Tag: Tuesday Poem

Tuesday Poem: Impertinent To Sailors

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Curved over islands, the world
dragged me south in a talkative year

slipping Southampton
as the band played a distant farewell.

It was better than steerage,
that assisted passage: ten pound Poms

at sixpence the dozen, promenading
in sun frocks, gathering for quoits,

angling, in an understated way,
for a seat at the Captain’s table —

while I, a child, roamed decks, became
impertinent to sailors.

And the heat! My dear, there never were
such days — rum, romance,

the rudiments of ska. Panama beckoned,
locks pulsing like the birth canal.

We passed through, to be rocked
on the swells of the quiet ocean,

its long unshaded days
of trade winds, doldrums, Equator —

then a cold shore,
a bureaucratic harbour,

and the half of a world
it would take to say goodbye.

“Impertinent To Sailors” was published in JAAM 27 (2009), edited by Ingrid Horrocks, under the title “Over Islands”. I plan to include it in my forthcoming collection “Men Briefly Explained”.

Check out all the Tuesday Poems on the Tuesday Poem Blog – including the poem by Kerry Popplewell I’ve selected as this week’s “hub” Tuesday Poem.

You can buy books by Tim Jones online!

Tuesday Poem: Family Man

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Family Man

My double relishes his freedom to move
through narrative and time. You’ll find him

in the trunks of burned-out cars,
in the cat seat of history, riding pillion

as the motorcade fails to take the bend.
On the red carpet, just behind the stars,

he whispers poison in each lovely ear.
He’s the sine qua non, the ne plus ultra,

the hand chained to the plague ship’s tiller,
the indispensable figure of the fifth act.

But now he’s taken to hanging round the house,
not picking up, showing the boy amusing tricks

and games to play with string. I’m bored,
my double tells me, and:- how can you stand

to live this way? I look into his empty face.
You’re the one who chose to fall in love, I say.

Notes

“Family Man” was published in JAAM 27 (2009), edited by Ingrid Horrocks, and I plan to include it in my forthcoming collection “Men Briefly Explained”.

‘The indispensable figure of the fifth act’ is an epithet applied to himself by Pechorin, the anti-hero of Mikhail Lermontov’s great early Russian novel A Hero Of Our Time, in the translation by Paul Foote. For what it’s worth, Pechorin – named after the River Pechora in Russia – is a double of Pushkin’s Eugene Onegin, named after the River Onega. I’m not sure I had that in mind when I wrote the poem, though.

Check out all the Tuesday Poems on the Tuesday Poem Blog.

You can buy books by Tim Jones online!

Tuesday Poem: An Alien’s Notes on first seeing a prunus-plum tree, by Jane Matheson

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An Alien’s Notes on first seeing a prunus-plum tree
by Jane Matheson

This is a device for recycling air
…so intelligently functional in its design
yet aesthetically pleasing in its line.
These delicate rose-petalled flowers…
so soft to stroke, you can do it for hours!
It is wondrous too
that in the heat of the summer sun,
these flowers become
marble-sized ruby-red rounds
of delectable fruit-flesh.

Humans call it a prunus-plum tree
I would very much like
to take it back with me.

This poem is included in Voyagers: Science Fiction Poetry from New Zealand, edited by Mark Pirie and Tim Jones (Interactive Press, 2009).

Voyagers cover

You can buy Voyagers from Amazon.com as a paperback or Kindle e-book, or from New Zealand Books Abroad, or Fishpond.

You can also find out more about Voyagers, and buy it directly from the publisher, at the Voyagers mini-site.

You can buy books by Tim Jones online!

Tuesday Poem: Icarus, by Vana Manasiadis

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Icarus

This is the truth of it: Icarus was dead set on seeing whether the Wa Hine
existed – that’s why he took off one day.
His father had said: If you go, you’ll need the constitution to match –
a strong will, a top navigational ability.
If you are successful, you can be whoever you please – discoverer, inventor.
Then again, should you fail, you’ll fall into the sea and drown.
You could breathe some life into these though,
glue new feathers into the empty spaces –
kiwi will do, moa would be better.

The trip was not easy. Twisters and tsunamis threatened Icarus at every turn. His wings
drooped under the weight of monsoons.
But he managed to remain airborne until he reached the Miramar Peninsula
where a storm, perhaps even a cyclone, was blowing.
He was tossed onto the paths of uprooted trees and roofing iron,
stray doors, and pots, and seaweed.
He got lost in laundry,
he tired, he sank.

Fishermen who’d been called to the siren’s aid, came across Icarus bobbing
in the water around Barrett’s rock;
his wings spread about him. Mr Rawhiti pulled him up.
He said awesomely: what a kalo kahu huruhuru,
a fine feathered cloak.
He said: a chief’s son.

Vana Manasiadis formerly lived in Wellington, and currently lives in Crete. “Icarus” is taken from her first poetry collection, Ithaca Island Bay Leaves (2009). I will be interviewing Vana on my blog later this week.

Ithaca Island Bay Leaves is available from the publisher, Seraph Press, and from independent bookshops around New Zealand, including Unity Books; Otago University Bookshop; The Women’s Bookshop (Auckland); Parsons Books (Auckland); Scorpio Books (Christchurch); Time Out Bookstore (Auckland); Page & Blackmore (Nelson).

It can be ordered through any bookshop, using its ISBN: 978-0-473-15235-2

For other Tuesday Poems, see the Tuesday Poem blog.

You can buy books by Tim Jones online!

Tuesday Poem: Honey Moon

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Honey Moon

When you moved through the cold
a fierce essential flame

I warmed myself at your altar.
Night

ate the afterbirth of day.
Birdsong wrestled with silence.

You covered me in stolen light –
this new and secret skin.

“Honey Moon” was originally published in the New Zealand Listener on 18 March 2006, and is one of the poems I plan to include in my forthcoming collection Men Briefly Explained.

See the Tuesday Poem blog for lots more Tuesday Poems!

You can buy books by Tim Jones online!

Tuesday Poem: A Left Hook, by John O’Connor

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A Left Hook

an early experience
of the left hook (admirably

tight if open-handed) came
at the beatific hand of

Monseigneur O’Dea – too
old to be a parish priest – who

about to impart the very
body & blood of Christ found I

was not holding the paten
correctly. a few years later

an equally irascible boxing
coach imparted impeccable

advice on how to throw it,
though he didn’t know the bit

about feinting with Jesus.
when the good monseigneur

had his final photo taken
he bestowed a copy on our family

– old friends should be so blessed –
for a decade it sat on the mantelpiece

between a bunch of plastic grapes
& a glass bowl that snowed if shaken.

This poem is from John O’Connor’s recently published Cornelius & Co: Collected Working-Class Verse 1996-2009 (Post Pressed, Queensland, 2010). I will review this collection in my next blog post.

The NZ distributor is: David & Wendy Ault, Madras Café Books, 165 Madras Street, Otautahi/Christchurch, Aotearoa New Zealand 8011; Phone 03 365 8585, Fax 03 365 8584, Mobile 021 284 8585, email info (at) madrascafebooks.co.nz

Mary McCallum’s Tuesday Poem initiative now has its own Tuesday Poem blog. Check out the poem posted there, and other Tuesday Poems via the links on the left of this page.

Poetry Reading Series – Christchurch and Dunedin

The autumn poetry reading series in Christchurch is well underway, and fortnightly reading sessions in Dunedin are about to start. Check out this post for the remainder of the Christchurch series, and Kay McKenzie Cooke’s blog for details of the Dunedin series (and a really good SF poem!).
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You can buy books by Tim Jones online!

Tuesday Poem: Tuesdays

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Tuesdays

On Tuesdays
when we should be making love
we sneak off to the movies instead.

You hold my hand.
I eat an ice-cream
that I don’t need and do not deserve.

It isn’t art: Van Helsing.
Hellboy. Harry Potter 3.
But it’s what you like

and I tag along, looking
for the joins in the CGI
and enjoying this escape

from the sunlit outer world.
Where we blink. We kiss.
Adult again, we go our separate ways.

I couldn’t really pass up an opportunity to go all meta for my second contribution to the excellent Tuesday Poem initiative started by Mary McCallum (check out her blog for the details, including other bloggers taking part – the current list is also at the bottom of this post).

I didn’t write Tuesdays specifically to be a Tuesday Poem – it was first published in the New Zealand Listener on 30 April 2005 and is included in my most recent poetry collection, All Blacks’ Kitchen Gardens (see below).

Tuesdays is cheap movies day in Wellington.

If you’d like a copy of All Blacks’ Kitchen Gardens, the easiest way is to order one directly from me, via an email to senjmito (at) gmail.com. Within New Zealand, that will cost you $15 including postage & packing. If you’re from overseas, please get in touch and I’ll let you know the total cost.

Till next Tuesday …

Cover image of All Blacks Kitchen Gardens composed and photographed by John Girdlestone.

The Tuesday Poets lineup

NZ poets

claire beynon 
harvey molloy
tim jones
helen heath
helen rickerby
ilikesweating
fifi colston 
paradoxical cat
kay mckenzie cooke
penelope todd
cilla mcqueen – nz poet laureate – who posts monday, wednesday, friday

Overseas Poets

Premium T
Vespersparrow

You can buy books by Tim Jones online!

Tuesday Poem: Shostakovich In America

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Shostakovich in America

1959, November. The plumed De Soto
hammers on, freshman driver
burning up the plains.

Freedom! The Kappa Gamma Beta boys
can never catch him now. They’re back east
in the studio, where Ormandy

shrugs and starts recording.
Dmitri has better things to do. This is
his jazz age, his lost weekend.

An upstate college, denuded branches
scrawled across the moon. He nestles
in a co-ed’s bed. Dreams

drag him back to the Kremlin:
always the bottle of Georgian wine,
always the black telephone.

Dawn is coffee, hesitant smiles,
the wordless bond of night
knotting itself into language.

She is summer, America, forgetting.
“You were flailing your arms,”
she says. “Conducting.”

He kisses, disentangles, turns the key.
His car roars over the siloed plains,
eastwards into the morning.

“Shostakovich in America” was originally published in Issue 11 of Bravado magazine, and is one of the poems I plan to include in my forthcoming collection Men Briefly Explained.

Dmitri Shostakovich did visit the USA in 1959, and did record with Eugene Ormandy. The rest is imagined.

Author, poet and blogger Mary McCallum has started an initiative called “Tuesday Poem” on her blog, and suggested that other poets do likewise – posting a poem, by themselves or anothr poet, each Tuesday. I’m not promising to post a poem every Tuesday, but it sounds like a good plan to me for those who can manage this. If that’s you, then go for it – and check out Mary’s blog for news of others who are doing so.

UPDATE: I had a pleasant surprise a day after this Tuesday Poem was published – an email from the editor of the world’s only journal devoted to Dmitri Shostakovich, asking permission to reprint “Shostakovich in America” in the journal, which I was very happy to grant.

I’m beginning to come round to the Tuesday Poem way of thinking…

You can buy books by Tim Jones online!