This trip is a holiday of sorts as I haven’t seen my grandmother in five years, but it is also a chance to spend some time working on my PhD away from the usual obligations and distractions. While I am away I will work half-time and have decided to put aside my research thesis for the moment (that is a job for October) and instead will write on weekdays for at least three hours. Usually I write in the afternoons, three times a week for four or five intense hours. The next day I tend to do other things like read, worry, edit, blog, procrastinate, research, mark or review. I want to see if I can create a daily writing practice that is less draining and whether or not this will produce a different sort of work. Yesterday I sat down to a white piece of paper with no starting point (unusual) but wrote something intriguing.

I am taking quite a bit of reading with me and have spent the last few weeks photocopying articles and deciding on the most important books (important in the end closely aligns with lightest). Ideally I could take all of these on an e-book reader but most of what I am reading is only available in paper. Anyway, adios!

Goon pillow, burgundy-stained kitchen garden. No.
Scarcely. That rock pool kiss—seashell teeth and slug tongues.

She believed her life was calcifying.Yes, no.
I certainly don’t want to lose him, she’d repeat.

Owning it as the sea does stones. Only during
periods of bruxomaniacal silence.

Fear of pain made her faint in a plane recently.
She saw his face as drained as hers. Is she always

so pale? asked the steward holding the oxygen
tank. She is quite a pale person, but not this white,

said he, the authority on her complexion,
who knew it in sickness and health. She did not look

forward to dying. The ache expanded behind her
forehead, inflating, she thought, like a lifejacket,

swelling as the thunderclap headache came to mind.
Hers was longer, linked to air pressure, popping ears.

Saints wake from revelatory migraines convinced
of God. Past the oxygen mask, she saw his face

wan with fond worry and was flooded with relief.
There is less poetic hysteria now. Fewer

words such as “flooded”. She was always optimistic.
More completely than many deem healthy. They just

need to break up, a single friend tells another
single friend. They don’t understand how she still finds

his small seizures astonishing—the palsied way
he paws his head to let the music out—after

a third of her life. Lying back-to-back at night
they are the moon people with two faces, eight limbs;

they are Charlie Bucket’s grandparents who never
leave the bed; Leopold and Molly—she is still

saying yes. There is her heroic faith, her hope
to stay virtuous and keep living completely.

Amy Brown’s work is a pleasure to read and I was excited to feature a new poem as a Tuesday Poem. We did our Masters together (and Amy’s MA won the Biggs Prize for Poetry) and I have always found her poems to be measured, touching and challenging. Her first collection of poetry The Propaganda Poster Girl was published by VUP in 2008. It was shortlisted for the Montana New Zealand Book Awards in the best first book of poetry category.

Amy is halfway through a PhD in creative writing at the University of Melbourne. Her dissertation is a genre study of contemporary epic poetry, focussing on a comparison between Melbourne performance poet πο’s 24 Hours and St Lucian Nobel Prize-winner Derek Walcott’s Omeros—both 1990s “contemporary epic poems” influenced by James Joyce’s Ulysses. An article on 24 Hours, which Amy wrote for Cordite Poetry Review, can be read here. In December, Amy will be presenting a paper on Omeros at a postcolonial literature conference in Orléans.

The creative element of Amy’s thesis is an attempt at a contemporary epic poem of her own, which follows six fictionalised saints. The poem is loosely structured around the Catholic process of canonization, one step of which involves a “Questionnaire on Life and Virtue”. The poem above provides answers to this questionnaire.

For more poems check out the Tuesday Poem blog.

This poem does not belong to me.
It rides on the smile of the postman.
As his clipped cuffs brush the chain
his wheels purr up your street.

This poem does not belong to me.
It is lost in the postman’s satchel,
a letter that has no signature,
a butterfly sealed in its cocoon.

This poem does not belong to me.
If you need it, steam it open
with your breath, then unfold
yourself. It is addressed to you.

When I asked Pope for a bio he said: “Lindsay has spent most of his life living in a house of numbers but a recent internment at IIML displaced some old theorems and fostered some latent word play” but I wanted to know more so I decided to do some digging. According to Google, Pope’s recent work has been ”informed by the human history of New Zealand’s sub-Antarctic islands” and that his poem ‘Dunedin, 1956′ won the NZ Poetry Day challenge to include all three New Zealand Post Book Award poetry finalists in a poem. You can see this poem on Beattie’s Book Blog. See more of Lindsay’s work on Turbine, Swamp and Blackmail Press 27.

You can enjoy other Tuesday Poems on the Tuesday Poem Blog.

A damp morning, just a touch nippy
for January. You’re here
in this indoor meadow, this art-house barn,
randy for epiphany,
or at least hoping to be surprised.

So Raphael’s Transfiguration
is certainly dramatic –
in fact, quite literally uplifting.
So why does that boy agoggle
at Christ levitating leave you cold?

Thirty-five years ago with a head
full of Gormenghast, Seventh
Seal, Crow, the Velvet Underground, you’d have found
El Greco’s silver-lit e-
longations ‘really weird’, but not now.

Now what hits home is Saint Barbara
by Parmigianino,
a left profile. Her face shines with youth.
Braided, brown hair hangs on her
right shoulder. She’s holding – what? – a part

of the tower daddy’ll shut her up in.
Her upper lip curves over
slightly. She wears rather a chic pink
number, such an inward look.
She knows exactly what lies ahead.

And here, opposite Van der Velden’s
flesh-heavy Deposition,
Robert Campin’s Annunciation.
Mary’s a blonde, long, straight hair,
bit plump. A nice girl lost in a book

and apparently quite unaware
of the heavenly rays round
her head, beamed down from top left,
or Gabriel patiently
kneeling, wings half-furled, with some pretty big news.

Harry Ricketts is a New Zealand poet, reviewer and cricketer who teaches creative non-fiction and English at Victoria University. His New Zealand Book Council bio states Ricketts “studied English at Oxford University and lectured in Hong Kong and Leicester before arriving in New Zealand to a post at Victoria University in Wellington in 1981. He has edited collections of verse, critical essays, and other works of non-fiction and his acclaimed biography of Rudyard Kipling was released in 1999. His poetry is defined by dramatic and satiric devices and tones, often grounded in personal commentary.”

Ricketts’ most recent book New Zealand Sports Writing was released in June 2010 and features eighty pieces of writing selected by Ricketts that cover a wide range of sports. You can read a full review of the book on Beattie’s Book Blog. ‘El Prado’ previously appeared in The Warwick Review in 2008. For me this poem is quite timely because I am heading to the Prado in just a few weeks. The poem deftly mixes the imagery of art with a whimsical voice that allows the poem to talk to ideas of perception and youth without being heavy. The result: a funny but pointed piece.

You can enjoy other Tuesday Poems on the Tuesday Poem Blog.

An intense month with my PhD means that I have resorted to craft therapy. Some days I need to make tea and craft away questions such as whether a long narrative poem is actually a lyric poem that employs narrative or a narrative that uses lyric technique, or whether I can answer a thesis question with a creative work without writing didactic poetry?

During September I am going to England to spend time with my grandma, aunt and uncle in the West Midlands so I have been crafting with intent. The tui knee rug is a present for my grandma’s ninetieth birthday. She has arthritis and spends a lot of time in an armchair so I wanted to make her something special for the English winter. This is not my design. A friend gave me a similar rug as a gift last year and I liked it so much I wanted to use the idea. With some searching for “tui” and “patch” I am sure the seller can be found on Felt. I bought the rug new from TradeMe and then washed it in a pillow case with fabric softener. It isn’t a vintage rug which I usually work with but the colours are very striking. The tui has been cut from wool felt and stitched onto the white background with embroidery cotton and then the white is stitched onto the rug so you can see minimal stitching on the back. I then stitched around the tui’s ruff in white although that is hard to see in this image. The tui has been traced from a digital scan of an old water-colour I found online.

Sally and John are my aunt and uncle and this paper bag will contain sweetly wrapped presents of New Zealand literature. My uncle is a cricket coach so I have purchased ‘How to Catch a Cricket Match’ by Harry Ricketts who will feature as the next Tuesday Poem on my blog. For my Aunt I have decided on ‘Novel About My Wife’ by Emily Perkins as my aunt likes well crafted and interesting reads. Apparently Perkins wrote thirteen drafts before the novel was finished. The alphabet stamps are also a recent purchase from TradeMe and I am using them to make the name cards for my wedding lunch (a transparent excuse, I know). Since I bought them I have gone a bit stamp crazy and have discovered Wellington Rubber Stamp Co. on Dixon Street that can make most images into rubber stamps. The possibilities!

A small joy that has come into my life is this suitcase. As I have become more crafty my fabric, patterns and general pointy, ribboned and sticky paraphernalia have outgrown any drawer. So I’ve found two suitcases second hand (one from the tip shop) for the grand sum of $20. This is my favourite as the lining is a little droopy and there are old travel stickers on the top of the case that are just darn charming.

Being a friend, Jane said, ‘You’re
the whole package!’
No one had ever
called me a package
before. ‘Well,’ I said, ‘I’m a package,
of sorts.’ Or I hoped to be one,
one day – bundled together, on
my way.

Jane said, ‘Don’t be silly,’ and was beautiful
in the high-backed chair, wearing her enormous black skirt
and crinkly leather boots (like dead balloons, but beautiful
on her particular feet), a thick clot of hematite
beaded round her neck, and her blown-glass hair

in a plait.
It is possible to stare and stare at Jane
who is beautiful in such a way
that one never grows bored
but some do grow sad, in her company.
I stared, and felt myself go

sad – there would be no surprises –
as my resolve opened,
dispatched itself in pieces.
‘Stop,’ Jane said, ‘stop writing
your lists and go out and do
something. Ask out Nose Boy – ask him his name.
Go diving.’

‘It’s hopeless,’ I said, and echoed
‘It’s hopeless,’ because that is the nature
of hopelessness; echoing itself, bending in on itself
through an infinity of selves, like a room
full of mirrors: every surface
mounting another to breed millions more.

‘It’s not,’ Jane said, ‘It’s not.’ That is the nature
of hope, she said: it refracts
hopelessness, and fills you –
like a mailroom, piling high with mail –
with many more hopes, all waiting to be posted
into the present tense: it’s

a room fat with letters
many wrongly addressed but all destined
to travel –
she said this, my friend Jane,
her explanation gorgeously wrought
but ultimately unwrappable.
She narrowed her cut-glass eyes
as if she thought she could see
the names and addresses
of all the mail bundled in me.

Ashleigh Young is a writer and editor living in Wellington. I saw Young read at this year’s Best New Zealand Poems and at her acceptance of the 2009 Adam Foundation Award in Creative Writing. She is an enviable talent, writing poetry and essays (she won the 2009 Landfall Essay Competition) that are gentle and funny but address painful subjects. For example Young’s Masters thesis revolved around people coping with physical or social awkwardness. After doing a little research I’ve found that Young’s work has appeared in various editions of Sport since 2003 and her bio on BNZP states her work has “appeared in Booknotes, Turbine, Sport, and Landfall” so she has been working toward her recent success. If you want to read another one of her poem’s I suggest Visitations on BNZP 2004.

You can enjoy other Tuesday Poems on the Tuesday Poem Blog.

This is a long winded way to say / how bird song clear your voice / bounds singing / out the window like sixty winged acrobats / that spin flips and cartwheels.

A Poem to Text to your Friends #2

The new sky is blue /a pale blue with icy aquamarine edges / a sapphire, midnight, electric blue / a royal navy steel slate cyan blue. / I just had to tell you.

A Poem to Text to your Friends #5

Agnes likes clouds. / Their coloured cones cloud out common colder thoughts / she considers: do clouds have faces? / A dewy dream of cumulus carries her away.

Happy New Zealand Poetry Day, everyone. I wrote these poems as part of a set of six for the 2011 edition of the Kiwi Diary – a beautiful diary, year book and planner that is curated with New Zealand art, writing , jokes, recipes and general inspiration. I have to confess the idea to write text poems came from one of the students I tutor at the last creative writing contact course where he read his poem (called “160 characters”) to the class from his phone. I have tried to make each of these poems 160 characters. Text them to your friends!

One of my goals this year is to make most of the presents I give my friends and family.  This is a way to learn some new sewing skills, save money, and not add to consumer waste by up-cycling materials and avoiding packaging. I also think hand-made gifts are the best. My friend Meg gave me a mosaic heart last year and it is one of my favourite gifts because she made it for me. This tea cozy is a present for my Mother and was not intentionally meant to look like a pink version of the American flag but somehow ended up that way. All those American poets I am reading? Maybe. Thankfully Mum lived in the U.S. for a number of years so the country is close to her heart. I also think America should be able to share this pretty colour combination.

I’ve never made a tea cozy before or fabric roses so there was quite a bit of trial and error. The striped fabric is a heavy weight cotton/canvas and the blue polka dot / rose fabric is 100% cotton. I would love to say I washed both first to pre-shrink them but I didn’t! The cozy is stuffed with a thin batting fabric and the inside is lined with the dots and stripes. Trying to figure out how to sew the lining so it came out right side up was like fabric string theory. I followed two very good online tutorials to make the tea cozy (although changed the shape somewhat): Tea cozy on Rusty Bobbin and Fabric flowers on Calamity Kim. I just have enough material left over to make another cosy for my Grandmother who turns 90 this year.

Sam Sampson was born in Auckland, New Zealand and grew up in South Titirangi, next to Little Muddy Creek. Everything Talks, his first collection of poems, was published by Auckland University Press (NZ), and Shearsman Books (UK) in June 2008. It won the Jessie McKay NZSA Best First Book of Poetry at the 2009 Montana New Zealand Book Awards.

As Sampson’s work is so much about sound I found reading the poem while listening to him recite it on Radio New Zealand (just click this link to listen) really opened the poem up for me, as well as hearing him speak about his work. You can also find out more about Sampson’s work on his website.