NZ Poet Laureate

Higgs 17

2009-11-20T09:00:00.000+13:00

The arches of Eric’s eyebrows uphold three horizontal lines across his freckled forehead. The wrinkles deepen as he glances up, keen-eyed.
Are you with me?

Jo. Bap. Piranesi Veneti architectus. F. Polanzani faciebat. 1750. Super permissu.
Reference Number: C-091-001

Higgs 16

2009-11-18T09:00:00.000+13:00

The more imagination grasps at the idea the greater the void created.

Taieri Pet at Middlemarch
Reference Number: WA-28295-F

Higgs 15

2009-11-16T09:00:00.001+13:00

Murphy’s particle, he repeats emphatically.
You have to allow for the Higgs, sine qua non,
absolutely nothing at all.

Rooms with a view; the Empire Hotel on the corner of Shakespeare Road and Brewster Street.
Reference Number: B-155-018

Higgs 14

2009-11-13T09:00:00.000+13:00

The scones are satisfying.

Blast cloud as explosives are used to create the spillway intake at the Benmore hydroelectric project
Reference Number: PAColl-8557-35

Higgs 13

2009-11-11T09:00:00.000+13:00

He cleans his glasses on his tie and puts them on again straight.
We might just be looking at NGC 1595 or NGC 1598!

Beneath the pale moonbeam's misty light, just you and I dear
Reference Number: E-628-038

Higgs 12

2009-11-09T09:00:00.000+13:00

Alpha Caeli, Eric states, has a diminutive M-class red dwarf companion
in a very wide orbit.
Lacaille saw a pair of chisels tied with ribbon

Maori needle, tattooing chisel and bird holding ring
Reference Number: 1/1-007559-G

Higgs 11

2009-11-06T16:45:00.000+13:00

Nought but the grin etched in mind,
the last miaow of Blossom who died bolt upright like a Queen.

Old Man rock or Queen Victoria, Puponga, ca 1939
Reference Number: 1/2-009677-F

Higgs 10

2009-11-04T09:00:00.000+13:00

Look up, affected by the gaze from the apple tree outside the window
of the same tabby cat, or one similar.

View through a window, (Wellington ?)
Reference Number: 35mm-25542-26-F

Higgs 9

2009-11-02T09:47:00.001+13:00

A cup of tea, make scones for Eric the Red
who might turn up tonight with his telescope.
The almanac open at the page on Caelum,
etched in the heavens between Columba and Eridanus.

Study, Sir Frederic Truby King's house, Melrose, Wellington
Reference Number: PAColl-6301-87

Higgs 8

2009-10-30T09:39:00.001+13:00

Go home. With a chisel ruin the frame, climb through the window.
A duplicate, a duplicate,

Trowel for cultivating window boxes
Reference Number: 114/111/02-G

Higgs 7

2009-10-28T10:23:00.000+13:00

Find the opening, stride through tall resistance, arms covering the face;
slide into the stream.
The keys unseen. Nor palpable among the boggy roots.

View of Mt Dumas, Campbell Island
Reference Number: PA12-1423-012

Higgs 6

2009-10-26T09:00:00.000+13:00

Until a tabby cat
appears, stares, disappears.

Ann Finnimore surrounded by vases of flowers
Reference Number: 1/2-147836-F

Higgs 5

2009-10-23T09:00:00.000+13:00

Hurry back down the bank steeper from above,
retrace the slippery track under the lupins,
brush off lupin flowers in a clearing edged with serried russet stalks,
no passage visible.

Plan showing the structure of an observatory tent
Reference Number: B-091-008

Higgs 4

2009-10-21T09:00:00.000+13:00

Feel for keys, braille-fingered over pen, lipstick, purse, phone, cards, diary, paper-clip. Not a jingle.

Flowers in fields near Sfax, Tunisia
Reference Number: DA-03012-F

Higgs 3

2009-10-19T09:00:00.001+13:00

One wet shoe, damp pages stick together, gold high heels dancing,
a dress the colour of wild lupins, mascara, holidays, bin it.

Poul Gnatt and Julie Barker on sand dunes at Bethells Beach, January 1954
Reference Number: KW-0001-G

Higgs 2

2009-10-16T09:00:00.000+13:00

Jump the stream, land in tough bracken.
A narrow track through lupins up the bank to the road, not a short cut.

Buller [1846?]
Reference Number: WC-325

Welcome to 'Serial'

2009-10-14T10:00:00.001+13:00

Kia ora from Cilla McQueen.

Welcome to Serial, an ongoing publication with images from the collections of the National Library of New Zealand Te Puna Mātauranga o Aotearoa.

Keep an eye on this blog for installments every Monday, Wednesday and Friday. The first chapter is titled 'Higgs'.

Higgs 1

Through waist-high grass cut through the empty section.
Bend to retrieve the glossy supplement falling out of the newspaper.
Slip ankle-deep in muddy water

Tussock grass plant aciphylla colensoi, 1961
Reference Number: 1/4-044636-F

it's cilla

2009-07-20T13:09:00.003+12:00

It's official – the NZ Poet Laureate for 2009-2011 is Southland's own Cilla McQueen, from Bluff. We in the north remember the warmth with which Cilla welcomed a gang of 22 poets to her home ground for the BLUFF 06 symposium. We remember the fabulous hospitality of Te Rau Aroha Marae where we stayed and where Cilla launched her CD, A Wind Harp, with that inimitable smoky voice and backing from the Blue Neutrinos. Then there was the trip to Rakiura (Stewart Island) for the second leg of the symposium, a big reading in the community hall at Oban. Cilla, we will never forget the south, and from all points north we salute you and extend our love and good wishes as you begin your laureateship. Arohanui!

Rob Allan, Tusiata Avia, Jeanne Bernhardt, Hilary Chung, Kay McKenzie Cooke, John Dolan, Jacob Edmond, Martin Edmond, Murray Edmond, David Eggleton, Cliff Fell, Brian Flaherty, Paula Green, Michael Harlow, Bernadette Hall, Jeffrey Paparoa Holman, David Howard, Alison Hunt, Michele Leggott, Bronwyn Lloyd, Therese Lloyd, Selina Tusitala Marsh, Emma Neale, Richard Reeve, Jack Ross, Helen Sword and Lisa Williams.

Here is Cilla's poem from OBAN 06, the online anthology that was compiled and launched during the symposium:

FOVEAUX EXPRESS

Diesel sounds aromatic
magenta, oxblood,
mineral smooth
any how as boronia

swivel that levers
a shoepolish lid,
key curls oily metal.
Poetry takes you apart,

puts you back different
as this day's passage
on shapeshifting water,
one to another island

swift as the stroke
of a pen the toothed strait
on the whale's path
chewed through, islets

scattered between,
text in motion
gimballed on muscling
swells, word-ware, cargo.

Bluff, April 2006

Images from top:
1. Cilla McQueen and Richard Reeve check the marine forecast en route for Rakiura on the Foveaux Express, 23 April 2005
2. Early morning at Te Rau Aroha Marae, the wharenui carved by Cliff Whiting
3. View from the harbour at Oban

Photo credits: Brian Flaherty and Alison Hunt

Molly again

2009-07-20T11:36:00.003+12:00

In September last year Michele wrote about Mollie the Ohakune elephant. To mark the end of Michele's laureateship, writer, blogger and crafter Bronwyn Lloyd made the Molly you can see here.

You can read more about this Molly on Bronwyn's blog.

the last two and a half months

2009-07-16T09:00:00.001+12:00

The final stretch of the inaugural laureateship was as busy as the rest of it. Here is the date list:

20 April Guest speaker and reader at Devonport Rotary Club meeting.

29 April MC for LOUNGE #7 (note:PDF) ten readers doing five minutes apiece, one of the biggest readings to date with over 70 people packed into the Old Government House Lounge, Auckland. Photos here (note:PDF).

11 May Launch speaker for Chris Price’s new book of poems The Blind Singer at the Gus Fisher Gallery in Auckland. Chris performed with partner Robbie Duncan and pianist / composer Jonathan Besser. Graham Beattie blogged the occasion here.

18 May Guest lecture and reading for Jack Ross’s stage two Life-writing course at Massey University, Albany campus. We discussed researching family history by means of the treasures from Papers Past.

27 May MC and reader for LOUNGE #8 (note:PDF) at Old Government House, Auckland. Photos here (note:PDF). LOUNGE will resume August-October with another three readings. The series is archived here.

2 June Launch of Phantom Billstickers poem posters in Auckland with Tusiata Avia, James Milne and others. View the video Poem Posters to the World and look out for further poster runs as the Phantoms sort almost 400 poems sent to them for consideration.

11 June Workshop at Stanley Bay School, Devonport, to launch the community project A Million Poems for Matariki.

17 June Guest speaker and reader at the University of Auckland’s Schools Partnership dinner, ‘A Hint of Gold.’

19 June Launch of A Million Poems for Matariki at Devonport Primary School.

24 June Start of Matariki 2009 and launch of Mirabile Dictu at the Devonport Public Library.

30 June Launch of Mirabile Dictu and Michele Leggott / The Laureate Series at the National Library in Wellington.

7 July Guest poet for Poetry Live with musician Jonathan Besser at The Thirsty Dog in K Road, Auckland. We excerpted a quartet of poems from Mirabile Dictu and presented them as ‘dog dove elephant parrot.’

Coming up

22 July Celebrating the new laureate with the National Library and Phantom Billstickers in Wellington.

24 July Reader with Murray Edmong, Bob Orr, Ian Wedde and others at Poetry Central 2009 at Auckland Central City Library. The event celebrates John Newton’s The Double Rainbow, a fascinating enquiry into James K Baxter’s impact on the tangata whenua and the young people who came to Jerusalem in the 1970s.

26 July MC and reader with Helen Sword and Sonja Yelich for A Million Poems for Matariki: Reading at The Depot in Devonport 1-3 pm, where some of the 1000-plus poster poems will be read and book prizes given away.

2 August Guest speaker for Retina NZ meeting in Parnell, Auckland.

7 August Workshop with Poukawa School in Hawke’s Bay. More poems, more posters, more chalk!

a sky-ful of poems

2009-07-14T14:35:00.005+12:00

A Million Poems for Matariki brought more than 1000 poster poems from school children and others to the streets of Devonport, Bayswater and Belmont last week. The community coordinator, Maire Vieth (who took these and some of the chalking photos posted earlier) spent the weekend before last blu-tacking the posters in 75 local shops and community spaces.

At the end of next week the posters will be taken down for a poetry reading Sunday 26 July 1-3 pm at The Depot in Devonport. Everyone is invited to come and read a poem for Matariki (their own or someone else’s) and book prizes will be given away. Maire plans to have the posters bound into volumes that will be presented to the Devonport Library to commemorate the project.

listen up

2009-07-06T15:44:00.003+12:00

A recording of Michele reading 'letter to dulcie jackson', from Mirabile Dictu and the third New Zealand Poets / The Laureate Series CD, is now available for your listening pleasure.

the book and the cd

2009-07-03T17:46:00.001+12:00

It’s done and (almost) dusted! The laureateship is finished (long live the laureateship) and in Wellington on Tuesday 30 June the book and the cd were launched in style at the National Library. Chris Szekely, head of the Alexander Turnbull Library, was MC for the evening, introducing Sam Elworthy, Auckland UP’s publisher and Ian Wedde, who launched Mirabile Dictu. Congratulations to Ian who is the just-announced 2009 University of Auckland / Creative NZ Writer in Residence at the Michael King Writers’ Centre.

Elizabeth Caffin, long-time director of Auckland UP and publisher of my books 1991 through 2005, then launched the third cd of New Zealand Poets / The Laureate Series, a selection of my work from Like This? (1988) to Mirabile Dictu. My thanks and admiration go to Robbie Duncan and Chris Price of Braeburn Studio for their dedication to the task of getting quality recordings from the difficult situation of a sight-impaired poet reading from a touch screen laptop. It seems to work, but only after much technical ingenuity on Robbie’s part.

The finale of the evening was a words and music performance by Robbie, Chris and I of ‘letter to dulcie jackson,’ my grudge poem about the frustrations of learning to touch type at the end of last year. I still don’t type fast or very well, but the poem is a lot of fun to perform, especially with the addition of musicians and Aesop, the talking keyboard on loan from the Foundation of the Blind. ‘letter to dulcie jackson’ is in Mirabile Dictu and on the cd.

letter to dulcie jackson

dulcie jackson is someone
I want to meet     she waits
at the close of lesson 15     undecided
about the quote on her alterations
which is higher than she expected
but even to talk about this
I have to leap ahead
or look at some of my fingers
how long will it take I wonder
to get it all together    dulcie
I wish I was there with you
we would lift a glass     a real glass
to those weird characters I met
along the way     the builders
with their bright blue bricks
the child who cut the cherry cake
and the burglars hiding
by the blackberry bushes    they are
so sweetly idiotic    they deliver
the vehicles carefully      dulcie
can you have a word with them please
we need q z x      the numerals
the commands and all the punctuation
dotted about the stalls at the village fair
this silky tie really is stylish
they say they study their salary
she yells as fiery tigers terrify her
dulcie     I have just one more thing
to say to you      !@#$%^&*()      !@#$%^&*()
cabbages in a row      grilled fish      or maybe
the tester tasting the fatal tarts
I am writing this with my eyes
closed      I am writing this
with my eyes xlosed      trying hard
to picture your face above
my belief that beef is the best buy
dad’s red leather shed in the suburbs
and some of the sillier circular saws
are you pretty      do you have
a soft heart      certainly your best
foot went west some time ago
I saw it making tracks with
one of the huge baboons we loosed
from the metropolitan library     see
what I mean      nothing is innocent
this year the dairy sells yeast
your vegetables were halfprice
at the market yesterday     I had
no o no n m p or w but they have
to be here so I skipped the dumb lamb
cucumber formalities and let them in
woo moon now poop mow noon moo
they have received their velvet jackets
my eyes are still closed      what
will happen when I remove
the slinky covers      dulcie will you be
all smiles and jiggles      waiting
impatiently for the poem of the universe
to begin its fevered song      the pitch
of the upright piano is almost
perfect      opulent purple poplin drifts
across the canopies of the bazaar
usually they live very active lives
he suggests a dull red rug at the hut
zebras and gazelles arrive with axes
zebras and gazelles arrive with bazookas
dulcie is your dirigible
capable of adequate evasive action

Images

James Fryer's cover design for Michele Leggott / The Laureate Series
Scenes from the launch: Ian Wedde, Michele, the performance

the book

2009-06-29T09:19:00.008+12:00

Keely O’Shannessy’s cover design

A local launch for MIRABILE DICTU took place 24 June in the Devonport Library with around 140 people present. We kicked off with Selina Tusitala Marsh’s ‘Samoan Star-chant for Matariki’ in blackout with drum and drone backing. Then the lights came up on 23 children (ages 6 to 10) from Stanley Bay School who read their Matariki poems to the enthusiastic crowd.

Selina calls the stars

Some star poets from Stanley Bay

Then it was time to launch the book and Peter Simpson gave it a good shove out into the stream. His launch remarks are reproduced below (thanks Peter). The proceedings finished with a performance of ‘keep this book clean’ that included projections of the smoking-enhanced illustrations in our ancient family copy of The Story of Doctor Dolittle, an excerpt from home movies of Urenui days and a rousing singing by all of the first verse of Me He Manu Rere. It was a great night and thanks are due to the Michael King Centre, the Devonport Library Associates and the Devonport Community Coordinator Maire Vieth for their generous support and organisation.

AUP publisher Sam Elworthy introduces MIRABILE DICTU

Peter Simpson launches book #7

Peter Simpson’s launch speech, Devonport Public Library, 24 June 2009

It is a real pleasure to be invited to launch Mirabile Dictu, the seventh book by my friend and colleague Michele Leggott. Seven is an auspicious number, I believe; at least dwarves, samurai warriors and the seven brides for seven brothers seem to think so, and what poet isn’t into numerology. Writing poetry used to be described by (was it Keats?) as “lisping in numbers”, and I don’t imagine things have changed all that much. Poets like counting; always have, always will. Readers familiar with the previous six of Michele’s books, and I imagine that counts for many people here, might notice some subtle differences this time round. Her previous books, well five of them anyway—Journey to Portugal is a special case—all had a distinctive square format, and all are exactly the same size, obviously deliberate. What’s so good about square, then? Well for one thing, it allows poems to have long lines without curling over the edge, as for example in famous early poems like, “An Island” some of whose lines were all of 30 syllables long—three times as wide as a sonnet. And having gone square once, it was easy to stay square so that all the books lined up prettily in a row, like peas in a pod. But not this time. Mirabile Dictu is both taller and thinner than its brothers and sisters.The thing about poetry, as we all know, is that nothing happens by accident; every detail of word, phrase, line, page is a matter of choice; it’s there for a reason. And the new format of Mirabile Dictu is no exception. It’s there for a reason.

Now, I haven’t spent the amount of time with the poems you’d need to analyse this carefully, but it’s obvious just flicking through the pages that Michele is favouring a shorter line. Take a look at the opening poem, “work for the living”; nearly all the lines are shorter than a pentameter and most are six or seven syllables: same with the last, “more like wellington every day”, and most of those in between. This is not exactly a new voice, but it’s a sign that Leggott is on the move, the lines tumble on top of one another, and into long juicy paragraphs, and further into page after page. None is a as short as a page, many are two, three, four, five, six, even eight pages long, and the pages pile up too. None of your 48 pages, 56 pages, or 62 pages of her first three books. You’d have to add those three together to get a book as big as this one. 154 pages, no less, the size of a novella. Clearly this is a woman who’s got a lot to say, and she wants to get on with it, briskly stepping it out line after line page after page.

Of course now that she carries the big blue stick, Te Kikorangi, of the poet laureateship, she can seize the occasion, command respect, order us to lend her our ears. I think this laureateship has been a benefit to Michele. I think it has given her confidence, a strong sense that words do matter, if we choose the best ones and put them down in their best order as she does, line after line page after page. I sense this new assurance in the poems, they know we are going to be all ears, hanging on every word, even if it takes three, five or eight pages to get to where it’s going. And speaking of coming and going, I’m struck by what a mobile collection this is. It’s always on the move—now up North, now down to Taranaki, or Hawke’s Bay, now in New Brighton, now in Rome, then Florence, then Venice, then back to more familiar parts: Rangitoto, Whatipu, Day’s Bay, Ohakune. The very first poem in the book is a car journey north, with a bunch of poets for company, heading for a funeral (Hone Tuwhare’s as it happens). The last poem in the book is also a journey by car and train, this time for a wedding among the olive groves. Two journeys—one north one south, one to a poet’s funeral, the other to a family wedding. Hey, this is not coincidental, this is deliberate, she planned it that way. And these two poems slyly introduce us to one of the big themes of this book, which we might describe as the family of poetry, and the poetry of families. We meet dozens of poets in this book; one whole poem is devoted to the north shore tribe, from Robin Hyde to Mary Stanley to Jack Ross, and heaps of others show up, John Newton, Bernadette Hall, Lord Byron, Walt Whitman, Rilke by the Spanish Steps in Rome and Ezra Pound on a gravestone in the cemetery Island of Venice. Poetry itself is never far from the topic of conversation, due no doubt to the challenges and opportunities of the big blue stick. And as for the poetry of families, that is present in this book in spades, as Michele searches family archives to put her mother and father and aunts and great aunts onto the page, often in their very own words, in a wonderfully moving series of poems.

Perhaps I could end with reference to just two more poems; The title poem “mirabile dictu”, and the one whose title is a translation of that phrase, “wonderful to relate”. The counters among you will not fail to notice that “mirabile dictu” is the third poem, while “wonderful to relate” is the third to last. Perhaps we can think of these two as the “Il Penseroso” and “L’Allegro” of John Milton’s pairing. “mirabile dictu” is a descent into darkness and blindness, loss and death, “looking into the eyes of my stone bird”; “wonderful to relate” by contrast, relays the miraculous discovery of what was lost, a daughter, and shows us a family ecstatically reunited in a wedding; a scene of comedy and fruitfulness like the end of a Shakespearean tragicomedy such as The Winter’s Tale. These two poems, the descent into a lonely world of darkness and despair; the entry into a scene of reunion and joy, establish the polarities between which this wonderful book moves, with its great richness of character and scene, and the tremendous verve of its language. It is a book worthy of a laureate: the big blue stick has spoken. Open your purses and buy!

Credits
MIRABILE DICTU cover courtsey of AUP
All photos by Maire Vieth

a few million more

2009-06-23T09:02:00.007+12:00

David Eggleton and Michele at the Michael King Writers’ Centre, Devonport

A Million Poems for Matariki is rolling along north of the harbour bridge as schools in the Devonport/Belmont area get busy with posters, sharpies and pavement chalk. David Eggleton was at Belmont Intermediate last week firing up the poetry motors. He has been in Auckland since April as one of the Michael King Writers in Residence, working on a new book and reading all over the city.

Children at Devonport Primary School talking about Matariki

Asking the tokotoko for good words

On Friday 19 June David looked out the front door of the Writers’ Centre on Mt Victoria/Takarunga and saw below him around 200 chalk poems going onto the playground at Devonport Primary School. The weather continues crisp and clear so the poems are still there under bright solstitial sun and the stars of Matariki, now visible in the northeastern sky before dawn.

Devonport Primary poetry stars at work

Poem posters

Michele chalks a Matariki poem.

Photo credits: Marie Vieth