Helen Lehndorf

news + musings

  • manifest poetry

    Yesterday I found a bird skull in the garden while I was weeding.

    I like the way there is a little patch of feathers on the top of it’s head, like a macabre toupee.

    In one of those cases of art foreshadowing life, I wrote a poem a long while back about digging up bird skulls. It is in my book.

    I really did bury some bird bodies in the garden – however, that was at my old house, so this bird skull is not one of those that I buried.

    Since I wrote that poem, my cat died of throat cancer. I didn’t bury him in the garden, though. I had him cremated. His ashes are in a little white box on the mantlepiece, wrapped with a yellow ribbon.

    Here’s the poem:

    Latest Project

    I am curating the kills of my cat, collected

    with shovel, buried together in a yard-bird cemetery

    at the edge of the comfrey patch. Soil nourishment, for sure,

    but mostly because I want to dig up the skulls.

     

    A bird skull is a beautiful thing.

    Mechanics of bone, small sculpture with hinge of jaw,

    tiny teeth and spike of beak. When I dig them up

    I might make a necklace of skulls, like an urban Kali,

    goddess of change, of Your Time Is Up.

     

    Sparrow head, blackbird beak, thrush face,

    threaded on leather, fastened with wood.

    More likely, I would sit them in a neat row

    on a bookshelf in front of my orange Penguin classics.

     

    Or, more inevitably, I will forget.

     

     

  • seed heads

    Often, if a plant isn’t taking up space I need for something else, I’ll let it go to seed. Partly because then it will drop it’s seed everywhere and next year I might get plant babies, and partly because I love seeing what plants do when they go to seed.

    Have you ever let a leek go to seed?

    They grow up and up into a crazy tall spindles, with a Hundertwasser-like turret on the top which eventually explodes open into a purple pom-pom! It’s almost worth letting a few go to seed as temporary garden sculptures:

    I also like parsley seed heads. They are pretty and similar to their plant cousins, Cow Parsley which you often see growing on the edges of fields in the countryside, and Queen Anne’s Lace.

    I am somewhat in love with Queen Anne’s Lace and have tried to grow it in my garden this year, but because it prefers to grow in a grassy environment, it isn’t all that happy in my flower beds – it’s a bit droopy and lonely-looking. It is still lovely, though. It’s also known as wild carrot, because the roots are edible. This is the sort of thing I like to know, even though I’ll probably never dig up one to eat the root! Aah, useless esoteric knowledge…

    Seedheads I am not so fond of are dandelion seed heads, because even though they are lovely – everytime one blows in my garden I know it means a lot of weeding….and grass seedheads for the same reason.

  • What the garden was doing at the turn of the new year…

    Happy New Year! I’m starting my year on the blog as I mean to go on – with excessive photographs of plants.

    Here is a snapshot of the garden on January 1 2012.

    There are new peas everyday – they never make it inside because we always eat them right there, standing beside the garden. It is my personal garden snack bar…

    The corn is getting taller…

    The apples we will enjoy in autumn are starting to look like apples, rather than little swollen buds….

    The herb garden is running riot: oregano, marjorum, sage, borage, mint, parsley, chives…

    The hydrangeas are doing their purple-pom-pom thing to the fullest…

    & the poppies continue to pop, then flop…

     

  • green bean serene

    Summer = season of green.

    Broad beans until we can’t face another broad bean.

    I divided up my monster stinging nettle plant and now I have baby nettles thriving away. (Anyone local want a nettle plant?) Nettles are a wonder herb and are seriously good for you – very high in iron, it also builds healthy blood cells and clears chest congestion, among other things. It also tastes great in soup – very savoury and iron-rich tasting.

    Green polka dot sundress with my green roman sandals. Welcome in summer, you’ve been a long time coming this year!

  • The Comforter Cocktail

    The Comforter Cocktail

    We made this in a big punch bowl, but of course you can make it by the glass also.

    One part Blackcurrant Vodka

    Four parts soda water

    Enough rose-infused sugar syrup to make it pink and tasty. This is the stuff I used – it’s French, lovely and costs about $18 for a bottle at good bottle stores:

    Edible flowers – borage, calendula petals, rose petals, cornflowers, violas etc

    Ice

    Mix the wet ingredients, pour over ice, sprinkle edible flowers on top. Drink and feel comforted!

    This drink is pink, refreshing, tastes like summer and roses and good times.

  • ‘The Comforter’ launches (2)

    Launch one:

    The first launch was in Palmerston North at the City Library.

    The speakers were Helen Rickerby, my editor, Thom Conroy, friend and creative writing professor at Massey University, and Natasha Allan did a beautiful blessing of the book.

    This one felt like a slightly more formal, ‘family, colleagues, local community’ (and friends, of course) one.  People bought books, I had my first experience of signing books, like a proper writer and it felt weird and really wonderful all at once. I tried to write something meaningful in each book I signed, so by the end of the launch my hand was really sore.

    Launch two: 

    Launch two was the next day in Wellington at my friend Emma Barnes’s house in Aro Valley. Wellington turned on the sunshine for us and it was a stunning day. This one was at 3pm in the afternoon and because of the perfect weather and all the women who obliged my request for floral frocks – it felt like a luscious garden party, (Emma McCleary said it felt to her like a wedding!).

    There was good food, plentiful wine, The Comforter cocktail, Simon (Emma B’s partner) played live banjo, which was just beautiful. The guests were many different kinds of lovely!

    For the ‘formal’ bit at this launch, Helen spoke again, then Pip Adam and Maria McMillan spoke about my writing and said extremely humbling things, then I read poems and all that, and then Natasha Allan did a closing blessing, which set me off crying a lot.

    (Oh and there was a notable earthquake.)

    Both launches went without a hitch and were just (as far as I’m concerned) perfect. I really couldn’t be any happier. Sometimes dreams come true. Check out this cheesy grin:

    If you want to see more photographs, I made a set on Flickr HERE.

    *

    NEWS! My poem ‘Garlic Planting Time’ is the Tuesday Poem on the Booksellers Blog today, HERE.

    & I’m also the Tuesday Poet, on Winged Ink, Helen Rickerby’s blog, HERE. & Helen wrote a little bit about the launches on the Seraph Press site HERE.

    *

  • ‘The Comforter’ launches (1)

    It’s early Monday morning and I just said to my editor, Helen Rickerby ‘Isn’t love the best drug? because I am still high from all the love at the launches!’.

    Helen and I did two launches, in two cities in two days! They were both really beautiful and special in their own ways.

    For a taster of the Wellington launch, Emma McCleary has written a post about it HERE.

    I held it together pretty well through both launches, but at the blessing part of the Wellington launch, (the very end of the formal bit) I lost it completely and cried like a baby, which was a little embarrassing, but then my friend Ben said: ‘Don’t worry. It just made it more ‘Helen’.’ Interpret that however you like.

  • a flower falls

    ‘A flower falls, even though we love it; and a weed grows, even though we do not love it.’

    –Dogen

  • off, off it goes

    I’m launching my book in less than two weeks.

    I would love to see you there, if you are in Palmerston North or Wellington!

    Here are the details:

    Palmerston North launch: Friday, 2nd December, 6.30, Palmerston North City Library. Books available on the night for $25. There will be refreshments and general book related frivolity. All welcome!

    Wellington launch: Saturday, 3rd December, 3pm. The Wellington launch is at a private residence, so I don’t want to put the address on the internets, however, if you would like to come to the Wellington launch, email me: helenlehndorfATgmail.com – and I will let you know.

    ***

    I got my copies of the book in the mail on Saturday. It was a surreal and lovely moment. I immediately sat down on my bed and read the whole thing cover to cover – even though I know all the poems inside out.

    It looks like a real, proper book! and I feel very proud of it. It IS a real, proper book.

    I’m very much looking forward to, with the help of friends, giving it a good send off into the world at the launches. I’ve organised lively speakers and a blessing of the book. At the Wellington launch there will be some live music!

    It’s really happening. This thing I’ve hoped for since I was a teenager. Someone pinch me!

  • lean in

    I went to the Pohangina valley.

    Clean spring green.

    PIcked up heart shaped rocks.

    Picked up broken glass.

    Picked up.

    They were throwing stones in the water. I walked away from the splashing.

    I walked past the Friday night fire pits, the Woodstock cans and pizza boxes.

    The trees along the bank were just flowering.

    I thought the trees were thrumming with their flowering, thought I could hear the flowers.

    Then I leaned in and it was bees. Trees were thick with bees.

    The bees sounded like effort and essence, it was a vital sound.

    Bee frequency. Bee transmission.

    I closed my eyes. I leaned in. I could smell new vegetation. Clean growth.

    The trees told me. The bees showed.