Category: poetry

A new poem and an older, previously unpublished one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I also wanted to share an older but previously unpublished poem.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.

*

July 1, 2025
twenty years ago I started a commonplace book and didn’t even realise

I was reading on writer Pip Lincolne’s delightful Wallflower Cordial the other day about her beginning a commonplace book. Then I remembered I had something similar, although I hadn’t realised it was a commonplace book.

I called mine ‘The Brilliance of Others’. On the cover is a somewhat gloomy photograph of the reading chair of someone famous. (I didn’t record who so if you recognise it–let me know.)

On the inside cover it says, “Personal Poetry Anthology: words by other people that move, stimulate, excite…& at the back, quotations.”

I guess I hadn’t heard of commonplace books then because that would have been a much more succinct title.

I started it in April 2004 which was around when I became pregnant with my second child, Magnus. I guess that is why, after over twenty years, it is only half-way full. Nine months later, a decades-spanning distraction was born.

Still, from time to time, I remember it exists and I add something. There are currently 51 entries.

In it there are poems I’ve copied by hand from library books, some snipped out of the New Yorker (now yellowing…that New Yorker paper doesn’t age well), or printed out. From time to time I subscribed to the Academy of American Poets ‘Poem a Day’ emails and I would print out the ones I particularly liked.

(I’ve subscribed to this so many times over the years…usually when I feel like I’m not reading enough new poetry and I should make more of an effort to ‘keep up’…but a poem every day to your in-box is so many poems! & so many emails. Therefore I usually only last a month or two and then unsubscribe again after getting overwhelmed. It turns out even poets can be exposed to too much poetry.)

(Above: This Merwin poem on brittle, yellowing New Yorker paper still gets me in the gut. What an ambiguous, radiant, brutal final stanza.)

There’s also the occasional dashed-down note which must have seemed very relevant to something I was thinking about or working on at the time and now I have no clue why. Thus:

According to USA lifestyle magazine The Good Trade, commonplace books are increasing in popularity again. Younger people are enjoying them as a kind of palate-cleansing, analogue and slow antidote to the relentlessness of social media. I totally approve of this trend.

Do you have a commonplace book or something like it?

Here’s a quote I wrote down from G.K.Chesterton. Why younger me liked it so much, I’m not sure…possibly the poetry in the final eight words?

“He discovered the fact that all romantics know–that adventures happen on dull days and not on sunny ones. When the chord of monotony is stretched most tight then it breaks with a sound like a song.”

April 3, 2025
The poem I needed right now, from Mary Walker

My friend, the writer Mary Walker, recently invited her Instagram followers to request a poem for a particular mood or need. She said she would see which of her poems came forward as answering the request. Mary is a sensitive listener -of both people and the land- so I immediately took her up on the call.

Mary’s invitation…

I have a new book coming out next month. It’s a funny thing…publication is both a writer’s dream…and yet is not without it’s challenging elements. It can feel so strange and exposing. Each time I’ve done it I feel a very odd mix of elation and also queasiness and vulnerability. As writers we hope our offerings will be met with kindness, generosity…but once the book has gone from the writer’s mind to becoming a tangible artefact – all control is lost and the work must be let go to have a life of its own, for good or ill.

So I asked Mary for a poem for ‘vulnerability and visibility’.

Here is what stepped forward for me…

Mary’s ‘Wild Fruit’

A more perfect poem I could not imagine. I was moved to tears when I read it.

Mary can’t know this (and yet somehow she did) but my book opens with a scene about me picking blackberries as a child…and about blackberries as a powerful edgeland plant with much to teach us about boundaries, courage and tenacity. Mary gave me just the poem I needed…at the moment I needed it. I cannot thank her enough.

Mary’s new book is available for order now. Her poems reveal her deep enmeshment with the land and a fearless engagement with all of the challenges of being a deeply-conscious human in this world. Thank you, Mary, for this timely gift. Thank you for gifting blackberry back to me…an uncanny coincidence, a portent, and a sign…that there is magic in this world if we invite it and then listen carefully for the evidence.

February 16, 2023
many moons

Last year I received a grant from the Earle Creativity Trust to write a book about my life-long practice of keeping a journal. It was so wonderful to get the grant and I’ve been busy working on this time-bound project, which has to be completed in 2016 (a condition of the grant.)

I finished year one of a permaculture design course last year. I also had a go at making yoga teaching my main source of income, really didn’t like it and am back to teaching just two classes a week, which is just the right amount for me. I had a year’s contract working for an environmental trust, doing communications and events work, and now I’m back at Massey, teaching writing.

Working with the Palmerston North City Library, I edited this anthology – you can download a .pdf version here. I gave a talk about nature writing at the Massey University-based symposium, ‘Working With Nature: understanding entanglements of humans and nonhumans in the Anthropocene’. I have a lot to say about nature and writing and nature writing, so I really enjoyed being a part of this great event.

I taught at the 2016 Kahini Retreat – it was terrific, a whole weekend of being steeped in writing and writing conversation.

Me and my friend, Nga Taonga Puoro artist Rob Thorne collaborated on a performance combining poetry with music, called ‘Tohu’. Huge satisfying fun, and we hope to do it again soon.

I was part of Massey University’s ‘writing in / writing of’ talk series, in a panel about Manawatu writers.

In May, I read with Janet Charman, Belinda Diepenheim and Johanna Aitchison at the Palmerston North City Library. I’ve loved Janet’s writing for a long time, so it was a real privilege to read with her when she visited Palmerston North from Auckland.

Last Friday was National Poetry Day and I read with other Seraph Poets and friends at Vic Books in Wellington, Paula Green took some great photographs.

My most recent creative act, though, has been painting moons. My friend is opening a shop in town with a theme of earth-based and earth-friendly hand made things. So I’ve been making moon gift tags, wall strings and cards for the shop. It is so much more enjoyable than writing poetry, which is always kind of masochistic and gnarly for me.

I

August 30, 2016
KUPU, part two

Some photos of KUPU, the ‘poetry off the page’ installation which I did in the Palmerston North City Library with fellow local poet, Leonel Alvarado.

First instalment was back HERE, when they had only installed one poem.

Here are some photographs of the other poems.

Glimpses of Leonel’s poems (his were harder to photograph in their entirety than mine):

And the other two of mine…

October 2, 2013
‘KUPU’ – a poetry installation at the Palmerston North City Library

Happy National Poetry Day! I have done something (read poems, handed out poems, chalked poems on the street, pot-luck poetry lunches, megaphone poetry on Cuba Street etc etc…) every year since Poetry Day began in the 1990s. Of course, every day is poetry day when you are a poet, but it’s lovely to have a day dedicated to celebrating poetry.

This year, the Palmerston North City Library invited Leonel Alvarado and I to work together on ‘installing’ six of our poems (three each) somewhere around the library. Inside or outside – it was up to us.

I had a wonderful time walking around the library with Leonel, looking for potential interesting sites.

The installation was ‘launched’ at a gathering last night, where I read with Leonel and Glenn Colquhoun. (Glenn was there to unveil an artwork he had donated to the library.) Unfortunately I only have photographs of one of the poems, because it was the only one installed when I was in the library during the day yesterday, and last night I forgot to take my camera. But below is my piece ‘Poem Without the L Word’ going up a staircase, so you begin reading at the bottom. (You can read the whole poem here.)

Leonel is originally from Honduras but now lives here in Palmerston North. He recently came second in a very prestigious Latin American poetry prize, the Casa De La Americas Prize. (Read more about it here.) I love to hear Leonel read with his thick Latin American accent, and sometimes he reads in Spanish, too. If you’d like to hear his voice, he was recently on ‘Playing Favourites’ with Kim Hill. (You can hear it here.)

Anyway, here is one of the installed poems….it was tricky to photograph, but hopefully you get something of an idea…I’ll get some photographs of the other poems soon.

August 16, 2013
The Rope Walk is launched!

Before I blather on about the launch of this fine, artisanally-produced book THIS IS WHERE YOU CAN ORDER ONE. GO ON. SUPPORT NZ POETRY AND INDIE-PUBLISHING.

On the weekend, I attended my darling friend Maria McMillan’s (I wrote a bit about Maria HERE) book launch at the Aro Community Hall. This is her first book and it’s with Seraph Press. It was a wonderfully warm-hearted event. The large turn-out and delightful people who attended were testament to Maria’s standing in the community.

TI associate Maria with tea and then another round of tea and then maybe some more tea but perhaps some toast this time, too….more butter please! I think I would like a giant ‘community-hall’ teapot for one-fill afternoon teas with all my mates.

Maria’s partner Joe Buchanan designed and letter-pressed the cover of the book, including the drawing of the ship on the cover. It is indeed a beautiful artefact with great attention played to paper, card, pressing, stitching. Book as objects d’art. But it is not all style over substance….the poems, an invented family history across multiple generations, starting with the first settlers are rich, detailed and poignant. For a chapbook, this collection is dense and satisfying. It has the heft of a full collection in a chapbook size.

Here writer Pip Adam (right) pulls her characteristic making-a-joke face and Maria displays her new shaved undercut…

Given our long writing history together, I felt all puffed up with pride during the launch…getting misty-of-eye during Maria’s speech, and feeling outright joy to see her signing books at the sale-table. This is the moment every writer longs for! (I remember how wonderful and weird it felt for me at my launch.)

There were flowers everywhere – gifts from her friends. These ones on the piano were just a few of the gorgeous bouquets everywhere. Here is Maria giving her speech.

Here is Maria with Kirsten McDougall who launched the book and gave a thoughtful and celebratory speech.

Here is Maria talking while Seraph Press Editor Helen Rickerby looks on…I liked this shot because you can see HR’s trademark stripey tights:

Here is Helen Rickerby again with writer Helen Heath who is doing a bit of unsubtle product placement:

Congratulations, Maria and Helen, on a wonderful book and a delightful launch. x

(Maria blogs HERE. )

Finally, writer Janis Freegard bidding me (and now you!) farewell in her fantastic panda-with-paws hat/mitten ensemble. Janis always has the best accessories!

July 16, 2013
celebrating a long apprenticeship

Next Wednesday, 12.30pm, Theatre Lab 5D14, Massey University Wellington my dear friend Maria McMillan and I are giving a talk/poetry reading. It’s my first duty as visiting artist at Massey. We’ll be repeating it the following Wednesday 24 April, 6pm, at the Palmerston North City Library.

I invited Maria to share the reading with me because we have been friends for almost twenty years and it has been a friendship with our shared love of writing at the core. Indulge me while I tell you a little bit about our history.

We met just after finishing university, and quicky bonded over our love for poetry. We both took it very seriously, sharing books, discussing poetry, sharing our own writing with each other, even sitting and writing together. Our relationship was intense at it’s beginning and we were soon devoted friends.

A couple of years into our friendship, Maria left for her OE and a year later, I followed (with my husband Fraser) and we lived with Maria in Brixton, London.

Our time in London was wonderful – we called ourselves ‘Girl Germs’ and we wrote a lot, went on geeky literary pilgrimages (I actually cried when I sat in Virginia Woolf’s writing shed in Rodmell, Sussex), joined the Poetry Library on the South Bank, went to poetry readings (most notably Carol Ann Duffy and (for me) two of the ‘Liverpool Poets’: Brian Patten and Roger McGough who I adored as a teenager) and read at Open Mike Nights – all over London, but the best ones were always at The Poetry Place in Covent Garden. You were limited to read just one poem (always a good idea for Open Mike nights!) and the famous read with alongside the newbies. You never knew who might appear. Once John Cooper Clark popped up! For a while Maria interned with Michael Horowitz. Exciting times for poetry nerds.

Here is Maria outside the Poetry Cafe with our friend, American poet Debbie Urbanski. (These days Debbie owns a Letter Press Studio – the Box Car Press.)

Anyway – like most friendships in your twenties (when you have no kids or mortgage) we had many great nights out together…

We danced together…

We played a lot of hacky sack together…(in London we lived in overcrowded flats where people were sleeping in the living room or sharing bedrooms, so we made trips to nearby parks for hacky-sack compulsory for all flatmates. Hacky sack is both great for letting off steam and for discussions about stuff going on in the flat that cannot get tense because…dude, you are playing hacky-sack – it’s a collaborative game! Hacky sack stopped us all killing each other many a time.)

We went on adventures together….

Maria was a very patient model for my try-hard arty photo shoots:

We wore each other’s clothes. (Particular old men’s jerseys from op-shops were in hot demand. The kind that was old and worn enough to have lost all stretch around the bands. Holes were desirable, too, for scruffy street-cred.)

But the thing that means the most to me, looking back, is how we shared writing. We both had an unassailable passion for writing, we were doing it by ourselves – outside of any academic institutions – we learned a lot together. The bed-rock of peer support we gave each other was a great ground for growth and experimentation.

Anyway, neither of us found particular success (in terms of traditional writing institutions and publications) during our twenties and it wasn’t until we hit our thirties+ that we moved from underground to the more expected terrain (publication in literary journals, anthologies and finally, publication of our own books.) We were not wunderkinds. But I am really grateful for our long apprenticeship and for the opportunity we had in our twenties to be zealots for poetry! To be poetry fundamentalists! To be so passionate and nerdy without the self-consciousness and self-doubt that academic creative writing programmes often breed. We were not cool or understated or moderate or measured or even particularly talented but we were passionate and dedicated and optimistic and eager to teach ourselves and each other. I love that about us-as-we-were.

Anyway, when we were ready, we DID study creative writing – I did the Writing Programme at Whitireia Polytechnic and it was invaluable beyond words. Maria did courses at the International Institute of Modern Letters which I know she feels really helped her develop her work.

This winter Maria has her first book coming out with Seraph Press (who are my wonderful publisher also) ‘The Rope Walk’, and next year she has a book coming out with Victoria University Press, ‘Tree Space’. As you may know, my first book ‘The Comforter’ came out in December 2011.

So, yes, this talk is something of a celebration for me of our long apprenticeship, and a long and wonderful friendship, too. Girl Germs Forever!

April 11, 2013
Poetry reading in Valhalla

I’ve always wanted to visit the great heavenly hall of the Norse gods, so am very honoured to be not only visiting, but reading poetry there this Sunday. I wonder if we will be served Sæhrímnir? (A boar-like beast cooked & eaten each day in Valhalla, which then appears whole again in the morning.)

Of course I am just being silly – Valhalla is the name of a cafe in Raumati South which has a monthly poetry reading. I am reading with fellow Palmerston North poet Tim Upperton. I went to hear Bill Manhire at this poetry night when the cafe was called ‘Lembas’ and it was a top notch night out. I am always delighted to be invited to read, then I spend quite a bit of time getting very nervous and worked up about reading, then afterwards I am happy that I did it. If only I could skip step two of this pattern.

March 19, 2013
poetry-nerd-gasm

The Red Cross hold an annual book sale here. It is amazing – two giant halls filled with books, magazines, music. It is so big and so busy it can be more than a little overwhelming! I go every year and always find incredible things.

This year I decided to focus just on vintage children’s books (one of my passions) and I found plenty….but then I couldn’t help myself having a stroll past the poetry table on the way out and I am SO GLAD I did.

Firstly I found these beauties – the Plath is a recent edition and looks in mint condition – like no one ever read it (shame on you, previous owner). I love the mushrooms on the cover. I was excited to find this early James K Baxter (pre-beard!) and someone had sellotaped a cutting out of the newspaper about his death in the back cover with a rather depressing photograph of him dead in his coffin.

Then I found the Lowell and Ashberry and was very happy. I had nothing by either poet in my collection so they fill a substantial gap.

But then…..THEN…>>>>>>

I found a copy of Turtle Island by Gary Snyder! A book I’ve been hunting for for years.

I was so excited I yelped ‘OH MY GOD!’ out very loud and clutched it to my chest in a possessive manner.

A man standing next to me looked at me with some amusement and said ‘What? WHAT??’

so I held up the book so he could see the cover.

He pulled a face conveying how unimpressed he was and shrugged….proving that one person’s poetry-nerd-gasm is another’s ‘whatevs’.

I love Gary Snyder is an irrational, gushing kind of way. His books are hard to find. (If anyone has any Snyder they feel ambivalent about….contact me, maybe we could swap or I can buy them off you!)

There is a wonderful photograph on the back of the book of him with his wee son Kai. I guess he was in his 30s here:

In my studio, I have a photograph of him in his late 70s, with Alan Ginsberg which I snipped out of a New Yorker and framed. I love how happy he looks and how typically lugubrious Ginsberg looks. When I’m feeling blah about poetry, I just need to look at this picture and it makes me feel a bit better. It reminds me that a) poetry is for life and therefore I (hopefully!) have a long time to write, to improve, to grow in my work…and b) friendship, especially friendship with other writers is how you keep going through the poetry life:

Here it is in all it’s beauty:

Best Red Cross book sale find EVER.

June 17, 2012