Tuesday Poem: I Would Rather..., by Laurice Gilbert

I would rather…

·         cut my toenails in the dark with a machete

·         slash my wrists and lie bleeding in a puddle of leeches

·         self-diagnose a suspicious lump by looking it up on the internet

·         roll cheese at Coopers Hill, run with the bulls at Pamplona,  swim with the sharks in Shark Alley

·         trek across Central Australia in bare feet and a black crushed velvet Goth dress

·         answer an online dating ad for an outgoing, intelligent and well-travelled professional man with his own successful business

·         visit Liberia without anti-malarial tablets, climb Everest without oxygen, hitch-hike in Afghanistan in a mini-skirt

·         recite poetry naked in Manners Mall on a Friday night in July

·         drink water from the Ganges during a cholera epidemic

·         go back to university to study accounting

·         have the soles of my feet tattooed

than write another funding application to Creative New Zealand 

Credit note: This poem first appeared in Valley Micropress (May 2010), where Laurice Gilbert was the Featured Poet, and is the final poem in Laurice's first collection, My Family & Other Strangers (Academy Aotearoa Press, 2012). It is reproduced by permission of the author.

You can purchase My Family & Other Strangers for $12 by:

(a) PayPal - linked from this page: http://www.poetrysociety.org.nz/aboutlaurice

(b) Emailing Laurice at laurice.gilbert@paradise.net.nz to get bank account details for direct credit.

Tim says: I went to the launch of Laurice's collection this past Sunday. It was a warm and fun launch, filled with family and friends, and introduced by a witty slideshow compiled by Laurice's husband Wally Potts, with well-timed interjections from Laurice. The collection is full of lovely poems about family, and I had decided to ask Laurice if I could use one of them as my Tuesday Poem, when she closed the reading with the poem above. How could I resist?

But, since it's Christmas, I want to wish a Merry Christmas and/or Happy Holidays to all poets and lovers of poetry; to the frustrated compilers of grant applications and the  inscrutable examiners of grant applications alike; to saint and sinner, publican and publicist; to the long and the short and the tall, and all the ships at sea. I hope everyone has the chance for, and enjoys, a lovely and well-deserved holiday.

The Tuesday Poem: Wonderfully rounds out the year.