Helen Lehndorf

Tag: poetry

  • Slow-Small Media for the Weekend #18

    (Above: a tiny posy of small flowers from the garden: forget-me-not, pansies, calendula, & marigold.) )

    Hello!

    Another week of our lives has passed since the last time you were here…indulging me by reading my collected nonsense.

    How was your week? Did you have time to look at the sky for a while? Read a good book? Wear something that makes you feel excellent and utterly yourself? Did you drink enough cups of tea?

    If not, make yourself one now and settle in for some slow-small media imbibing…

    The joy of simple well-made things

    I write this from beside our fire. It’s stormy outside and today’s high is 12 degrees. The fire is just over a year old. We had it put in when our 1980s gas fire was condemned by the gas inspector. He recommended a heat pump. We did this instead and have not regretted the decision for even a second.

    The fire was made in New Zealand in a business in the Hawke’s Bay. The fire feels like a new member of the family and staring into her depths has given me many happy moments.

    (Above: our little fire with the morning sun on her.)

    When I was in Taupō last weekend, I upgraded our poker to a lovely hand made one from a metalsmith at the local Sunday morning market. I took a photo of him brandishing the poker at the market because he was a lovely chap and I am a nerd for the provenance of handmade things:

    (Above: The maker of our new poker. He didn’t make the hooks on display but he did make the poker.)

    Speaking of woodstoves, last week I stumbled on the YouTube account of Homewood Stoves, another NZ-made wood fire business – this time based near Whangarei.

    Their videos are full of wholesome and homey videos featuring their beautiful homes, gorgeous kids and lovely kitchen…it’s peak #cottagecore content but in a NZ context. Very soothing viewing for a rattled nervous system. Which leads me to today’s recipe…

    How to start a ginger bug for homemade ginger beer

    Also on the Homewood Stoves channel, this aesthetically-pleasing and slow method video has really inspired me to brew up some ginger beer this summer.

    This is a very helpful and nicely made video.

    & I have kitchen-envy! >>

    Poetry: A bit of Mary Oliver balm for another hard news week

    On Thursday, I had a really long work day and was ‘head down, bum up’ all day so didn’t catch any news. When I finally knocked off, Fraser mentioned it had been a big news day in terms of global events and laid it all out for me. (I won’t rake it over here because it’s not Slow-Small-Media suitable… ) but again I was struck how, in these turbulent times, you can be offline just for a day and then plug back in and find the world has been through the wringer again…in new and newly-awful ways.

    To that end, I feel this week we need one of the big guns of solace poetry…so here’s an excerpt from Mary Oliver’s ‘In Blackwater Woods’ (read the whole poem here):

    Here she is on love and the necessity of detachment as part of that love:

    ‘To live in this world

    you must be able
    to do three things:
    to love what is mortal;
    to hold it

    against your bones knowing
    your own life depends on it;
    and, when the time comes to let it go,
    to let it go.’

    A song for the week: ‘So Free’ by Lūka, & Mose

    I appreciate every season…however, at this stage of late winter/crappy spring, I can’t help but begin to yearn for summer.

    This newish song by Lūka & Mose gives me that spacious and bright summer-road-trip feeling…even on this stormy day.

    I can tell I’ll be playing it a lot this summer:

    (You can listen to all of the Slow-Small Media songs over on YouTube here. I add one song every time I write a new edition of this digest.)

    Affordable Art : the Tea Frog you probably don’t need at all but might make you smile

    Oh, hi:

    (Above: image borrowed from the IkoIko website.)

    Look, I know nobody needs this ridiculous object…but how much fun, hey? )(+ Who ever went into IkoIko looking for something they needed?)

    This little guy is $33 so he falls well within the affordable art budget of $50.

    Is it ‘art’ though? I imagine you asking… I’d argue it makes having a cup of tea more artful…and so yes, he qualifies.

    A short list of ‘sacred gifts’, from Alex Klingenberg

    Returning to the topic of regulating the nervous system after feeling rattled by the noise of the world… this short article by Alex Klingenberg invites us to consider what we have to give in this moment, what our ‘sacred gifts’ are.

    I particularly like this excerpt. As I read the list below, I think about how I can bring these qualities into my relationships, my family, my friendships.

    Does my being in my presence leave people a little uplifted? I hope so.

    Sacred Gifts of Being:

    • Presence – showing up fully to the moment.
    • Attention – the act of noticing, listening, and honoring.
    • Wonder – the childlike awe that keeps the world alive.
    • Stillness – the capacity to rest, pause, and make space.
    • Resilience – carrying light through difficulty.
    • Gratitude – choosing to see abundance and say thank you.

    The article is gentle and thoughtful; I felt a little steadier after reading it.

    (Hat tip for this link to Thousand Shades of Gray who also does a regular digest which I really enjoy and find a lot of good reads from.)

    An artist who embraced the slow art of sewing after an illness

    Speaking of gratitude and presence, this is a lovely watch. Louise Watson had to give up her teaching career after illness. Now, she lives more slowly and has begun and nature-based art practice as part of her new, slowed-down life:

    & That’s a wrap for this week’s sharing.

    This weekend I’ve been invited to a friend’s house for the inaugural paella in her new (from the op shop) paella pan; I’m going to be sharing early birthday cake with some fellow September-birthday friends and I’m going to a Sika Sound Journey as he’s passing through town. This will be my fifth time going to a Sika journey. I’ve been twice at yoga/kirtan camps and twice here in my home town. It’s always worth it. Transporting!

    Sika often starts his journeys with the repeated phrase:

    ‘you are leaving time…you are leaving time…you are leaving time…’

    I hope you can find some moments of presence, attention, wonder, stillness, resilience and gratitude this weekend and also maybe ‘leave time‘ for a little bit.

    Much love.

  • Slow-Small Media for the Weekend #17

    (Above: PN’s Te Manawa Museum currently has an exhibition about sunshine and light. Here I am playing with my shadow in the light box.)

    Song for the week: Just George ‘Lungs’

    This local tune is by my friend Abi Symes. I’m proud to have a little connection to this song, all about the overwhelming nature of grief, because Abi wrote it after we had a conversation about the physicality of grief. Abi got a bad lung infection after going through multiple griefs in quick succession and I told them that in Traditional Chinese Medicine, the lungs are an organ where grief is felt.

    Abi sent me the song and I felt all tingly at the way, as creative people, we can cross-pollinate each other without even intending to. I love the song and I love Abi.

    (I add one song every time I compile this digest. You can enjoy the whole playlist on Youtube here.)

    Be careful, this video may turn you into a total bird nerd

    I loved everything about this little clip from Gardening Australia: the birds, the Australian native plants…but mostly, the enthusiasm and nerdy citizen-science of the sweet, sweet couple who are developing the bird garden. They gave me a deep case of ‘elder couple goals’ for me and F.

    Watch this and then tell me people aren’t good:

    A fun spring challenge: can you find enough edible flowers to make a ‘fairy salad’?

    (Above: my fairy salad – all of this was growing in the garden.)

    Spring in the Manawatū is pretty horrid. Squally winds, sudden temperature drops, weather that goes from warm to icy within the same outing…leaving me in the wrong clothing…all uncomfortable and cross.

    It’s been like that all week….then on Wednesday…there was a brief reprieve and the sun came out. The garden was still. I could hear the tūi. I could hear my own thoughts.

    I grabbed the sun-window to play in the garden and I made a fairy salad from edible flowers.

    Read all about it, including the recipe for the dressing, over on my Substack.

    (btw, I’m still not sure about writing in two places. Here and Substack. I thought I’d do it for a year and then reassess. Do you have any opinions? I’d love to hear them in the comments.)

    Affordable Art*: ‘Forage’ vase

    (Above: image of the ‘forage’ vase from Jilly Jam Pots borrwed from Felt)

    At just $48, I think this vase is such good value. Handmade, rustic, interesting, very original. The inside is glazed to hold water for the little stems you have foraged from around the place. I love it – so simple and eye-catching. The maker, jilly jam pots, has lots of other goodness in their shop, too, including this little vase that looks like a lotus pod. So good.

    (*To qualify as ‘affordable art’, the item needs to be less than $50 NZD. Let me know if you’ve spotted anything around the internet you think people might enjoy and I’ll share it.)

    Rest in power, Kelly Ana Morey

    As a Gen-X NZ writer, I was shocked and saddened to hear of the death of Kelly Ana Morey.

    Kelly is iconic among my generation of NZ writers. Punky, fierce, funny, no-bullshit, straight from the hip, generous, strong sense of justice and of course, a brilliant writer who didn’t get enough kudos and celebration.

    As my FB feed filled with tributes and lamentations, I was again filled with that deep sense of life is so short and random.

    Tell people you appreciate them now. If people cross your mind – get in touch and tell them you were thinking of them.

    Tell a creaky, broke, vulnerable NZ artist that you love their work TODAY. Or if you can’t be bothered doing that, give them $20 via their online begging bowls or maybe, buy one their creative efforts.

    It’s hard being an artist in NZ:

    “This fucking stupid milk-loving piece of shit dumbass mean-spirited sale at Briscoes racist sexist 40% off deck furniture piss country.”

    as Hera Lindsay Bird once tweeted. (Also iconic.)

    A poem: ‘After Work’ by Gary Snyder

    I love Gary Snyder. Especially this book.

    This week’s poem, ‘After Work’ I thought would be a good one as we (in NZ) leave winter…

    It’s simple, it’s erotic, it’s amusing.

    The stew simmering on the fire is not the only thing simmering.

    & it reflects his Zen-eyes. 

    After Work

    The shack and a few trees
    float in the blowing fog

    I pull out your blouse,
    warm my cold hands
         on your breasts.
    you laugh and shudder
    peeling garlic by the 
         hot iron stove.
    bring in the axe, the rake,
    the wood

    we'll lean on the wall
    against each other
    stew simmering on the fire
    as it grows dark
                drinking wine.

    *

    I think that’s all I have to share this week, friends. Soon we are driving up the Desert Road to visit my folks. I’m hoping there will be snow so we can have a snowball fight and I can take photographs of icicles.

    (I have a poem which mentions the Desert Road.)

    + Happy Fathers Day to all the good Dads in the world…and may the not-good Dads be forgiven so their offspring can find peace in their hearts.

    If I don’t blow away in these horrible spring blusters…I will see you here again next week.

    x Helen

  • Slow-Small Media for the Weekend #10

    (Above: F and I like to have fires in the backyard, whatever the weather. A recent violet dusk.)

    Does it feel to you like the weeks are whizzing by? Friday seems to come around faster and faster lately. Here we are again!

    I’ve had some lovely feedback for these Slow-Small Media digests. Thanks to everyone who has been in touch. I’m so glad you’re enjoying them. I really enjoy ‘foraging’ for things to share with you. 

    A ‘corny’ song

    This week’s addition to the slow-growing Slow-Small Media playlist, is ‘Close My Eyes’ by Arthur Russell. 

    I was new to Arthur Russell until I recently watched this fascinating documentary about him. (I love music documentaries even if I don’t know the subject. I find a lot of new-to-me music this way.) 

    If you’ve been reading these Friday digests since the beginning, you’ll probably know by now that I love nature-based songs, or songs that reference growing food and tending gardens. This beautiful soft song references a corn field: 

    ‘Will the corn be growing a little tonight

    As I wait in the fields for you

    Who knows what grows in the morning light

    When we can feel the watery dew.’

    (I add one carefully-considered song per week. You can find the whole playlist here. It’s nice to listen to on a weekend morning.)

    An ‘Eat the Weeds’ Pesto

    I am a massive Nicola Galloway fan so it meant a lot to me that she gave ‘A Forager’s Life’ a little shout-out in this column in ‘Life and Leisure’ magazine. 

    In the article she shares a delicious version of a foraged weeds pesto.

    Pesto is one of the best ways to ‘sneak’ weeds into your family’s diet if they are weed-resistant. They’ll never know once it’s all blended up and on pasta or some crackers. (Other good ways are soups, smoothies and quiches.) 

    Something to watch: a fascinating wild honey bee conservationist making beautiful hives from wood and rushes

    In the UK, Wild honey bee conservationist and carpenter, Matt Somerville, has designed a beautiful, natural, handmade hive habitat and over the last 14 years has installed 800 (!) for the wild bees. No honey is ever harvested from these hives – they are installed just to support wild honey bee biodiversity. 

    This beautiful 12 minute film about Matt’s work is inspiring in terms of how much of a difference one person with a big passion can make. I so appreciate that he wanted the hives to look appealing as well as being beneficial. 

    Some sweet, sweet cakes that are food for the eyes only: 

    Artist Heather Rios makes delightful cakes from polymer clay and embroidery.

    A feast for the eyes and oddly uplifting to regard, I found.  

     (Above: photograph borrowed from FrogsbyGigi.) 

    Affordable Art: 

    Felt Shop artist Gigi handknits frogs and dresses them in tiny jerseys or overalls.

    They come in under the $50 budge for affordable art and although you might argue they are toys not art, I’ll bet most of them are purchased by adults and then perched on bookshelves and desks…which means they are qualify as works of art. 😉 

    Aren’t they adorable?

    ‘This is the best domestic perfume: an ode to the humble onion

    I like how in this week’s poem William Matthews elevates the humble onion to it’s rightful place as the beginning of many things good in the kitchen. 

    This poem reminds me how good poems are all about looking at things, even humble things, very closely and being curious about what’s to be found there. Over the years, I have written poems about garlic, pasta sauce, my bicycle, and many other tangible things.

    An Anarchist Gardener’s Club on Substack!

    I think I know who the writer is behind this fabulous ‘Anarchist Gardener’s Club’ on Substack…

    …enjoy their call for collective green-fingered mischief!

    “We will cultivate whatever we can.
    We will grow flowers in the cracks.
    We will seed bomb every desolate corner of the scrub land.
    We will enjoy a brew and a biscuit as we do it.”

    Count me in!

    *

    I’m always overly-ambitious for how much I can fit into a weekend.

    Here’s my ‘might-do’ list for this weekend.

    -make kimchi. We got a beautiful cabbage in our CSA box and it’s calling to become kimchi, I think.

    -plant the dahlia bulbs I dug up and divided two weekends ago

    -work on my poetry manuscript some more

    -do some food prep ahead of the week -mostly washing and chopping vegetables- so we are more likely to eat them in salads and stir-fries

    -finish reading this wonderful book by Nadine Hura 

    I think that’s enough of a list, hey? If I even get a couple of those things done I will feel content. 

    What’s on your ‘might do’ list for the weekend?

    Try not to do too much, hey? And always factor in some fun.

  • 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.

    *

  • Slow-Small Media for the Weekend #9

    (Above: low winter sun through some crops gone to seed at the Awapuni Community Garden.)

    Hi lovelies,

    Jeez, another week of scary news in a world gone mad. I hope you are faring okay and doing plenty of sensory, nature-based things off screens to give your nervous systems a chance to recover.

    Winter calls for an encounter with ‘a Wild God’

    Long a favourite poem of mine, I went looking for a shareable version of ‘Sometimes a Wild God‘ by Tom Hirons and saw, to my delight, that you can both read it and listen to it being read by the author here. There’s something about listening to poems read by their authors which is really special.

    This poem speaks to that longing inside us to connect with nature’s raw wildness…how that raw wildness is no joke…and it also has such a great ending. A modern classic, I think.

    Song for the week

    This week’s song is gentle, evocative and sounds a bit like Nick Drake. It’s ‘Crow’ by English ‘folktronica’ band, Tuung.

    As a poet, I can’t fall 100% in love with a song unless the lyrics are thoughtful and interesting. The chorus for this song are so good:

    ‘And we bide our time
    And we shed our skins
    And we shake our bones
    And we sink like stone
    And we crawl through mud
    Til we reach the sky
    And we bide our time.’

    (Listen the full playlist of Slow-Small Media songs here on Youtube.)

    Sally Wise’s ‘Apple Day‘

    Nothing warms my heart like friends and communities getting together to work on food harvests and processing together. (If you didn’t catch it already, here’s an article about some friends and I doing just this with green tomatoes.)

    Australian food writer Sally Wise just wrote about her annual ‘apple day’ here.

    I especially like the photographs. What great seasonal fun.

    Make a liver-cleansing, iron-boosting tonic from a much-maligned weed

    Most people I talk to are unaware that yellow dock, a plant loathed by many, is a powerful medicinal plant.

    When I did a live-cooking event at the Womad Festival last year, one of the things I made was some wild seedy crackers which had yellow dock seed in them which I foraged.

    Dock root is rich in iron, minerals and vitamins. Check out this recipe for an Iron Rich Liver-Cleansing Support Oxymel from one of my favourite New Zealand food writers, Anna Valentine.

    Lot’s of weeds are a bit of a pain, it’s true (hello, tradescantia, hello, convolvulus) …but so many weeds are edible or medicinal. I feel like re-learning all of the offerings of local weeds will be an important passtime for the coming years.

    Here’s to the humble dock plant: mineral-retriever with it’s deep taproot, generous-seed-offerer, cleanser of livers and booster of blood.

    This week’s affordable art: Whakangā

    This week’s affordable art is not wall art, but an artful object, a meditation tool, a little something perfect for the wintery months. This would make a beautiful gift.

    (Above: photo borrowed from the Creative Hive NZ website.)

    It’s a little beeswax candle set from the Creative Hive NZ. Whakangā means in Māori to take a breath, catch your breath, rest, relax or inhale.

    From their website: ‘This beautiful Whakangā set is the perfect addition to your wellbeing with 21 small beeswax candles and an exquisite artisan ceramic kawakawa leaf holder.’

    I think it qualifies as ‘art’ and is very reasonable at just $35.00 for the set.

    This is such a thoughtful product. The tiny candles are made to burn for twenty minutes; just long enough to take a break or meditate. A friend of mine has a set and the candles are so very small and sweet.

    How to make a Wild Food Map of your neighbourhood

    This is a great article from Milkwood Permaculture on how to make a wild food map of your neighbourhood. I haven’t done this but I’d love to. If you have younger kids, it could be a fun activity to get them involved in over the school holidays?

    As well as great instructions on this project, this article has a handy list of links for online community food maps at the end, like Falling Fruit a global map of crowd-sourced information about public fruit trees. It’s very fun to type your address into it and see what’s within walking distance of your house. You can add your local knowledge to it, too.

    Something chill to watch: a Brixton folk artist’s beautiful house and studio

    This short (9min) clip featuring folk artist Abe Odedina on the World of Interiors YT channel is a good time.

    He’s a vibe, and I loved seeing his house and studio. His house is beautiful as is his art. I also appreciated how much he talks about loving being at home. I think since the pandemic, many of us feel the same way, hey?

    (I lived in Brixton a zillion years ago when I was on my travels. I found it such a vibrant, exciting suburb of London.)

    A Manifesto for Stubborn Optimists

    From the Montague Workshop (Brad and Kristi Montague), a Manifesto for Stubborn Optimists:

    ‘We believe that care is courageous.

    Joy is rebellious.

    Wonder is defiance.

    We believe in the builders,

    teachers, growers, healers,

    quiet ones making room at the table,

    the messy middle, the long haul, and

    in the overlooked beauty of a slow repair.’

    This manifesto gave me some solace this week. I love manifestos. I think most things I write end up being thinly disguised manifestos; I can’t help it.

    I’m going to print it out and stick it on my fridge.

    This weekend my oldest ‘baby’ turns 25. Quarter of a century!

    (Above: the oldest baby when he was 4. A favourite pic.)

    I spent my 25th birthday dancing at Duckie London – a queer club night that’s still going! But I started off the night straddled across one of the bronze lions of Trafalger Square in London, drinking straight from a 1.5 litre bottle of Absolut vodka. Classy, aye? (I wasn’t always the quiet homebody I am now.)

    It’s funny, because I remember clearly thinking back then ‘I’m going to climb up here and get on one of the lions…because then I will always remember what I did on my 25th birthday’ …and it worked, I do!

    Anyway, there will be birthday celebrations this weekend and no doubt F and I will have a tipple of whisky and contemplate the bizarre passage of time.

    Hope there are sweet, calm things in your weekend, too. x

  • Slow-Small Media for the Weekend

    Introducing … Slow-Small Media for the Weekend, a weekly digest of things which have caught my eye lately. My hope for these digests is that you can curl up with with a cup of tea over the weekend and enjoy these things as an antidote to the overstimulation of social media. 

    A read

    I’ve been enjoying Kirsten Bradley’s new art/writing project about moon literacy and garden tending.  If you like thoughtful writing about land tending and community care coupled with an art practice (cyanoptye) and folk herbalism…this is for you.

    Her article about progressive pickles and caring for her child particularly resonated with me. I, too, have had to let go of a lot of ideas about what loving family routines ‘should’ look like. I have a family member who dislikes eating with us. He eats his meals alone out on the porch.

    Kirsten writes: 

    ‘I have learned that insisting that we do things in the Family Way (…) was something I needed to let go of. (…) 

    Care can look like learning to pay close attention to what is actually doable for this kid, this day, rather than assuming I know better and pushing them too far.’ 

    Read the full essay here. 

    If you have time, read her other essays, too. All rich, contemplative stuff about nature and art and care. 

    A song

    When I find a song I love, I listen to it over and over and over. It feels like spending time with a friend. This has been my song of early autumn: ‘Time to Bide’ by New Zealand artist, Monty Bevins. It’s a whole journey in one song and a great example of song as storytelling.

    I love the spaciousness of the beginning. The song begins in Māori and then switches to English. Then just as you think you have a handle on what the song is going to be… changes pace. It is a song which demands close-listening. 

    + It’s a song that references cold weather and fires so it is a beautiful one to play loudly beside the fire. 

    Read more about Monty here. 

    A zine

    The Theme Zine is a project which brings together an international cohort of artists and writers to collaborate on zines based around set themes. Their latest issue’s theme is ‘Nature as Sanctuary. It’s beautiful short read (and best read on a laptop so you can enjoy the art). 

    An artist crush

    I love the work of American artist Chelsea Granger. I have her plant oracle deck The Dirt Gems and it is just stunning. Her work is so beautiful, humane, colourful, intimate. It feels like steeping into another world…a better one. If you tap the first tile on the top left, you can then view all her art as a slideshow. Trust me, it’s worth it. You’ll feel better about the world afterwards. 

    A watch 

    I found this short (12 minute) film about the ARK (Acts of Restorative Kindness)rewilding movement so soothing and nourishing for my nervous system, I’ve rewatched it four times over the last week.

    It’s got me thinking about where in my small garden I can intervene even less and ‘rewild’ small pockets for all the other creatures I share this little patch of land with. We (humans) like to try to be in charge of our gardens…it takes some real reprogramming (deprogramming?) to let go of control and let nature do what it is so good at, romping greenly. 

    Read more about the ARK movement.

    + I recommend Mary’s two books, also. I’ve read both and they are beautiful and inspiring. 

    A recipe

    If you were too busy in late summer to make a tomato kusundi, Nicola Galloway has a fantastic version made from feijoas.  If you like Indian flavours and haven’t tried kusundi before you will love this spicy, aromatic pickle. It’s a great thing to have around to liven up winter sandwiches. 

    Or if you are in the northern hemisphere, where spring weeds are springing…here’s a great recipe for wild weed pesto with a guide to some suitable weeds. 

    *

    This weekend I’m planning on sharing a morning tea with friends, making Nicola’s kusundi with our feijoa abundance, painting a new sign for the sharing shelf (the orange one in this post got stolen) and digging up some of my abundant strawberry and yarrow plants to share. 

    Tell me what you’re getting up to in the comments. Happy weekend, friends! 

  • don’t buy a sympathy card, buy this

    Another thing that happened while I was too distracted by the release of ‘A Forager’s Life’ to give it the attention it deserved is that writer Iona Winter published a grief almanac called ‘a liminal gathering‘.

    I submitted poems to it and Iona chose one for the almanac, which I share below. I feel privileged to be amongst the writers, artists, musicians and photographers who are part of this precious container for giving voice to grief.

    Iona’s son, the musician and artist Reuben Winter killed himself in 2020. Since Reuben’s death, Iona has used her skills as a writer and communicator to be public with her grief in service to all who grieve and are silenced, or are too overcome by grief to speak themselves.

    A review of the almanac by Hester Ullyart says, ‘This is a hopeful resource, much needed. A rope of stars thrown out into the murk of grief. I recommend this almanac for every shelf, for death touches us all, and no one need struggle alone.’

    I so agree. This book contains both the intensity of new grief and the wearing plod of long-carried grief. It spans anger, raw shock and emotional pain through to gratitude, reverence, elegy…sometimes in the same piece of work.

    If someone you love loses someone they love, don’t buy a sympathy card, buy them this. You will be giving them the gift of a chorus of voices who dwell in the same place as them, a liminal gathering: grief.

    In his piece in the almanac Dear Reader, Rushi Vyas captures the some of the nuance of grief in his poem’s ending:

    ‘Dear Reader, go outside. Feel everything. The wind is cruel. And full of oxygen. The sun is deadly radiation. And our only source of warmth.’

    -Rushi Vyas

    & here is my poem from the almanac:

    negotiating boundaries with the dead

    grief: week one

    kaimanawa horse in my living room

    wild waters                        white flames

    grief: week two

    flower’s fingers holding medals 

    i’m a hobo pedestaled for bravery

    grief: week three

    in the musty cave mushrooms sprout from armpits

    it’s a total eclipse of the total eclipse

    grief: week four

    hurricane chasers, race to get best footage of worst damage

    a raggedy lone wolf to stare down

    grief week five: 

    bat-infested feeling my way   with echo-location

    drink puddle-water      trying for nutrition by chewing on a husk

    grief: week six

    (but wait there’s more

    were you looking for a neat trajectory?) 

    belly-crawling at toadstool height

    make the bed with a chainsaw

    grief: week seven

    turns out the source of the tinnitus is my own throat’s moaning

    some forest fires happen to crack the open the seeds of amoured shells. But not here.

    Just another searing morning. The petrol pours itself.

  • 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.” 

  • The poem I needed right now, from Mary Walker

    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.

  • many moons

    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.

    helen_rob_gig
    helen_rob

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

    writinginwritingof

    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.

    poetryreading_janetcharmanandfriends

    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