poetry – Page 2

Cartography for the Soul

May 1, 2021 Leave a Comment

Tim Saunders

Map for the Heart: Ida Valley essays by Jillian Sullivan (Otago University Press, 2020), 280pp., $35

The last time I visited the Ida Valley in Central Otago I stopped on the road beside the Idaburn, the river that cuts diagonally across the plains between mountain ranges. The sun was slung low in the sky and the moon was already rising, as if caught in some cosmic game of chase across the heavens. It would soon be dark, and I still had an hour’s drive to where I wanted to be.

I watched a hawk slice the thick evening air as water flowed over river-smooth stones, its dark shape flicking over sheep scattered across brown grass. Magpies sat upright in trees, turning their backs to the sun to catch the last of the warmth. As I looked at these creatures that had made a home here, among the tussock and in the shadows of hills, I had the sudden desire to stay just where I was. There was something there in that limitless landscape that beckoned me to put down roots. [Read more…]

Dandelions Flung Together Learning to Grow

May 1, 2021 Leave a Comment

Erik Kennedy

National Anthem by Mohamed Hassan (Dead Bird Books, 2020), 68pp., $35; Childwood by Denis Welch (Steele Roberts, 2019), 64pp., $20; The Sets by Victor Billot (Otago University Press, 2021), 118pp., $27.50

The ‘national anthem’ of Mohamed Hassan’s second book of poems, National Anthem, is built on a clever contradiction: it is not actually meant to be a national anthem at all, as it is sceptical of the very idea of nation states. As the title poem puts it:

I pledge myself to

no flag

no border

no house of trees

no fairy tale past

no charismatic king

no industry of false profits

burying their dead in the sand [Read more…]

Sometimes Playful, Always Compelling

March 1, 2021 Leave a Comment

Harry Ricketts

Nouns, Verbs, Etc: Selected poems by Fiona Farrell (Otago University Press, 2020), 211pp, $35

Fiona Farrell is one of those enviable writers equally adept at fiction, non-fiction and poetry, not to mention plays. She is perhaps best known for The Skinny Louie Book and, more recently, for The Quake Year and The Villa at the Edge of the Empire: One hundred ways to read a city, but her three intermittent poetry collections have also been eagerly awaited and read.

Selections from these three volumes—Cutting Out (1987), The Inhabited Initial (1999) and The Pop-Up Book of Invasions (2007)—plus poems from the essay collection The Broken Book (2011) are represented here in chronological order. Interspersed between these is a generous helping of uncollected poems, not arranged chronologically but, as Farrell says in her Preface, ‘loosely as they seemed to echo one another or share a common theme’. The result disrupts any attempt at an overly chronological or ‘developmental’ reading of the work. The poems are bracketed by the evocative Preface and by a series of fascinating Notes (some of which have already appeared with the separate volumes). It is an impressive ensemble: engaging, inventive, sometimes playful, always compelling. [Read more…]

He Whakarite Ataahua/A Beautiful Arrangement

March 1, 2021 Leave a Comment

Gina Cole

Ko Aotearoa Tātou | We Are New Zealand: An anthology edited by Michelle Elvy, Paula Morris and James Norcliffe with art editor David Eggleton (Otago University Press, 2020) 250pp, $39.95

In the aftermath of the Christchurch massacre of 15 March 2019 and Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern’s declaration that ‘We are all New Zealanders’, the editors of this anthology called for creative work that responded to life in contemporary New Zealand. The response wonderfully displayed in this collection was wide ranging and diverse. And after all, portraying range and diversity is the job of anthologies. In an article from a 2020 issue of the New Yorker, writer Clare Bucknell states:

Etymologically, ‘anthology’ refers to a collection of flowers, varied species of blooms selected and arranged so that they look like they belong together. Since the term’s origins in the seventeenth century, multiplicity has always been the form’s selling point: the provision of very different voices and concerns that nonetheless have some kind of collective force.¹ [Read more…]

Habits of Hearing and the Practice of Seeing

February 18, 2021 Leave a Comment

Rushi Vyas

A Habit of Writing by Helen Jacobs (Cuba Press, 2020), 60pp, $25; Social Media by Mary Macpherson (Cuba Press, 2019), 56pp, $25; Sinking Lessons by Philip Armstrong (Otago University Press, 2020), 54pp, $27.50

When you pick up Helen Jacobs’ A Habit of Writing, the first thing you’ll notice is the stunning, vivid cover, a detail from artwork by Julia van Helden. While I’m no art scholar or critic, the impressionistic sketch prompted me to stop and breathe in the colors—a fitting primer to Helen Jacobs’ meditative poems. Writing these poems as a 91-year-old environmental activist and former mayor of Eastbourne, Jacobs draws from life in a retirement village. While the title speaks to the ‘habit of writing’, the poems emerge from a habit of noticing, of paying close attention. These poems could only be written by someone with a deep practice of skilful observation, both of the physical world and the realm of thought. Many of Jacobs’ poems are short, capturing a small image from life as a retiree. Their simple diction but cleverly shaped syntax stilled me. I found myself drawn to re-read and, indeed, to slow down from my own wily mind. These poems carry within them a depth of metaphorical resonance and complex knowing. [Read more…]