broadsheet new new zealand poetry Issue No. 8, November 2011 Editor: Mark Pirie THE NIGHT PRESS WELLINGTON / 1 Poems copyright 2011, in the names of the individual contributors Published by The Night Press Cover photo of John Gallas in happy Uzbek hat 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 CRAIG CLIFF / 6 MICHAEL DUFFETT / 8 JOHN GALLAS / 9 ROGER HICKIN / 17 REX HUNTER / 18 CAMERON LA FOLLETTE / 20 CHRIS MCCABE / 21 MARY MCCALLUM / 25 MICHAEL OLEARY / 26 HARRY RICKETTS / 28 LAURA SOLOMON / 29 YILMA TAFERE TASEW / 31 PAUL WOLFFRAM / 33 F W N WRIGHT / 37 NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS / 40 / 3 Acknowledgements Grateful acknowledgement is made to the editors and publishers of the following collections and magazines where the poems in this issue first appeared: Michael Duffett: Sonnets Holy and Unholy first appeared as a poem postcard printed by the author. Rex Hunter: Cleopatra first appeared in And Tomorrow Comes (Steen Hinrichsen: Copenhagen and Chicago, 1924; Warren House Press: Norfolk, UK, 1982). Cameron La Follette: Border Guardians from Beyond the Painted Hills (Original Books: Wellington, 2011). Chris McCabe: George Orwell first appeared in The Manhattan Review and Kingfisher first appeared in The Rialto and is republished in The Best British Poetry 2011 (Salt Publishing: London, UK, 2011). Michael OLeary: The Last 48 Seconds of Kurt Cobain first appeared as part of an artwork in the Kurt Cobain tribute book, Blue Eyed Son, compiled by Benedict Quilter (Independent Woman Records: Wellington, 2010). Harry Ricketts: Cricket coach Bob Woolmer... first appeared on the Tingling Catch blog, 20 March 2011. Yilma Tafere Tasew: Eroded first appeared in Thank You, Thank You!: Volume 1 (Steele Roberts: Wellington, 2010). F W N (Nielsen) Wright: Patch Up, Showcase Canzonet and Incessant from Post Alexandrian Poems (781-832); Newspaper Man from Post Alexandrian Poems (833-884); Sestet and Staying Alive II from Post Alexandrian Poems (885-936) (all Cultural and Political Booklets: Wellington, 2011). 4 / Preface This issue features John Gallas, a New Zealand poet who has been living in the UK since 1972 where he went to study Old Icelandic, and whose collections are all published by prestigious small press Carcanet in Manchester. I first came across Gallass work when I was in London in 2005. A friend had shown me the astonishing global poetry anthology Gallas edited, The Song Atlas (2002). I looked up his name in Foyles Bookshop, thinking he was a UK poet. They had some of Gallass books there, including his first collection Practical Anarchy (1989). Reading his bio closely I discovered he was born in Wellington in 1950. I bought the book immediately and subsequently now have all of his collections. I enjoy Gallass sense of the absurd. His surreal and fantastical humour and anarchic wit appeal to me along with his control of traditional forms (the ballad, the sonnet) and the more modernist/postmodernist structures in his recent work. Yet Gallas doesnt appear in Oxfords 1997 An Anthology of New Zealand Poetry in English (despite appearing in Landfall in the 1980s) and not all of his books are held by the National Library of New Zealand. However, his first work was published here: A different drum, or, How to blow your own trumpet in twelve easy to read pages, with Robin Murray (printed at the University of Otago Bibliography Room, 1971). In recent years, poet and academic Bill Manhire has done much to rectify this. Gallas was included in Manhires 121 New Zealand Poems and Gallass work has been in Sport and in the IIMLs Best New Zealand Poems series online. This year Gallas also published a three volume trilogy of chapbooks, F***ing Poets, through Roger Hickins stylish Cold Hub Press in the South Island, with funds from the sale given to help the Canterbury earthquake recovery. Its great to be able to feature Gallas in broadsheet 8 and help further recognise his work in New Zealand. Through my own work on Gallas, the Poetry Archive of New Zealand Aotearoa (PANZA) now has a full collection of his books in their online catalogue. Elsewhere Ive continued broadsheets eclectic policy of inviting different poets to appear in each issue. Mary McCallum, Chris McCabe, Cameron La Follette, Roger Hickin, Yilma Tafere Tasew and Craig Cliff appear here for the first time along with a poem by the late Rex Hunter. Hunter (1888-1960), a writer and journalist (who left New Zealand as a young man), had a reputation overseas in the States and so far has mostly fallen through the radar here despite an attempt to remedy this in the Oxford Companion to New Zealand Literature (1998). Its hoped Hunters poetry will become more widely known in New Zealand in the future. Mark Pirie Wellington, November 2011 / 5 Craig Cliff T H E L I N K A R C A D E 1. I was not there when my father acted out to Van Halens Jump at his work Christmas party in the Link Arcade. I was probably asleep at my grandparents house in the bed he slept in as a child. If not asleep, then reading a Munch Bunch picture book: Dick Turnip saving Suzie Celery from an oncoming greengrocers truck. But my mother told me the story the next morning and now whenever I hear that song I think of the scene with my father climbing onto the handrail of the mezzanine part arena rocker, part suicide-to-be shaking his non-existent locks and mouthing: Go ahead and jump! to the shocked faces of his colleagues who thought he might / the uneasy conversations after he climbed down and didnt sound the slightest bit drunk. Which he wasnt. Not my dad. Apart from a photo from his bucks night (Andrew Undies Cliff tied to a clothesline in singlet and undies, a sloshed St Sebastian) I cant remember seeing him drunk. 6 / Indeed, when I was approaching an age where I might be offered a beer at family barbeques he sat me down and extolled the virtues of drinking from a can: You can drink as slow as you like, set your own pace, and no one can tell how much youve had. 2. Everything from that first stanza is now defunct, deceased, or rebranded: my father, Van Halen, the Link Arcade. Though there was a decade between his daredevil David Lee Roth and his death, this reconstructed scene seems to me another decade later the point at which my father wandered off into the ultramarine glow of the afterlife, and if I could just get back inside that arcade between Main Street and Broadway hed meet me there for the conversation where I say everything Ive bottled up and he listens and nods and smiles, ever-sipping from a can that never empties. / 7 Michael Duffett S O N N E T S H O L Y A N D U N H O L Y Grace I imagine the movements of the master As never awkward, no clumsy gap Between the thought and bend of limb. Faster, More efficient moves could be but the sap That lubricates the body with the mind, The holy transition between head and hand Was unclouded by the salt of doubt, lined Inside with no gritty particles of sand. His footsteps never faltered, no grimace Indicating doubt or calculation Marred his mouth; he sat and rose with ease. His time was spent as well with saints as sinners And peace was brought to every situation That he blessed by bending to his knees. Jesus at the Border Carpenter, you say? Get a haircut, shave And a real job before we let you in. Youll need to fill your purse with money, save A few bucks so as not to ruin Our social security system. What! Youre penniless? Got no place to lay your head? You dont honestly think we would blot Our government forms to provide you a bed. Get back to where youre from, wherever that May be. Weve got no place for you here. Youve got no transportation, no car, You say? Can you see that great big fat Donkey over there? Ride him, get him near To starving and he from here will take you far. 8 / John Gallas P A C I F I C T I O N S 1. encounter with a Taniwha near Puponga Farm The deed of a Taniwha does not take time: it is considered / done. The doing is not to be seen. He may put on his socks if he wishes by thinking how nice they will look when he does. The Taniwha lives at the westernest end of the sand, and resembles a cave at all points. His face is a rock-face glour; his hair a bush all punga and flax; his breath by the pulmonous salt-lacd wave. You are restless already with objection. But the Taniwha is not Nature mistook or took, nor an eco nor logical soul. He is Here; not About. Come on. From his fuscous brow three chilly-lit water-threads spilled down on his tongue, where three plastic bottles sat like good ideas forgotten in an empty dream of noon. A Taniwha does not dream: and I was sharp as August-shine, and rapt as three hours tramp, a nippy dawn, a glaucous beanie and a ruckt sock could be.