



Robert Hass:

What is the necessary word?
What are the least sufficient words?
What turns you in?
What turns you out?
What species of New England bog berry do you love, regret in the pulp and the sky ashy?
What animal insolence, what bell of what round in the contest between anguish and delight provokes you?
What feather of the winter cardinal would you like to attempt?
What taxi cab meter, measuring the fare uptown toward coffee con leche or the hurt dance of recalcitrant marionettes would you not like to participate in?
Finally, if poetry exists, what do you expect the grass to say, Susan?

Long Letters (published poem)

Long Letters

She writes long letters -
fat envelopes with
pages forced to fold,
shoe-horned into my letterbox.

She begins (and then she makes
an aside (briefly commenting
on that and then (meandering again
she finishes somehow and when she does
the brackets stack up like plates in a dish rack )))

She has broken up with the possessive apostrophe,
sick of its demands and fickle nature.
Her colons are cancerous, while exclamation marks
have mated and multiplied, throwing themselves
at verbs, huddling in excited groups.

Recycled writing paper taken
from her bedroom floor:
old homework, sheet music,
ads plucked from windscreens - sometimes
I have to send back a page and say
honey you need to sign this and return it to the bank.

This poem has just been published in the NZ Poetry Society 2006 Anthology, tiny gaps - and yes, I realise that I helped make that book so it might look a little suss, but I didn't get to choose which poems went in and they were all done anonymously anyway so HAH!:P Its also included in my zine, The Knife Thrower's Apprentice, which you can pick up in Wellington from Dandylion and in Auckland from Cherry Bomb Comics. I work in arts marketing when I'm not churning out the stanzas, peeps, anyone picking up that vibe?!

Special Guest Post! Rebecca Trelease in her own words:

First of all, lets get a few things straight. Why 'Trelease'? There were two Rebecca's in the last year of uni so by default it went to the surname. However, the other Rebecca hasn't been around for more than a couple of years now so lets get it back to the original status, huh? I'm mostly annoyed by the fact I didn't even get a The prefix, as in The Bartlett. I'm so jealous of that I'm totally going back to Rebecca (although it did cause some confusion as I was introduced around Wellington. Eddie met Trelease but was told he would be hanging out with Rebecca so he had NO idea who I was when I climbed into the car).

Bel and I both did the BCS so I knew of her from first year. I always thought she was really cool right from the start but alas she hated me. Although, I remember before we actually started hanging out or knowing too many people in common (i.e. only Shane and Gareth) she saw me walking around mega stressed at Uni one day and she walked over and gave me a big hug. Which I thought was lovely. Over the years we met at random parties, but the one she mentioned at my house - why did you come if you hated me so much! Although she did encourage me to have the vodka and orange juice that ended the night for me, so maybe it was all planned... *

Right. Wellington.

I managed to make it all alone into the city, except I got off at the wrong stop and totally ruined my grand entrance outside the St James. Was there for about 5 minutes before I was sat down with a stapler, stickers and pamphlets. Spent a couple of hours in the most gorgous but very uncomfortable costume from 'My Fair Lady', my hat made me 10ft tall but it squished my brains and the elastic cut into my chin. But no biggy. *

Explored every floor in Te Papa. This visit was a lot more educational than the last one where Bel just pointed to it and said 'well thats Te Papa'. *

That night, drinks at the Hawthorne (which I thought was the Matterhorne) and roasted marshmallows with Ebony, Sam and Sarah-Kay. Now Bel had talked this place up, how they have 'Connect 4' and lots of board games. They had cards for poker. That's it. We considered a round of Snap but instead ate more marshmallows. Went to the Matterhorne where I met Melissa but they didn't have any confectionary so we left.

We explored the Art Gallery which featured Sam Taylor-Wood * and while it showed random pieces of her other works, the main 'attraction' were her photos of actors crying (www.city-gallery.org.nz/mainsite/). We had both heard about it and had our criticisms before seeing it and I'm happy to report that it did absolutely nothing to sway our opinions of getting hired emoters to emote on cue and then call it an 'intimate portrayal of grief'. At one extreme was Philip Seymour Hoffman who actually looked like it could be an honest portrait, to Robert Downey Junior who seems to have a very elaborate way of lying himself out on a bed to cry. Although he did keep it modest. And don't get me started on the David Beckham video of him 'sleeping'. He wasn't. It was probably very difficult getting comfortable wearing massive diamond earrings and bracelets and flexing the pecs but it was by no means 'sleeping'. It was totally worth paying to see just so we could spend the whole time criticising the 'drawcard' of the exhibition. (note: The first part of her exhibition is quite good, especially 'strings'. Just not the crying thing).

Bel's brother Eddie took us on a tour of Parliament. As a security guard he would be in charge of Lost and Found so we handed over a soggy and dejected pink teddy bear found on the path. He also didn't need to go through (or explain) the security checkpoints, so as he kept walking we were stopped and I said 'but we're with him' (meaning he needs to stop or we'll lose him and don't know what we're doing) but being told 'that doesn't mean anything to us' in a very snotty manner as if I was trying to smuggle in stuff. However, that was when Bel was caught with (heaven forbid) her mobile to which he was quite horrified. * The question session in Parliament was a bit boring, when they start yelling you can't work out what they're saying. And no-one asked the tough hard-hitting question: Who lost their pink teddy bear?

Bel tells me we're going to 'Pao Pao Pao'. I had no idea what it was about but it starts and everyone is talking Te Reo. With no translations. However I'm sitting next to Cam and he was laughing away and agreeing with what's being. What I learnt: Pakipake means clap! Canicani means dance! We most enjoyed the performance by Hinemoana Baker (www.hinemoana.co.nz), and ended up seeing a second performance by her at The Marae in Te Papa. I've since heard her version of 'Secret Love'; the only other person I've heard sing this is Mandy Moore and I must say both versions are excellent.

Bridgit's wedding was beautiful and I was very honoured to be Bel's 'date' for this event. We did have to run off to Turnbull House for the Anthology Launch * in the middle (where Bel presented another glorious poem of hers) and I did have a moment out the window of 'That building looks like that main Parliament building. Oh, it is Parliament.' The night continued with our appearances at Mighty Mighty, The Hawthorne, Salsa night at the Jimmy and concluded with a Rosebud cocktail at Motel.

Random thoughts:

• Never seen Malasian restaurants before but they are GREAT.


• Whats up with only having fancy lemonade in glass bottles all the time, can't a girl get a decent watered down, overly carbonated Sprite? If I'm paying $8 for vodka do you think I give a hoot about the lemonade?!!


• The 'walk' signals are incredibly loud.No one waits for a 'walk' signal. The entire group would start crossing so I would too instead of being a scared loner because the man was still red! It took me one day to start running across whenever like a Wellingtonian.


• Yes, California Sushi must always be spoken with a reverent tone.


• Bel's friends in Wellington are all very lovely and I enjoyed meeting them all.

* Bel here, chipping in because I'm the editor and that's my perogative. I would've been in attendance at the at-the-time dreaded Trelease's party because Shane or Gareth or BOTH was so in love with her back then. Another contributing factor to my depising - ya know how possessive I was of those boys. About the same level as I am of Trelease now.
No comment on the drink thing tho. Heh heh hee...

* This is referring to the photo shoot I intended to involuntarily recruit Trelease for, mentioned in this post, which it turned out she hadn't read and therefore was oblivious to our broadcast weekend itinerary!

* We were in a hurry, people!! I thought our time would be better spent eating gelati at Oriental Bay... good call, right?

* Yes, I went along. Yes, this was partially because Trelease offered to shout me. Yes I folded over the sticker pass they make you wear at the door so I didn't have to wander around the building with that pink-shirted sap Hayden Christiansen attached to my body. However, I wholehearted agree with Rebecca's comments about the REST of the photographs/films included, and I think I felt even more strongly about them. Her images The Leap and Self Portrait As A Tree has such impact on me, much more so than some fucken actor working up crocodile tears in front of another lens.

* The 'he' being the snooty security guard that this, not my brother - who is just a regular security guard, feeling cool wearing his radio ear piece n all. The guy had a freakin MARE at me, as it was just before entering the actual, um, chamber? is that what they call it? ...am trying to think back to Social Studies... Anyway - pulled out my phone to put it on silent and they acted like I busted out a glock or something, honestly. What, am I going take scandalous photos of them flipping the bird to each other?! whoo!!

* You can read more about the launch of the NZPS 2006 Anthology here. As well as being Assistant Editor for the collection, and doing the typesetting and cover design, I had a poem included, called 'Long Letters'. Some of you may know it from my zine 'The Knife Thrower's Apprentice' - I'll probably post it up here some time soon anyhow... it went down pretty well on Saturday :)



Ok, better hop to it and get this posted. Trelease - I mean, Rebecca sent this through before COB as request but I somehow got busy and then had to head home from the office and THEN had all kinds of distractions, like ohhh I don't know sussinganewflatmate and stuff like that!!

Could someone please acknowledge two things? 1) my awesome anchor tags doing the whole footnote thang and 2) how I let the whole Mandy Moore thing slide. 'Cause you know she ain't trying to be funny at all there. K, sweet.

e. e. cummings poem: up into the silence the green...

up into the silence the green...

up into the silence the green
silence with a white earth in it

you will(kiss me)go

out into the morning the young
morning with a warm world in it

(kiss me)you will go

on into the sunlight the fine
sunlight with a firm day in it

you will go(kiss me

down into your memory and
a memory and memory

i)kiss me,(will go)



e. e. cummings

Marilyn Hacker poem: Nearly A Valediction

Nearly A Valediction

You happened to me. I was happened to
like an abandoned building by a bull-
dozer, like the van that missed my skull
happened a two-inch gash across my chin.
You were as deep down as I've ever been.
You were inside me like my pulse. A new-
born flailing toward maternal heartbeat through
the shock of cold and glare: when you were gone,
swaddled in strange air I was that alone
again, inventing life left after you.

I don't want to remember you as that
four o'clock in the morning eight months long
after you happened to me like a wrong
number at midnight that blew up the phone
bill to an astronomical unknown
quantity in a foreign currency.
The U.S. dollar dived since you happened to me.
You've grown into your skin since then; you've grown
into the space you measure with someone
you can love back without a caveat.

While I love somebody I learn to live
with through the downpulled winter days' routine
wakings and sleepings, half-and-half caffeine-
assisted mornings, laundry, stock-pots, dust-
balls in the hallway, lists instead of longing, trust
that what comes next comes after what came first.
She'll never be a story I make up.
You were the one I didn't know where to stop.
If I had blamed you, now I could forgive
you, but what made my cold hand, back in prox-
imity to your hair, your mouth, your mind,
want where it no way ought to be, defined
by where it was, and was and was until
the whole globed swelling liquefied and spilled
through one cheek's nap, a syllable, a tear,
was never blame, whatever I wished it were.
You were the weather in my neighborhood.
You were the epic in the episode.
You were the year poised on the equinox.


Marilyn Hacker

kids these days

I am very very nearly finished on the anthology. By which I mean, having the whole thing up to final first draft status, ready for the first run of proof reading and feedback on the layout etc.

I have saved one nice thing until last, as a delicious sweet treat to keep me going. This is choosing the little line to go on each of the 'blank' intro pages for each section. E.g. "Poems from the Open Section" will have a italicised line from one of the Open section poems as a wee sampler of what's to come.

Am currently doing the Junior Section ones and am having trouble picking one. Am spoilt for choice and also, I want to set the right tone. I definitely have my favourites and that's probably because they stand out from the ones about cats or native plants or snow storms. (Oh trust me - the adult writers have just the same tendencies).

However, the overbearing committee is always on my mind, so self-censoring as I go and not even bothering with some I'd really like to use.

your delirious womb

When you come to me without telling me

Wake up so I can hate you.

I think I'm gonna go with " clinging to its slippery self " in the end. I quite like that. I'm trying to find ones that work as stand-alone lines and perhaps say someting about poetry in general. For the Junior Haiku section I've chosen " Looting from flowers " which is lovely on so many levels and comes from a really great lil poem comparing bees to helicopters.

The book is called tiny gaps and I can't mentioned it without saying what a hero the Bartlett has been over the last fortnight. Its going to be launched on the 18th November, more details closer to the date - when I am feeling less frazzled by it all.

Dean Young poem: He Said Turn Here

He Said Turn Here

and then Tony showed us the lake
where he had thrown some of his sadness last summer
and it had dissolved like powder
so he thought maybe the lake could take
some of the radiant, aluminum kind
he had been making lately.
And it did.
It was a perfect lake,
none of the paint had chipped off,
no bolts showing, the arms that Dante
and Virgil would have to hack through
not even breaking the surface.
Mumbling Italian to itself,
it had climbed down two wooden stairs
back to the beach now that the rains were done.
How strange to be water so close to the ocean
yet the only other water you get to talk to
comes from the sky. Maybe this is why
it seems so willing to take on
Tony's sadness which sometimes corrodes
his friends, which is really
many different sadnesses, smaller
and smaller, surrounded by more
and more space, each a world and
at its core an engine like a bee
inside a lily, like buzzing inside
the bee. It seems like nothing
could change its color although
we couldn't tell what color it was,
it kept changing. In the summer,
Tony says he comes down early each day
and there's no one around so the lake
barely says a thing when he dives in
and once when his kitchen was on fire in Maine
and he was asleep, the lake came and bit his hand,
trying to drag him to safety
and some nights in New Mexico,
he can hear it howling,
searching for him in the desert
so we're glad Tony has this lake
and we promise to come back in August
and swim with him across,
maybe even race.


Dean Young

Thanks to Dora Malech for introducing me to Dean's writing at this year's Iowa Workshop up at the IIML. She's going to be running the MA course in 2007 while Bill Manhire takes a break from teaching. We are literally going to be at the airport to welcome her back into the country.

Beamer (new poem)

Beamer

Brooke's dealer drives
a silver beamer

but his face
cracks open

into one of those
little kid smiles

you see him

in gumboots
kicking up puddles

using tin foil
to wrap his lunch

those deft fingers
the same silly laugh

I realise the poetry link on my main site is a big ole dead end but once of these days I'll get around to putting some work up. As I have no software, this means an exciting combo of trying to recall the Intro To HTML course I did like a year ago and manipulating images on the sly while at work. Would also love to get up some of the recordings I have, from the The Knife Thrower's Apprentice zine launch and from the National Radio When Push Comes To Love collection. But that would involve having the mad skillz, which i sadly lack.