woa poetry We have some amazing

woa poetry
We have some amazing poets in New Zealand and nothing is more powerful that the written word. Here we offer a chance to read the poems you have heard on woa.
Local poet, Helen Lowe, will be talking to Canterbury poets during 2008, on the first Sat in the month.

birthday boy

you were planning two
birthdays this year -
after 365 days of sobriety

there was to be a cake
frosted with lemon ice
a single candle
lighting your face

then the text message:
hey mum i relapsed
yesterday got drunk.
going to aa meeting tonite
told my sponsor, eh

where is the harbour
that will hold you, little
boat, out in rough seas
lights blazing, your hull
keeling in deep water?

the day you were born
it rained like hell
your sister declared your toes
white as haricot beans

my name is … and i am ...

after the meeting you ring
i love you eh, mum
and for a wild moment
i think you’re drunk again

(c) Frankie McMillan

My Sister’s San Diego Garden

My sister’s San Diego garden looked like
a mini desert when I first walked out
to it that hot jet-lagged morning,
dry mouthed, an orange juice in my hand.

Behind me her house, mud-coloured,
rose up, a giant sand castle, towering
over the arid landscape. Her small son
had made a dust bowl, a crater, big enough

for him to jump into and hide from the
terrorist army, he told me. His dark hair
was sprinkled with gold dust in the harsh
light. Soldiers battled round the rim of

his fox-hole and he fought them off.
We sat and watched, laughing quietly,
on iron-hard chairs, the sunlight tracing
their lacy pattern onto the soft sand.

Friends came over with cake, cloud
white and orange sprinkled. We all had
a piece. It was layered and tasted of
nothing. I found it resting in her spare

fridge in its sarcophagus the next day.
We looked at the plans and tried to
imagine seeing five fountains splashing
amongst floral flashes, and green grass

through walls with glassless windows.
But we could not. Some years later,
she sent photos of this mirage, this
miracle, this trumping of the desert.

Great yellow and purple roses crept along the
walls, their tendrils reached out behind her son,
now a smiling stranger. He looked cool in his
shades, the dust bowl long forgotten.

(c) Elizabeth Robertson

bandwidth

Jenny Argante

She is the early news

that brings report

of some disaster in a far-off land,

a car abandoned on a country road.

The dollar weakens, and the horse

you backed falls at the fifth.

She is a storm forecast.

A cyclone building over western hills,

rough winds and rain foretold

rattling boldly at your door.

She is the sports result,

always this close to bringing home

the shield, this near to being

first across the line.

She is a book review. Opinion split.

'A beginner's piece' that shows

'some brilliance'. The best advice is

borrow it, don't buy.

She is the soap, whose episodes

include some drama and some tragic flaws,

both character and plot.

She is the Talkathon,

her froth and fribble deftly teasing gold.

from your back pocket.

In a good cause, my friend:

in a good cause.

She is The Final Word

before the box falls silent

and she sleeps. She sleeps

without conviction.

Bending Air ~ Voices in Poetry: featuring the taste of nashi, the Third New Zealand Haiku Anthology (Windrift 2008)
July 18 is Montana Poetry Day and Women on Air has decided to help celebrate poetry throughout July by featuring local poets who have been included in NZ's third naional haiku anthology, the taste of nashi (Nashi). 10 years after publication of the Second New Zealand Haiku Anthology (NZPS 1998, ed. Cyril Childs), Windrift extended an open invitation to NZ writers to submit published and unpublished haiku (including senryu) for a third national anthology - and the writers responded with almost 1,000 haiku submitted from 118 writers, both known and unknown on the NZ haiku scene. The result of a strenuous selection process was the taste of nashi, which was released in April at the national haiku conference in Christchurch. It is a unique collection, written by New Zealanders, and many of the haiku have also been published in national and overseas journals, and have won awards in international competitions. Christchurch haijin (haiku writers) are well represented in Nashi and ten have recorded a sample of their haiku to share with Women on Air listeners throughout July.

Three haiku from the taste of nashi

May Day –

the last hydrangea bends

under snow

by Helen Lowe

PD gang –

tattooed man

weeds the pansies

by Frankie McMillan

September nor'wester –

beneath the trees

pieces of spring

by Janine Sowerby

Bending Air ~ Voices in Poetry: Catherine Fitchett, Saturday 7 June
Catherine Fitchett's background as a forensic scientist and quiltmaker can be seen in the consummate craft and precision of her poetry. Currently a member of the collective that oversees the Takahe literary journal and of Christchurch's "Poetry Chooks" writing group (with Victoria Broome, Diane Forbes and Christina Stachurski), Catherine has been published in the Christchurch Press, Takahe, the Big Sky anthology and the Chook Book collection, and read as a guest reader during the Canterbury Poets' annual autumn season of poetry readings. A local poet who's work merits being more widely known, Catherine will talk with Helen Lowe about what drew her to write poetry and influences and themes in her work.

Kitchen Sonnet
“Cream the butter and sugar”, as if by beating

hard enough we could reverse time,

return it to what it once was.

“Add the eggs”. Medieval painters

would grind their pigments for hours,

bind them with egg yolk, mix it with water.

It was Irina who told me this. How

the holy icons, the flowing robes, the shine

on the faces of the saints were built up

with layer on layer of thin transparent glaze.

I am thinking of her as I crack the shells

on the side of the bowl, let the yolks fall

like heavy haloes, one, two, three,

giving themselves up for the cake.

Bending Air ~ Voices in Poetry: Diana Deans,
A poet who is interested in the precision and power of words, Diana Deans' first collection of poetry, It matters that we were young together, has recently been published by Steele Roberts. The collection is also a sequence of poems that charts the final year in the enduring friendship between the poet and her childhood friend, Susan, who died in 2005. Written with an acute eye for the moment and for detail, James Norcliffe described the collection as poems that are "at once tender and unflinching, and give us not only a compelling picture of both friend and writer, but of friendship itself". Diana will read three poems from It matters that we were young together and discuss the process of writing the collection with Helen Lowe.

Pearls

You give me your pearls

to wear when I'm sad

you say they will need to feel

the warmth of my skin

to maintain their lustre

106 tears

alchemy of moonlight and raindrops

they cascade through my fingers

and I want to murmur

ancient incantations

for the safe passage

of souls

Bending Air ~ Voices in Poetry from Women on Air: Nancy Mattson
Nancy Mattson is an expatriate Canadian poet who has lived in London since 1990 and is currently visiting New Zealand for nine weeks. On Saturday 5 April, Nancy will speak with Helen Lowe about her two critically acclaimed collections, Maria Breaks her Silence (Regina: Coteau, 1989) and Writing with Mercury (Flambard, 2006), as well as her current project, Finns and Amazons, focusing on the work and lives of seven, avant-garde, women Russian artists. A Canadian of Finnish ancestry, Maria Breaks her Silence is based on Nancy Mattson's research into the history of Finnish women immigrants in the late nineteenth, early twentieth centuries. The collection was shortlisted for the Gerald Lampert Memorial Award for the best first book of poetry in Canada, adapted for the stage as Lye Soup and Dancing Cows and is now taught in Canadian universities. Writing in Mercury is a chronicle of 1990s London, but Canadian and Finnish voices slip through its pages in a subtext of the Canadian expatriate returning to the Old World -- and looking both back and forward.The poem that Nancy has selected for the Women on Air website, titled "Third Generation Lost Language Blues" was commended in the 1990 League of Canadian Poets National Poetry Contest.

THIRD GENERATION LOST LANGUAGE BLUES

Your blood flows

through my heart, limbs, gut,

but stops

at my Canadian neck,

dammed at the throat.

Your blood is mine

but not

your tongue, lips,

language of your birth.

I am guilty of collusion in the accident

of my unchosen birth in post-war Winnipeg,

condemned to a life of English sentences.

I have learned them well, their multiple

undertows pull me down

into swirling possibilities of poetry:

swyrl

from Scottish through Norse

possibilité

from French through Latin

poesis

from Latin through Greek

I cannot deny the delight

of tongue, ear, mind,

the polyrhythmic shaping

of my Canadian heart

but now

I am beginning to hear

the words that English never speaks:

suomea suruksi

language sorrow

laulun kieli

language song

Years

Taylor Dry Valley, Antarctica

Six million years

the Dry Valleys

have been waiting

and still no rain.

Old notes remain

to sustain snow and sand.

Come. Rest your ear

against these brittle waves.

The ancient foraminifera never sleep.

They lie awake forever

perfecting their private alphabet.

Tapping in code, they set questions

and clues adrift on currents

beneath the ice.

Phrase marks with a hint

of the familiar

rise and fall

rise and fall

but without the accompaniment

of language our untrained ears

can hear, answers and meaning

elude us. One-celled creatures

have the upper hand here.

This much is clear.

Knowledge and ignorance

arrive and leave

arrive and leave

on the same

invisible

tides.

© Claire Beynon 2007

Kaupapa
Hinemoa Baker and Maria McMillan
Kaupapa: New Zealand Poets, World Issues, edited by Hinemoa Baker and Maria McMillan, (Development Resource Centre, Wellington) My boyfriend’s mother gave him this collection for Christmas. I read it over two days, sitting outside in the sun, without any distractions, and was profoundly satisfied when I’d finished. It showed not only the strength and diversity of New Zealand’s contemporary poetry (including many familiar favourites from James Brown, Karlo Mila, Kate Camp, Bill Manhire, etc.) but also that poetry can deal with heavy issues, while feeling light and fresh on the page.