Tuesday Poem: Memorial (for Jonathan Franzen)

Memorial
for Jonathan Franzen

Arms outstretched, the novelist
stands amid the ruins of nature.

It’s a curated nature: his
cultivated rescue garden,

a scoop of hills and plains,
wind large among dead pines and dying needles.

He has gathered all the birds, these valiant
survivors of drought and storm

into one remaining protected preserve:
the last refuge of wildness, this circle of life

kept smoothly spinning by selfless human cogs,
volunteers who’ve let the world go to hell

in the service of saving a fragment. This
is their last best hope, their final stand.

But climate, the revenger’s tragedy of the commons,
cannot be bought off or set aside.

Their predator-proof fences, their best
intentions, have no effect on fire or air.

Lightning sparks a firestorm, trees
adding their carbon to the oversaturated sky.

Birds roast in the updrafts, volunteers
are crisped below. In the aftermath,

the novelist arrives, surveys
the ruins of the little world he’s made,

and stretches out his arms. Tiny skeletons
flutter to perch on his scarecrow bones.


Credit note: This poem is included in my new collection New Sea Land (Mākaro Press, 2016). It is previously unpublished.

Tim says: Why is this poem addressed to Jonathan Franzen? Because he wrote this article for The New Yorker in 2015:

• Carbon Capture: Has climate change made it harder for people to care about conservation?

The central thesis of this article, as I read it, is that because contemplating the likely effects of climate change is too depressing, and because taking action on it is too hard, it's better (or at least, it's better for Jonathan Franzen) to focus on try to save what he's most interested in - birds.

I'm a big fan of wildlife conservation and bird sanctuaries - on our offshore islands, on mainland islands, and maybe even nationwide at some point. But to imagine that birds can be exempted from the effects of climate change is short-sighted and self-defeating.

Fortunately, New Zealand groups such as Forest & Bird are well aware of the risk climate change poses to New Zealand's birds and forests. Jonathan Franzen's love of birds does him credit,and I'd love to see him place that in a wider context.

National Poetry Day on 26 August: Events in the Hutt and Wellington

National Poetry Day is coming up on Friday 26 August - two days after my new collection New Sea land is launched.

There are events all round the country, including a whole bunch in the Hutt Valley and Wellington.

I'm due to take part in three events on the day, the first two organised by New Sea Land publisher Mākaro Press:

• 12noon-1.15pm: Poets in the Park: A National Poetry Day Event: Glover Park, Ghuznee St Wellington
• 2pm-3.15pm: Buckets of Poets: A National Poetry Day Event: Bucket Fountain, Cuba Mall, Wellington
• 7.30pm-10pm: "Poems of the Season and the Land". This event, at St Mary's Church, 56 Woburn Rd, Lower Hutt (see map), features a great lineup of poets. Check out the poster below!

I'll have my new poetry collection New Sea Land available for sale at these events.

 

You're Warmly Invited To The Launch of My New Poetry Collection "New Sea Land"

You're warmly invited to the launch of my new poetry collection, "New Sea Land", published by Mākaro Press, at Te Aro's new bookshop, Ekor Bookshop and Cafe at 17b College St opposite Moore Wilson's (see map).

The launch is on Wednesday 24 August, starting at 6pm with the traditional drinks and nibbles. The formalities will start at 6.30pm, with the book to be launched by Harvey Molloy.

These are poems of the land, sea and shore - and of what happens when the sea rises up to claim the land. I hope you'll join me to celebrate the launch!

There is also a Facebook event for the launch - please join and share! Alternatively, please RSVP to senjmito@gmail.com

Tuesday Poem: Spitsbergen, a poem from my new collection "New Sea Land"

As soon as winter lifts they come,
straggling up from Europe, blank-faced,
bearing the burdens of families, of the diseases
that chase them north from the burning lands
to those that are merely falling apart.

So many miles of ocean. So small the boats
that thread the lanes of iceberg and storm,
upsetting, overturning, sudden frozen death
in the heaving seas that freshwater melt
keeps no less frigid than before.

Faces greyed with suffering. Tiny bodies

clutched in shivered arms. Small treasures, euros,
tucked into boots and inner pockets. The smugglers
turning south to try their luck again. The shore
a frieze of shattered bodies, splintered wood.

They come north, and we do our best,
here in our slim green habitable fringe
between rising sea and dying ice.
We do our best, but we are overwhelmed,
and there is nowhere further north to go.

Credit note: "Spitsbergen" is previously unpublished. It will appear in my new poetry collection New Sea Land, published next month by Mākaro Press.

Tim says: Spitsbergen is the largest island of Svalbard, an island group administered by Norway in the High Arctic, well north of Iceland and Norway itself. About 3000 people live there, mainly in the capital, Longyearbyen. It's not a very green place at the moment, but with the High Arctic warming very rapidly at the moment, that could soon change.

New Sea Land: New Poetry, Coming This August

I'm excited!

This is the cover of my new poetry collection, coming in August from Mākaro Press, RRP $25. Stay tuned for plenty more information, including details of the launch, how to buy the book, and lots more!

The cover image is by Claire Beynon - thanks, Claire! Check out Claire's website and the Honeycomb Project.

Tuesday Poem: Messages, by Polina Kouzminova

Happiness is a big city.
Taxi cab rush, whisks of hair.
Polka dots of rain on the windows,
clearing under the heat wave of shimmering sun.
Street signs weave stories.
I’m more than my usual self – home abandoned
for a small heated teacup on a street I thought I knew,
felt comfortable living in it…art in museums
screams so loud with reproductions of nudes,
but this isn’t Paris, and the years are not the same.

There’s a bus full of people, and it’s heading my way.
Soon, I’ll be gone, having captured that bit of happiness -
from a stranger, some sight my eye followed,
an emotion getting larger and larger under the heat
of the day. But this is not a remedy. It never was.

All year from November until the next, – trying to weave stories
out of starts and exits, as if Alice in a modern wonderland;
that purple cocktail did the trick, for a bit –

forgotten waves
lay at rest, at peace, but not in silence.

Shells to my ears,
murmur of something, some message being scribbled at night
inside my head.
All through the day – unravelling, but never really discovering,
until my eyes turned to the Coast. I sort of stumbled, – I am…
I’m in you, whenever nature breathes fairy tales.

To watch the grass grow, feel the wave
tumbling and twisting, a sense of being together at once,
in that initial moment, – if just for a bit.

Credit note: "Messages" by Polina Kouzminova, is included in the "Poetry Gees" anthology edited by Mark Pirie and published in conjunction with the Poetry Gees Winter Reading on 17 July. It is reproduced here by the permission of the author and the publisher.

Tim says: I like the sense of dislocation, and relocation, in this poem. I've only just discovered Polina's poetry, but based on the little I have read so far, I am keen to read and hear more of her work.

Author bio: Born in Siberia and raised in New Zealand from the age of ten, Polina Kouzminova weaves the threads of both cultures into poetry. These are poems of snow and water, and just as water reflects, her poems echo not only each other, but also her own reflections on the lover who leaves, the family left behind and the universe that is waiting for her. Polina’s world shimmers with snowflakes, glaciers and condensation on glass, and there is always a sense of missing. She writes: ‘These are the reasons to leave late nights and fly back home’.

Polina's first collection an echo where you lie is published by and available from Mākaro Press.

The Winter Readings Are Back!

I was going to do a blog post about British turkeys voting for Christmas (or, to put it in Marxist terms from a bygone era, false consciousness), but it's too discouraging - and negative. So I  shall blog about something good instead!

After a hiatus of several years, the HeadworX Winter Reading Series is back! Albeit in cut-down form, because this year it's a single reading:

You are invited to a poetry reading:

Winter Readings 2016 – Poetry Gees

This year’s Winter Readings celebrates the

return of Winter Readings itself, a popular event at

the City Gallery in Wellington 2003-2008. Each

event featured a tribute to an album or group.

This year’s readings form a tribute to the Bee Gees.

Sunday, 17 July 2016

Poets: MaryJane Thomson, Mark Pirie, Rob Hack,

Polina Kouzminova, Michael O’Leary and Jeanne

Bernhardt (Otago).

Venue: St Peter’s Hall, Beach Rd, Paekakariki.

Time: 2-4pm. (see map)

Admission to the reading is by koha. Books for

sale from 2.00pm. No refreshments will be served.

The Main Street houses cafes and a bar close by,

for those who arrive early.

Earl of Seacliff Art Workshop (ESAW) will publish

an anthology of poems by the readers featured to

celebrate the event.

Winter Readings are presented by:

HeadworX Publishers

Paekakariki Community Trust

Poetry Archive Trust

Earl of Seacliff Art Workshop

I hope to run a poem from this booklet as a Tuesday Poem next week.