Oh Welly, you shining star
Today you were my heartbeat
as I walked your streets
to Te Papa to listen to
a conversation about
a very modern woman
our Katherine Mansfield
100 years since she died
Oh Welly, what would she
think of you today...
Wouldn't she be surprisedThe things she might have saidabout the dreaded cruise shipsparked on the sea, disgorgingelderly tourists into Lambton Quayimagine the parody...Oh Welly, you sure turned it ontoday, and I listened in thrallto talk of our Colonial girlso ahead of her timeI found you waiting for mein your dress of wordsand I took your handfor a brief momentjust you and me babeyou and meuntil an elderly touristoffered to take my photoOh I know you'd love theirony.
On Saturday, I left home at 7.30 am to drive over the hill to Carterton. The reason for this, was the lure of a free Poetry Workshop and later on, performance by Chris Tse. What’s not to like?
The Poetry Workshop was at the rather flash new Carterton Events Centre (well, it looks very new). We were in the Hurunui o Rangi Room. Rather like a Corporate Boardroom with Chris and his whiteboard at the top table.
One and a half hours to unpick the meaning of two poems and have a go a writing something ourselves (with several song lyric prompts on the whiteboard).
But, first we had to introduce ourselves and tell the group what sparked joy for us, or in us. Of course cliches abound with such a question. One group member had both a mother and a granddaughter named Joy, which was rather special. One woman claimed that joy for her was elusive and she needed to work out how to find it. A dog licking a waking face was another rather lovely image. Grandchildren, the night sky… You get the drift.
We looked at Jenny Bornholdt’s now very famous poem ‘Make Sure’. It is a perfect example of how to undercut, and distill what is for sure, a Kiwi cliché – man lost in the bush – grieving wife talking to the news. The discussion around this poem was interesting because love was the enduring theme in responses to it. The clever final shift of pronoun from you to I in the last line, owning the whole poem. It’s easy to read this poem several times and find new ways to inhabit it. It had an extra resonance with the shadow of Cyclone Gabrielle stalking our thoughts.
We then read a poem by Sam Duckor-Jones ‘Allemande in G by J.S. Bach. I’d read this poem before and to be honest, I’d dismissed it as pretentious modern and who cares. But, when I had it explained to me by Chris and what Sam was doing with musical notes, I finally ‘got it’. No longer pretentious, but clever, ingenious and great fun. Poetry that has constraints is something I admire. The Villanelle, Sestina or even a Sonnet.
The final exercise was to write for about ten minutes (maybe a little longer, but not long) – just the first response without thinking too hard, to prompts from the whiteboard.
Here’s my effort… yet to be tamed.
I didn’t start the fire
Mum did, she sharpened
the axe first, in the shed
cobwebs overhead, the
smell of lawnmower petrol
and freshly cut kindling
what was she thinking
falling for the returned
soldier who proposed
in the graveyard
threatening to kill himself
as she scrunches paper
into tight balls to build
a cushion, allow air in
before setting the wood
before striking the match
before
does she hesitate
does she wait
to strike the match
to smell the sulphur
sometimes, peeling onions
she stuck a struck match
in her mouth, evidently
folklore has it this
will stop you crying
Chris generously gave out pencils at the end of the workshop and I grabbed two – see my photo. He really is an inspirational poet. His journey as a young Chinese Gay man and the story he told us at his performance later in the day…. He talked to his Mum about ‘coming out’ and she said to him ‘you’ll be lonely’…. His reply ‘I’m already lonely’. Wow. Right to the heart. He owns the stage, he owns his poems and he’s generous to boot. After reading several of his own poems, he chose to read some of his favourite poems from other poets he knows. Applause.
Skinship
Run the sound over your tongue
let it roll for a while in your mouth
then swallow it whole
Skinship, like kinship, meaning
connection but through the skin
as simple as holding hands
Konglish, meaning Korean
English, a new word, but
not a new feeling
Skin on skin, a hand in
yours, a touch, skinship
kinship, friendship
It’s not difficult to
guess why Korea
created this new word
Fathers holding adult
son’s hands, mothers
holding daughters
Touching, skin on
Skin, with kin
this word
Skinship
It crosses culture
it caresses
skin on skin
The ship of affection
Skinship
Sail on you beauty
Daebak!
In lockdown she learned to wish the moon goodnight
Muddling two languages to make a new word for water
I learned to say pada and she knew it was the sea
Bashing back the Spinifex dodging spikey grasses
Chasing seagulls in circles on freshly wet sand
In lockdown she learned to wish the moon goodnight
Nana is my Kiwi name, in Korea I’m Halmoni
We talked to stars together, marvelled at the moon
I learned to say pada and she knew it was the sea
We inspected dying jellyfish followed scuttling crabs
New words emerged, that neither of us understood
In lockdown she learned to wish the moon goodnight
We ate lunches purchased from the local bakery
I discovered strawberries are also called ttalgi
I learned to say pada and she knew it was the sea
Some days we walked and talked to teddies
In the trees, on windowsills, all unexpectedly
I lifted her to wave to them her new-found friends
In lockdown she learned to wish the moon goodnight
I learned to say pada and she knew it was the sea
Today is my Dad’s birthday. He died in 1999. It’s almost 80 years since the invasion of Crete coming up on 20 May. I’m not one to glorify war, but here’s a picture of my Dad taken during the war (his name was Curly in the war)… and I’ve just merged a whole lot of files from one computer to another and found a poem I wrote some time ago… a villanelle of sorts about that early morning, May 20 when the German elite took the Allied soldiers and local Cretans by surprise. So, in memory of my father.
May in Maleme
Gliders came as a horse to Troy on Crete
blind side, spilling their dawn cargo
falling from the sky like Icarus the German elite
Momentarily they were glorious, an impossible feat
how was anyone on that May morning to know
Gliders came as a horse to Troy on Crete
The Deutscher Fallschirmjager fell replete
with guns and ammunition where the olives grow
falling from the sky like Icarus the German elite
Screaming for their mutters they took a final leap
over Maleme, the 5th Field Artillery waiting below
Gliders came as a horse to Troy on Crete
Kiwi lads with only tins of bully beef to eat
roamed the hills and the olive groves
falling from the sky like Icarus the German elite
and you, my father, on that hillside steep
said hee high blow fly, and Oamaru for Timaru
but all of you and even Freyberg knew
that on Crete, retreat meant surrender.
This poem is not actually about lockdown, but written during lockdown after watching a video by Billy Collins… I am pretentiously channelling Walt Whitman.
We were away for the mid-term holidays. Just a short break, across the hill. Part of the plan was to hire a couple of electric bikes to try them out. The weather permitted, and we had a fun afternoon enjoying the newly found benefits of a bike set on eco, normal, or high, whereby, although you pedal, there’s a little engine kicking in to assist. I climbed my first hill on eco and was still puffing, so from then on, it was high uphill all the way, almost coasting. We smelled the cow pats, breathed in the pollen, and faced the headwinds with ease.
On our return to base, at a pretty modern cottage, in a reasonably high-end resort (special deal for mid-weekers), we collapsed, each with a glass of wine, to read and relax. I was inside, as the wind had come up and John sat outside to catch the late afternoon rays of light.
Later that evening, he told me what he overheard, while sitting sipping wine in the sun. Across from us, almost obscured by a beautifully manicured hedge, were other pretty wooden cottages. John heard a man knocking loudly on a neighbouring cottage door. The door was answered by another man who was regaled with loud apologies. It seemed the man knocking on the door wanted to apologise for having abused his neighbour in their adjoining courtyards just a moment ago. He was speaking loudly and apologetically and trying to explain that he’d just had the ‘worst day of his life’. John said, he could hear the pleading in the man’s voice and sensed him wanting the other chap to at least ask, what the matter was. But it seemed the man who had been abused, although grateful for the apology, didn’t wish to dally and enquire as to why. (Understandably probably).
John and I talked about this encounter and whether we should go and ask after this stranger, so distraught that he was abusing other people and then apologetic, saying he’d just had the worst day of his life. We speculated that perhaps his wife or partner had left him, that perhaps someone had died…. We even briefly permitted the idea of murder in the benign cottage across the manicured hedge.
But still, it wasn’t our business, really was it? And we both agreed, if we’d been closer to the encounter, it would have been okay to at least ask this distraught man if he was okay – but by the time we talked about it, it was too late really and we couldn’t be sure exactly which cottage he had come from.
And then, I looked at the date which was 12 October and that almost 50 years ago, in 1969, my eldest brother took his own life on this exact day – back then, indeed, it was the worst day of my life. I wrote a poem about this which is due out later this year in a new literary magazine Geometry. The idea that people put their heads down when others are in trouble, or when the trouble is too awful to acknowledge. Back in the 60’s suicide held a certain social stigma, and people preferred to pretend it hadn’t happened. We’re both hoping the distraught man who abused his neighbour in the resort over the hill, is okay.
a curious half hour 