Tag: Tuesday Poem

Tuesday Poem: ‘To the Gods the Shades’ by Kathleen Jones

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Inscription on a 1st century Roman tombstone in Hexham.

The wolf and wild boar wintered here
where Flavinus’ impetuous latin blood
felt the unkindness of snow

and the granite hardness of the Wall
whose builders he defended against
the brutal insurgence of Pict and Celt.

Days of cracked leather, blistered hands,
the horses’ breath rising like bath-house steam,
a northern mist obscuring the sun’s retina;

remembering the soft, olive-perfumed
flesh of southern lovers in the rough,
hessian coupling of Celtic women —

the wire-boned, woad-stained, spoils of war,
who worshipped alien Gods and stank
of semen and ambiguous politics.

Flavinus, Standard-Bearer to the Troop —
speared by the carved barbarian
trampled under his horse — killed

by the cold driven in on the east wind
scouring the Tyne gap through this bleak
border town where everything closes at five —

his final dread — to leave his bones
to winter north in the sour peat, covered
by the same grey stone he died for.

Credit note: “‘To the Gods the Shades'” was first published in the Lancaster Lit Fest Anthology and is collected in Kathleen Jones’ 2011 poetry collection Not Saying Goodbye at Gate 21, published by Templar Poetry. It is reproduced by permission of the author. Not Saying Goodbye at Gate 21 can be ordered from Templar Poetry.

Tim says: I will be reviewing Not Saying Goodbye at Gate 21 later this week. I’ll say more then about why I like the collection so much, but let me say now that many of the poems I like best in this collection skilfully evoke both character and place, as this poem does so well. I thrilled to stories of the Roman conquest of Britain, like The Eagle of the Ninth, when I was young – these days, I have a rather different take on imperial adventures and the grandeur that was Rome, but this poem revives the shades of that harsh borderland and its harsh inhabitants.

Kathleen Jones is one of the Tuesday Poets. You can check out all the Tuesday Poems on the Tuesday Poem blog – the hub poem in the middle of the page, and all the other poems in the sidebar on the right.

You can buy books by Tim Jones online!

Tuesday Poem: Appearances

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It is autumn in the land of appearances.
Film sets are being taken down.
To the south, the audience
diminishes to haze.

Out beyond the Heads, the crash of guns.
Shore batteries, defend us!
Ships of every nation
have come to take our lamb.

A broadside works wonders.
We rush out in our dinghies.
If you are dismasted, take my life-raft.
Take my rubber ring, my hand.

Credit note: “Appearances” was first published in Bravado 7, July 2006.

Tim says: This poem has nothing to do with Christmas, except that I wrote it during my Christmas holidays a few years back, walking south along the ridge from Seatoun and looking at ships steaming into Wellington Harbour past the old gun emplacements.

You can check out all the Tuesday Poems on the Tuesday Poem Blog – this week’s hub poem in the centre of the page, and all the other Tuesday Poems on the right.

You can buy books by Tim Jones online!

Tuesday Poem: The Exquisite Confusion Of The Prose Poem, by P.S. Cottier

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Exquisite, as if there’s pleasure in my mongrel life. Dog of the boulevards, sniffing this way and that, torn between the mundane and the mellifluous. Hand on my leash pulls this way, towards rhyme and rhythm, then that way, towards common sense, if not the solid brass lamp-post of the best-seller. Trickle of golden adjective runs from me, moderated by the cut of verb. It must end, this torture, this constant orphaning. Father was a Poem of the Proper Sort/His Lines They Echoed as They Ought. Even when I will myself into a sad bad clang of couplets, they won’t break the flow of this word after word, the hideous horizontality of being that beset me from the start. I am doomed to lie down, to cover myself with the rags of reason, frayed into flags of a red agonising interest, signalling the daytime nightmare of the metaphor. Cruel matador of the plunging quill, never-ending coup de grâce. Mother’s mission, to share recipes and love stories with the masses, has eluded me. In cook-books she was legion; in romance novels legendary. She tied an apron of prosey appropriateness each time she entered the literary kitchen. Hand over honest hand, she ribboned herself in the present tense (or past simple). And her progeny is this half-slipped knot, the dropped stitch, the soufflé which never rises into ether and the crêpe can never be mere honest pancake, stacked into hearty flat use. Creeping creature of the half-light, twin of an invisible doppelgänger, neither one nor not either, I pull my carcass through the cruel streets of non-belonging. At least, at least, release is soon, that delicious sip of easy non-being. Be seeing. Been seen.

Credit note: “The Exquisite Confusion Of The Prose Poem” is from P.S. Cottier’s second poetry collection The Cancellation of Clouds, published by Ginninderra Press, and is reproduced by permission of the author. The Cancellation of Clouds can be ordered from Ginninderra Press.

Tim says: I have recently finished reading The Cancellation of Clouds in preparation for my interview with P.S. (Penelope) Cottier, which I will be posting here later this week. I very much enjoy the spikiness, humour and energy of her poetry, which is well represented in this tale of the tormented prose poem, forever pulled this way and that.

P.S. Cottier has just joined the Tuesday Poets, and you can read her first Tuesday Poem post here: http://pscottier.com/2011/12/12/progress-by-p-s-cottier/. I look forward to reading more of her poems – and watch out for our interview later this week.

You can check out all the Tuesday Poems on the Tuesday Poem blog – the hub poem in the middle of the page, and all the other poems in the sidebar on the right.

You can buy books by Tim Jones online!

Out The Tent, by Madeleine Marie Slavick

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Early night hills move
to profile, wear bushy velvet skirts
with some outcrop warts

Coming closer, five feral cows
chew old rice terraces and step
down the series like a lesson in obedience

Crabs, shy in their uneven saddles,
scurry in grass as dry as newspaper,
their hole in one of these sands

Then boat engines chainsaw
at our thin tent, police angle shouts
into shoulder radios, helicopter lights scan our fear:
A man has disappeared

We hear the myths: a spearfisher
from a dark rock corner, diver and shark,
nightsurfer, swimmer in the undertow
of three great things: night and sea and solitude

We become different lumps of sleep
and wake each time we turn over
The dogs at the next tent sigh

One of us leaves to sleepwalk
and arrives at the wet sounds below,
a beach toppled with the unattached

Where is all the light from anyway?
The sky stays grey
and the tides patient,
rinsing everything out twice a day,
like new parents

Credit note:This poem is from Madeleine M. Slavick’s collection “delicate access”, poems in English with translations into Chinese by Luo Hui, and is reproduced by permission of the author.

Madeleine M. Slavick is a writer and photographer. Madeleine has several books of poetry and non-fiction and has exhibited her photography internationally. She has lived in Germany, Hong Kong, and the USA, and was until recently based in New Zealand. She maintains a daily blog: touchingwhatilove.blogspot.com.

Tim says: I suspect this poem wasn’t written about a night in the New Zealand bush, given the mention of old rice terraces, but it reminds me very much of nights spent outside in the rain in a tent, and mysterious lights that pause and move on. I’m a sucker for a great last line or couplet – this one is wonderful!

You can see all the Tuesday Poems on the Tuesday Poem blog – the hub poem in the centre, and all the week’s other poems on the right.

You can buy books by Tim Jones online!

Tuesday Poem: The Reader, by Robin Fry

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The new anthology is here.
I read through it
turning the pages          on and
on
from its end to its beginning
seeking connection
sifting
winnowing…

And —
here it comes
surprising me at last —
the rare, the numinous one
like the flick of a silver tongue
light falling
from another room.

Credit note: “The Reader” is from Robin Fry’s new collection Portals, published by Earl of Seacliff Art Workshop, and is reproduced by permission of the author.

Portals is available directly from Robin for $15, sent to Robin Fry, 19 Bolton Street, Petone, Lower Hutt 5012. Robin can also be contacted by email: robinfry@paradise.net.nz

Here is an excellent article* from the Hutt News about Robin and her writing: Life’s experiences inspire words.

*Stuff’s page title is wrong, though – this is Robin’s fifth collection.

Tim says: I went to the launch of Portals at the Lower Hutt Library, which was a great success: 60 or so people came along, Jo Thorpe gave an excellent introduction which you can read on the ESAW website, lots of people bought the book, and Robin read very well.

I have been reading Portals this week and, among a number of poems I like very much, “The Reader” jumped out at me because it so well conveys the experience of looking at a new anthology and hoping to find one or more poems that take the breath away.

There are some fine poems in Robin’s previous collections, too – here are links to a couple from her previous collection, Time Traveller:

Hurry
Riverine Elements

You can check out all the Tuesday Poems on the Tuesday Poem blog – the hub poem in the middle of the page, and all the other poems in the sidebar on the right.

You can buy books by Tim Jones online!

Tuesday Poem: Rangipo Grounding, by Keith Westwater

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I looked around
Ruapehu’s apron
after the subaltern

bellied the rover
in a minefield of boulders.
Waiting for the NCOs

who’d seen it all before –
a new lieutenant
green as the desert was grey

trying to impress us boys
though he’d been told
not to go that way.

Behind, Ruapehu simmering
Ngauruhoe smoking.
In front, desolation –

a few tussocks, wire weed
desecrated earth.
I didn’t know then

about rain shadow
desiccation by wind
the habitats of lahar fields

or the conditions necessary
for things to grow.
Muttering wry derision

the NCOs
with knowing grins
levered, heaved, hauled it free.

Those dry, wiry, salty men
who supplied us with
the necessary conditions.

Credit note: “Rangipo Grounding” is from Keith Westwater’s debut poetry collection Tongues of Ash.

Tim says: Since last Tuesday, Keith Westwater and I, together with publisher and poet Dr David Reiter, have been on a book tour to Dunedin, Christchurch, Wellington, Lower Hutt, Paraparaumu and Auckland to launch our respective collections, his Tongues of Ash and my Men Briefly Explained. Our final gig is tonight in Auckland: we are reading at PoetryLive at the Thirsty Dog, 469 Karangahape Road, which starts at 8pm.

“Rangipo Grounding” is one of my favourite poems from “Tongues of Ash”. I love the way it brings together a particular landscape and the people who inhabit it, how it reaches from the particular to to the general without strain, and the aptness of its title.

The Tuesday Poems: You can check out all the Tuesday Poems on the Tuesday Poem Blog – this week’s hub poem in the centre of the page, and all the other Tuesday Poems on the right.

You can buy books by Tim Jones online!

I’ve Selected The Tuesday Poem This Week: Guarding the Flame, by Majella Cullinane

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This week, I’m the editor for the main Tuesday Poem blog, and I have selected “The Force of Things”, from the collection Guarding the Flame by Majella Cullinane, as this week’s Tuesday Poem.

Head over to the Tuesday Poem blog to find out what I have to say about it – and don’t forget to check out all the other Tuesday Poems for the week, which are listed to the right of the hub poem.

You can buy books by Tim Jones online!

Tuesday Poem: happened to meet

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happened to meet
fingers extending a welcome
household of tired gods
the table, drinks

then morning.

Birds, coffee, the paper
affirmed you

my hand on your hip
my hand on your breast
my hand on your heart.

Credit note: “happened to meet” is a new poem, first published in my new poetry collection Men Briefly Explained.

You can check out all the Tuesday Poems on the Tuesday Poem Blog – this week’s hub poem in the centre of the page, and all the other Tuesday Poems on the right.

You can buy books by Tim Jones online!

Tuesday Poem: Evensong In A Graveyard Of Villas, by Keith Westwater

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The pines on the ridge are about to cede
their colour to the night. Once more
light’s absence will shroud this place.

Not even car-lights on the highway below
(such is their need for road when it’s dark)
re-mark the trees – their placement

their particular explanation of green.
Soon the evening will lay claim too
to vestiges of villas which once stood

in the bush beneath the pines –
orphaned lawns, homeless paths
rhododendron that flower

among five-finger, tree fern, rata.
These last artefacts mark the bones
of grand abodes. These and a plaque

at the site of each home
listing its name, its history of dwellers
its date of sacrifice to the road.

Credit note: “Evensong In A Graveyard Of Villas” is from Keith Westwater’s debut poetry collection Tongues of Ash.

Tim says: In late October, Keith Westwater and I will be embarking on a book tour to Dunedin, Christchurch, Wellington, Lower Hutt and Auckland to launch our respective collections, his Tongues of Ash and my Men Briefly Explained.

I met Keith when we both did the IIML Writing The Landscape course, run by the wonderful Dinah Hawken, in 2003. “Evensong In A Graveyard Of Villas”, the penultimate poem in the penlutimate section of Tongues Of Ash, is a fine example of his landscape poetry, and anyone who knows me will know that I am in full agreement with the last line!

The Tuesday Poems: You can check out all the Tuesday Poems on the Tuesday Poem Blog – this week’s hub poem in the centre of the page, and all the other Tuesday Poems on the right.

You can buy books by Tim Jones online!

Tuesday Poem: Men At Sea

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1. Puysegur

Glint of gold, horizon
proclaiming fish: familiar
warnings of gale and cloud.

He descends to the fishing boats.
One will take him tideward,
southward, a tolerated,

but far from welcome,
inspector of catches. In a pre-dawn
counterfeit of morning, they cast off

for Puysegur: the south-west
corner, the Roaring Forties’
big back yard, their hunting ground.

Three days of the sea as mountain range,
eating with the crew, sharing danger
but not profit. Three days

of soaked skin, puddled clothes, each
wooden bunk a trampoline, salt spray
in every cut and nick. At last

the turning homeward, past Solander,
past Centre Island — the Bluff
finally, blessedly, in sight.

He will make tallies, say farewells,
enact the weary rituals
of damp wharf and empty office.

He will drive a narrow highway home,
eyelids heavy, engine cold and catching
in the falling winter light.

2. Halfmoon Bay

School holidays. The ferry’s
uncertain plunging past the fishing fleets,
young feet

attentive to the scuppers. Green bile
derived from dread and remnant breakfast
flung, a final offering,

to the greedy waves. Then this
harbour long desired, Foveaux’s fingers
unclamping from my inner ear. Sudden

ease, relief; a brief reflection
that all this must be undergone again.
Boats in our wake, men at sea

raising a laconic workman’s finger
to visitors, to loopies,
to the daily irruption of other lives.

And now the island: crash
of gangways, solid ground,
davits whining as we walk away.

Men at sea, I take my father’s hand
as we approach the village, houses
hunched against the glowing skies.

The lure of escape, of absorption
into no-time, merely being
and doing. The memory of waves.

The journey back. Hands,
half-longed-for, half-feared,
reaching as we near the shore.

Credit note: “Men At Sea” is a new poem, first published in my new poetry collection Men Briefly Explained.

Tim says: My dad used to work as a fisheries inspector in Southland, the southern province of New Zealand. Halfmoon Bay on Stewart Island/Rakiura, and Puysegur Point at the south-west corner of New Zealand, were two of the places on his ‘beat’. I went with him several times to Stewart Island, but the trip to Puysegur was regarded as a bit tough for a child of my age. I still haven’t been there.

You can check out all the Tuesday Poems on the Tuesday Poem Blog – this week’s hub poem in the centre of the page, and all the other Tuesday Poems on the right.

You can buy books by Tim Jones online!