Issue 25 May 2020
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broadsheet new new zealand poetry Issue No. 25, May 2020 Editor: Mark Pirie THE NIGHT PRESS WELLINGTON / 1 Contents copyright 2020, in the names of the individual contributors Published by The Night Press Cover image: Janet Charman by Max White broadsheet is published twice a year in May and November Subscriptions to: The Editor Flat 4C/19 Cottleville Terrace Thorndon Wellington 6011 Aotearoa / New Zealand http://broadsheetnz.wordpress.com Cost per year $12.00 for 2 issues. Cheques payable to: HeadworX ISSN 1178-7805 (Print) ISSN 1178-7813 (Online) Please Note: At this stage no submissions will be read. The poems included are solicited by the editor. All submissions will be returned. Thank you. 2 / Contents PREFACE / 5 SERIE BARFORD / 6 RICHARD BERENGARTEN / 7 JANET CHARMAN / 10 WALTER CHARMAN / 19 PIERS DAVIES / 20 BELINDA DIEPENHEIM / 23 AMANDA EASON / 25 MARGARET JEUNE / 28 HELEN RICKERBY / 29 ILA SELWYN / 31 ELIZABETH SMITHER / 33 KATE WATERHOUSE / 35 F W N WRIGHT / 38 NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS / 40 / 3 Acknowledgements Grateful acknowledgement is made to Janet Charman for the reproduction of the following work: Walter Charman: The Blue Penguin is from The White Schooner and Other Ventures (Asterisk Publishing, New Plymouth, 1973). 4 / Preface Janet Charman is one of New Zealands leading contemporary poets and feminist critics. She was associated with Spiral and New Womens Press in Auckland in the 1980s. In 2008, Charman was awarded the New Zealand Book Award for Best Book of Poetry for Cold Snack. I first came across Charmans work in the 1990s as a young student. I had bought her collection Red Letter (AUP, 1992) from the Vic Books Centre. She had a bold, uncompromising and energetic voice, which I warmed to. I continued to follow her work over the years, and as general editor of JAAM magazine I published and reviewed Charmans work. I have met her in Auckland, several times, once having the chance to visit her at her home in Avondale. When I co-organised the Poetry Archive of New Zealand Aotearoa, with Dr Michael OLeary and Dr Niel Wright, Janet Charman was among its supporters and sent us a copy of her father Walter Charmans book, The White Schooner and Other Ventures, from 1973. It is lovingly printed and bound in suede leather. Janet trained first as a nurse. She has also been a receptionist, and became a tutor in the English Department of Auckland University in the 1990s. In 1997 she was Writer in Residence there. She became a secondary school teacher in the 2000s. She has had published eight collections of her poetry. In 2009 she took part in a literary residency in Hong Kong that featured in her latest collection, Surrender (2017). Her 2019 monograph SMOKING: The Homoerotic Subtext of Man Alone is available as a free download at Genre Books (https://www.genrebooks.co.nz/ebooks/smoking.pdf). Critic Janet Wilson writes that Charmans poetry often dense, elliptical or complex in expression displays considerable emotional range extending from sexual innuendo, to the erotic, to tenderness, or a playful wit. This comment certainly applies to her lively poetry in this issue. Its nice to be able to feature her work in broadsheet. As with other issues, I worked with Janet to invite some of her close friends and fellow poets to be in the issue with her. Thanks to those who sent work in for it. This is what always makes broadsheet features so special. Its also great to be able to include here a poem by Walter Charman alongside Janet. A few contributors appear outside the feature such as Helen Rickerby, Richard Berengarten (UK), Margaret Jeune, and F W N (Niel) Wright. Mark Pirie Wellington, May 2020 / 5 Serie Barford I F Y O U W E R E A T I P U T A if you were a tiputa Id steal you from the museum treat and preserve you lift soil from your shoulders with low pressure suction divert the landslide that swept you away swab you with blotting paper parcelled in acid free tissues bathe you like a delicate artefact lay you in humidification chambers rehydrate your brittle parts tenderly lacquer your frayed edges patch gaping wounds with kozo drape you over my shoulders slumber within your bark cloth folds press you against my heart tiputa poncho-like garment made from bark cloth. 6 / Richard Berengarten From R O U G H D I A M O N D S To An unlock error the map however you need its may well be code. The map or provoke an itself is not the code. entirely new form The code is or may be or expression of being. hidden in the map and its The converse question is variants. And since the map who is the father of God the itself is not unique but exists Father? That is mustnt pursuit many exempla, some of which may of ultimate origins always get stuck well contain errors (damn them), in an infinitely receding (and hence the ideal (i.e. correct) map has unfulfillable) search for some to be inferred from all of its ever-earlier anterior cause models before the code like what kind of nothing itself can even begin or darkness was there to be approached and where and how let alone applied was it before with any hope Genesis i.e. of accu- the Big racy. Bang. / 7 Now Meillet sliding was right around my a language is mind, surfing un système où tout and surfacing into se tient. Chomsky words, patterns that too a language is a eventually come out as finite mechanism capable poems do keep on getting of generating an infinite set made as entirely new, i.e. as of sentences. Pity though about as-yet-unsaid utterances. his drab word mechanism How miraculous then for how close to angelic is language among is language in its out- all other miracles pourings of utterly that this I lives, stupendous and with, through, unpredictable within, to, surprises in from. poems. 8 / Over What the blue Matters bay lights go above all is out one by one. what the heart You walk back into tells us to be and do. the house from the fine- This can be quite simple. white-sanded beach. Nothing When choice occurs, pause in or belonging to this movement to listen. Wings on wind, speaking is capturable cinematically. Only these as they thrum, tell. So move from the words (waste, shells, shards of the particular to the general and back real?) still exist to contain, pour again, in an arc, whorl, zigzag, out, recapture, restore, and spiral. And from breath to reconstitute whatever you wrist-pulse to heartbeat (another you?) may have and then back (ever) in one way or other to breath. And drawn out of so encircle the sea Destiny. / 9 Janet Charman B E C A U S E D E S I R I N G to use your sacred taonga and make new meanings as in the gestational when the unknown becoming infans receives & takes from their unknown becoming m/Other yet she as the originary source retains completely her own subjectivity do you acknowledge this as besidedness? that is neither parasitic nor symbiotic and not colonizing Note: Technical font constraints preclude the inclusion of macrons for Te Reo in Janet Charmans poems in this issue - Ed. 10 / R A N G I N U I if ever i went after her Rona would drench me from her taha though now and then depending on the time of the month she fills it with moonshine and asks me in once she said youre separated too arent you? as if for her that made it better Rona and my ex grew up together our children i told her blame themselves but their mother and i know it was more too many too young she always had her own plans high five to that said Rona our boys have started sending me up weird stuff but amongst it there are usable fragments i keep them in a black hole an inassimilable vortex that Rona refers to as your shed the best of their junk i can reconfigure as a car that drives away the light years and orbit by orbit i am also working on Rona to come with or is she working on me? / 11 the children if they notice my emptiness will still have their mother to fight over or they can want me and look out for us but i wont be back 12 / T H E H O L Y G H O S T A N D T H E L O S T B O Y S that whakama Pakeha chick in the 24/7 Wendys is always eating buttered toast hungry hot with her coat open milky star patches showing on a ballooning blue nightie draped so nobody sees quite what shape shes in since her babys been uplifted e Kare we say why did you let that happen? those big men with pink hats creased like cunts took my little boy into their prayers then they opened that fire door and pushed me in here meant to be over it Hine sits down in the booth beside her old mates if Mere but knew they go way back those were your brothers Kare following your fathers orders but long before they left you here we had another bro who decided he could live forever by re-entering my tuhinga / 13 also unasked a process meant to usurp my voice but in our story for his impudence i locked him out of existence remembering Tatahore cracks up youre not alive here Mere he tweets then that flirt Piwakawaka spreads his feathers interrupts Mere he says youre not dead 14 / A P A R A L L E L R E A L I T Y C H E R Y L W E S T Cheryl West is offered a smoke no thanks says Cheryl i quit at their housewarming Wolf wants to hoist Cheryl onto the hand basin for a fuck Cheryl says really? is that all youve got? but call me if your writers ever make a C for lit.