A new poem and an older, previously unpublished one

Last week, a new poem I wrote, ‘hemmed in like a boar between archers’, was published on The Spinoff’s weekly column ‘The Friday Poem’.

I’m grateful to The Spinoff and editor, Hera, for selecting the poem. It was great fun for me to see it on The Spinoff on Friday and to see what image they had selected to go with the poem.

I wrote the poem last summer. I had a good spell with poetry over the summer and, after a while of feeling like I was wringing out a dry rag when trying to write poetry, suddenly a whole lot of poems tumbled out in a rush. It was a good (and relatively rare) feeling.

It meant that a poetry manuscript I’ve been fiddling with for over ten years (!) is much closer to completion now.

I was able to ditch some poems I wasn’t 100% happy with (I call them ‘the weaklings’) and replace them with some of the stronger, new ones.

(Above: bush canopy in the Rangawahia Reserve.)

I also wanted to share an older but previously unpublished poem.

This was commissioned years ago for an anthology about New Zealand’s endangered species. Each poet was assigned a topic. My assigned subject was the Manoao Tree (Silver Pine).

Sadly, the book project didn’t eventuate so I thought I’d share the poem here:

Manoao

Small, sensitive,
the cleanest of the grassy greens
of the understory
single leader, forest pine

too many years
of mistaken identity
growing in the shadow of all
that a Kauri can be

rainforest supporter
prone to sudden collapse
like all things humble,
misidentified, or hard to see

human desire-lines
walk wide past
the subtle glow
in long rows
of gloaming extroverts

If we were better, we’d
take the time
to thread the eyes.
of this graceful relict.

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