broadsheet new new zealand poetry Issue No. 19, May 2017 Editor: Mark Pirie THE NIGHT PRESS WELLINGTON / 1 Contents copyright 2017, in the names of the individual contributors Published by The Night Press Cover image: Peter Bland, photo from Collected Poems (Steele Roberts Ltd); photo by John Schroeder (2013) at www.the digitaldarkroom.co.nz Etching on p. 16 by Guthrie Smith, 1965 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 FLEUR ADCOCK / 6 PETER BLAND / 9 GORDON CHALLIS / 17 GLENN COLQUHOUN / 18 MARILYN DUCKWORTH / 20 RIEMKE ENSING / 22 MICHAEL HARLOW / 24 KEVIN IRELAND / 26 LOUIS JOHNSON / 27 KAPKA KASSABOVA / 28 VINCENT OSULLIVAN / 30 BOB ORR / 32 A G PETTET / 34 GUS SIMONOVIC / 36 ELIZABETH SMITHER / 37 C K STEAD / 38 NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS / 40 / 3 Acknowledgements Grateful acknowledgement is made to the editors and publishers of the following journals or collections, where the following poems in this issue first appeared: Peter Bland: Exotic, This poem starts right now... and Evensong from A Fugitive Presence (Steele Roberts Ltd, Wellington, 2016). Gordon Challis: Gifts from Luck of the Bounce (Steele Roberts Ltd, Wellington, 2008). Marilyn Duckworth: Marble Solitaire from The Chiming Blue: New and Selected Poems (Victoria University Press, Wellington, 2017). Kevin Ireland: Exotic is from Kevins 23rd book of poems Humphrey Bogarts great sacrifice (Steele Roberts Ltd, Wellington, December 2016). Louis Johnson: At the Palazzo Pitti from Selected Poems ed. Terry Sturm (Victoria University Press, Wellington, 2000). Thanks to Cecilia Johnson. A G Pettet: All three poems from Improvised Dirges: New & Selected Poems (Bareknuckle Books, Brisbane, Australia, 2015, new ed. 2016). Gus Simonovic: Poems taken from Allowed and Aloud: Selected Poems, edited by Laurice Gilbert, President, New Zealand Poetry Society (Printable Reality, Auckland, 2014). 4 / Preface Peter Bland (actor/writer) is one of the major New Zealand poets, and the recipient of the Prime Ministers Award for Poetry in 2011. I first knew him as an actor in Came a Hot Friday (1985) with comedian Billy T James, which I saw as a teenager. His poetry I discovered later at age 19, when reading an anthology in my fathers library: Recent Poetry in New Zealand (1965). The poets in this selection certainly interested me in writing poetry myself. James K Baxter, Louis Johnson, Fleur Adcock, Peter Bland, Alistair Campbell, Kendrick Smithyman, Gordon Challis and C K Stead were firm favourites. Peters lively poems of anger and experience spoke to me, with a suburban and domestic outlook, accessible and well-crafted. Early poems like Death of a Dog live with me still. I never expected to be featuring/publishing Peter, 20 something years on from first reading him, let alone some of the poets he has invited to be in this issue with him, who I first read in that above-mentioned anthology. Its nice to make this issue a tribute to Peters poetry and contribution to our literature. Peter has kindly written a brief note as an introduction: Ive been writing poetry for over 60 years, so Ive lived through all sorts of literary fashions and arguments that, at the time, seemed absolutely necessary to encounter, and probably were, particularly in terms of belonging, where the here-and-now of lived experience is the active field for all sorts of poetic possibilities, and is as open to the wayfarer as it is to the tribal chief, though both will inhabit it differently. But literary theories are nothing more than stimuli, and valuable as these are the origins of poetry are more elemental, primal, even sacred, than that. The Argentinian poet Borges admits that theres a need among poets to be familiar with the renowned uncertainties of metaphysics, but only in order to make the best use of staying open to experience, and to help pass on what we dont know as much as what we do. The sources of poetry are as ancient as cave paintings and the modern poet still has to have something of the shaman left in him in order to be able to indulge in a little cave talk and to commune alone with the deeper sources of his imagination. Thanks to those who contributed to Peters issue and shared my feelings for celebrating his impressive oeuvre in New Zealand poetry. A few poets outside the feature are included: A G Pettet from Brisbane, co-editor of the international Bareknuckle Poet series, and Gus Simonovic from Auckland, an innovative entrepreneur, publisher and poet. Mark Pirie Wellington, May 2017 / 5 Fleur Adcock T H A M E S Rather alternative these days, Thames: haunted op-shops full of fancy crockery, tottering canyons of old wardrobes, a sense of goods for sale that arent on show. Hippies cruise by like extras in a film, togged up in beards and unlikely knitwear. Most things that happened here happened a while ago: like the gold rush, with its hundred hotels; like the locomotive industry (watch out or youll turn into a museum); like staying with Auntie Lizzie and Alma on our post-war back-from-England tour. They gave us exotic fruits with real cream and a crate of nasty American sodas to make us feel at home in New Zealand. Thats not fat, its muscle, said Auntie Lizzie when we thwacked her on the bum, enjoying a new great-aunt we could be cheeky with. From Pollen Street Auckland to Pollen Street Thames Alma had come in her middle-aged bridehood, having married that pillar of rectitude Mr Belcher of Ezywalkin Shoes. (You wouldnt dare to wallop Mr Belcher; we rather doubted if he had a bum.) 6 / Nearly seventy years on, the former Ezywalkin declines to reveal itself how to tell one handsome but faded shop-front from another? Even this café has a past. (Whoops! There goes a funeral: a squad of bikers roaring behind a hearse.) When weve finished our toasted sandwiches its time for the next touristic indulgence. Andrew offers the bird hide, approached by a boardwalk over a mangrove swamp: not quite as long as hed remembered but joyously a-flutter with fantails. By now the chief museum will be open (and dont worry about that hooter; its a call for the Volunteer Fire Brigade to which no one seems to be responding). I thank my clever son for the fantails. Thats OK any time, says the modest. / 7 A G A M E O F 5 0 0 The Muse is a seeker after sensation. She wants me to tell you about the time when my second husband offered to play me at cards for my young lovers life. Except that it wasnt quite like that: no death on offer, for example; just a beating-up. And anyway hed left me first, the bastard; and anyway But enough of that (although yes, I won). What Id rather tell you about is how in this hot summer the little girls have been chalking on the pavement: birthday cakes with coloured candles, and, repeated twice in large letters, Horse Queen of the Year whatever they may have meant by that. 8 / Peter Bland C O N C E R N I N G O U R O W N B I T O F T I M E yours or mine. Down at the harbour at daybreak a small boat arrives (not the one with black sails). Its dawn and your life is coming ashore. Of course people are waiting to shame you out of it, talking about a zeitgeist and the proper way to create. Thats OK. Deep down you know that building fences or ticking boxes was never really the name of the game. Sometimes it gets so confusing (this sense of paradise mixed with ancient betrayals) that the dog looks up wondering whether to howl or slyly lie back and wag its tail. / 9 T H E S P I R I T H O U S E Mould in the bread bin, ants in the sugar bowl. Theres the damp smell of earth in every room. We bring it back on wet clothes and soiled shoes. The years running low on the warmth it loves most, and the dark is closing in, so its time to build a small Spirit House with gifts of mulled wine and an old Chinese poem about a loved one coming home. Well place it next to those ants in the sugar bowl and a couple of thin bees blown in from the cold. 10 / E X O T I C Angela Ackroyd was exotic back in Pommyland in the 50s. At 15 she painted sexy seams on her drab school stockings. Wonder Woman and Tarzans Jane were exotic, and anything that tasted like Turkish Delight and of a paradise where you never got caned or were made to sing GOD SAVE THE KING at the end of the film. Foreign stamps were exotic, especially those with palms and lots of Lawrence of Arabias on camels. Even the poppy Dad wore once a year was exotic. It was like a scarlet butterfly that landed on his lapel and stayed there all day. You couldnt take your eyes off it! / 11 T H E D I S T A N C E B E T W E E N U S Tonight youve come close.