broadsheet new new zealand poetry Issue No. 4, November 2009 Editor: Mark Pirie THE NIGHT PRESS WELLINGTON / 1 Poems copyright 2009, in the names of the individual contributors Published by The Night Press Cover drawing of Ruth Gilbert in Samoa by Michael OLeary broadsheet is published twice a year in May and November Subscriptions to: The Editor 97/43 Mulgrave Street Thorndon Wellington 6011 Aotearoa / New Zealand http://headworx.eyesis.co.nz Cost per year $12.00 for 2 issues. Cheques payable to: HeadworX ISSN 1178-7805 (Print) ISSN 1178-7813 (Online) Essay on Ruth Gilbert copyright F W N Wright 2009 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 JEANNE BERNHARDT / 6 ALISTAIR TE ARIKI CAMPBELL / 7 MEG CAMPBELL / 9 JILL CHAN / 11 BILL DACKER / 13 LYNN DAVIDSON / 15 MICHAEL DUFFETT / 17 A R D FAIRBURN / 20 JAN FITZGERALD / 21 RUTH GILBERT / 22 MICHAEL HARLOW / 26 SIOBHAN HARVEY / 27 LEONARD LAMBERT / 29 MICHAEL STEVEN / 30 BRIAN TURNER / 31 ESSAY FEATURE / 32 NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS / 40 / 3 Acknowledgements Grateful acknowledgement is made to the editors and publishers of the following collections where the following poems in this issue first appeared: Jeanne Bernhardt: Damians Poem from 26 Poems (Dunedin: Kilmog Press, 2009). Jill Chan: The Blind One from These Hands Are Not Ours (Paekakariki: ESAW, 2009). Michael Duffett: The poem Sarah was recorded on the jazz CD, Within and without (MusicLabs, 1999), with James Hackworth. A R D Fairburn: Jazz from Count Potocki de Montalk, the all time bad boy of Aotearoa letters: news of some recent developments in Potocki studies: a report, F W N Wright (Wellington: Cultural and Political Booklets, 1997). Jan FitzGerald: Sea Captain from London Magazine (UK). Ruth Gilbert: Poems from Sappho and J B M from Selected Poems 1941- 1998 (Wellington: Original Books, 2008). Michael Harlow: Canticle from The Tram Conductors Blue Cap (Auckland: AUP, 2009). Michael Steven: Port Waikato from Centreville Springs (Dunedin: Kilmog Press, 2009); and Lotties Song from Bartering Lines (Dunedin: Kilmog Press, 2009). 4 / Preface Ruth Gilbert published her first book, Lazarus and Other Poems, in 1949, and throughout the 50s and 60s she became a well-established and anthologized name in New Zealand poetry. Since that time she has continued to publish, however, her more recent work may not be as well known. For instance, in the 1990s, she completed a series of translations from the classical poet Sapphos original Aeolic dialect. Her Sappho translations are very finely rendered and worthy of more interest. As with her striking post-war Lazarus poems that have been much anthologised, these Sappho translations add to her reputation. Its noteworthy, then, that revived interest in Gilberts work has come from overseas. This year, a Canadian academic has included Ruth Gilberts work on the University of Toronto Librarys web page (next to the greats of English language poetry, including Bob Dylan): http:// rpo.library.utoronto.ca/poet/537.html (This recognition is partly due to the continued efforts of Niel Wright, Ruths current publisher and long- time friend, who received the request from Canada by email. Niel also sent me Ruths unpublished Sappho translation from 2005 included here.) So, in order to recognise Ruths stature as a poet, I have devoted much of this issue of broadsheet to her work. In addition to a selection from her Sappho translations, I have included a chapter from Niel Wrights interpretive study of Ruths poems published in 1985 to coincide with Ruths Collected Poems (Black Robin, 1984). The chapter focuses on her 1966 collection, The Luthier. Along with Gilberts work, Im delighted to present an unpublished poem from the late Alistair Te Ariki Campbell who died in August of this year. Alistair was one of our finest poets and as Alistair Paterson commented after his death, brought a distinction to New Zealand letters perhaps only equalled by Jim Baxter and Allen Curnow. Earlier in the year, Alistair kindly sent me two unpublished poems by his wife Meg Campbell to include as well. Megs poems remind us there is work still to be done on her poems too. A R D Fairburn, another who brought early distinction to New Zealand verse, is also included here with a lost sonnet Jazz, which I came across in a bibliographical pamphlet published by Niel Wright relating to Count Potockis work. This fugitive piece is not in Fairburns Collected Poems. Elsewhere, broadsheet continues to cast its net wide and far. I welcome the following established and new faces: Michael Harlow, Brian Turner, Michael Steven, Jill Chan, Bill Dacker, Siobhan Harvey, Lynn Davidson, Jan FitzGerald and Leonard Lambert. Read on. Mark Pirie Wellington, November 2009 / 5 Jeanne Bernhardt D A M I A N S P O E M Goldenness outside window The fine and fragile points of leaving Lifting skin and shining Today I see roofs and skyscrapers Tree light on the pavements in Boston The separation isnt painful. Inevitable His shed in the morning sun Crying ova dead bee in flower as if not perfect How is the weirdness? You ask. Weirder, I say Nothing taken back or altered All things one day makes possible 6 / Alistair Te Ariki Campbell O D E T O W E L L I N G T O N C I T Y Wellington, thou art the flower of cities all. Who can deny thy loveliness seen at night from the top of Mt Victoria, a sunken treasure ship, exquisite, every gem aglow? But who can deny the past? Seddon howling myths of Empire, Te Rangihaeata hurling profanities at Governor Grey who catches them in his teeth, and spits out broken promises. Kapiti sinking slowly into the sea, its back bristling with innuendoes hurled by demented whalers. A stray shot disembowels the moon, blood spreading across the water. O my people, who can forget Muldoons massive head turning ponderously, exposing terrible teeth; Lange sinking into the mire of the House, stung to death by his own one-liners; Te Rauparaha dragging a sackful of shrunken heads into Bellamys? Hey, Maui, leave the bloody fish alone. Every time you hack out a hill or a valley, a gash appears on my body. O my people, church spires prick Gods tender underbelly. His indignant cries are echoed by the screams of little children. / 7 See, they join hands and are hurled naked into the jaws of the New Hereafter Words, words, words, let me not betray you. Let the flame return to the spark, the spark to the flint, and, only then would I consign you to derision, and the fate of the Great Unread. 6 March 2007 8 / Meg Campbell C H R I S T M A S D A Y , 1998 How could it be that I have no present for you, the one who meets my needs, and who supports me, and by whom I am protected? How could I forget? Its little things you want these days, endurance being most prized. Theres nothing I could buy at North City Plaza without your chiding me for wasting money. And so I come to you at Christmas, empty-handed, as usual. But it bothers me, because you are first in my world, and should receive my first gift. Will it do, if I say, I honour you, I trust you to live long with me until I die, and be sorry when Im ghostly. Will it do? Will you know that I give nothing, because nothing will do? / 9 T H E B U R D E N It is my sorrow that I cant live without you, and it is my tragedy that thinking of life, and you not here, tortures my whole body as though you are my imagination, my reason for being. I am so truly wed to you that severance would bring about my death. I have tried, against my own interests, to set you free, but, strangely, you need the burden of me. April 82 10 / Jill Chan I C A L L Y O U F A T H E R : I N S I S T E N C E You keep wanting to turn on the light in the room, my light, though you are so insistent, I forget momentarily where I begin or where you end, each point coming to the other without want or light or room Each a borderless name now for referring where you stand in this relationship Father, the only moment this moment refers to. Ive a thought to refuse but nothing to refuse me. / 11 T H E B L I N D O N E Im thinking of how youve come to me. You were hiding near something Id found. An arrival or something older; a danger that kept losing its edge, naming its velocity; a present, perhaps, that left too soon, that a future could argue about. You are always the blind one. I dance in front of you and all you cannot see is the dark wanting to be the both of us. 12 / Bill Dacker A S O N G F O R T H E R I V E R Somewhere between upstream and downstream come from State Highway 1 to State Highway 8, turn from the traffic onto a river road where ghost trains run from station to station that have closed. In the valley of the living youve made sometimes blossom falls like snow, sometimes falling fruit drums on earth, sometimes a distant thunder and theres no shelter, this wind will rock you, sometimes beneath you a sudden shifting of solid ground decrees you will go where its flood takes you.