Helen Lehndorf

Tag: poetry

  • 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

  • Graft is launched

    I went to a lovely poetry event in Paekakariki last Saturday – the launch of Lynn Davidson’s ‘Common Land’ (VUP) and a local celebration of the recently launched ‘Graft’ by Helen Heath (VUP). Both poets were interviewed by Paekakariki poet, Dinah Hawken. It was a lovely laid-back affair with mood-lighting, a traditional ‘hall supper’, wine, tea and live music after the poetry. Quite relaxed and wonderful!

    Here are Dinah Hawken, Lynn Davidson and Helen Heath:

    Here are two of my dear friends, whom I love very much and who will probably kill me for putting a photograph of them on the internet:

    Here is a random shot of some people enjoying the night – I wanted to show you the beautiful rose-lamp! :

    Congratulations, Helen, on all the ‘graft’ that went into this terrific book. It has certainly paid off – what a great achievement!

    ‘Graft’ is rich and carefully-crafted book. There are affecting and emotional poems about the terroire of motherhood and grief. There are sad/funny/sad poems about a composite character from the Hutt Vally called ‘Justine’. There are playful and moving poems about science and scientists. In short, there is a lot going on in this slim volume and it is a dense, satisfying read.

    Here’s to charmed evenings in little town halls, with moody lighting, poetry, live music and home-made lamingtons! I could do that every Saturday…