Poetry collab with Ja and New Zealand
In June 201,9 Meeting Ground had its first outing, featuring poems from Jamaica and New Zealand. The theme then centred on fatherhood. This time around, we give you birds from New Zealand and Jamaica.
Works from New Zealand’s Poet Laureate (David Eggleton) and one of the Caribbean’s eminent poets and critics, Professor Edward Baugh, are included in the collection below that we hope will bring you illumination and joy as it did us.
Ann-Margaret Lim, Jamaica
Jamaica and New Zealand have so much in common. Both islands are post- colonial nations love our beaches, sports, poetry, art, and music, preferably reggae. Our cultures are vibrant, unique and show great flair.
This, our second co-lab, is based on our beautiful bird-life. Thank you so much for being part of it. As we say in New Zealand, Aroha (love) and Kia Kaha (stay strong).
Shane Hollands, president, The New Zealand Poetry Society.
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A tale from the rainforest
The bird flew out of the rainforest.
It was a day like any other, or so it seemed
until the poet at his desk looked up and saw
the marvellous omen hovering
by his window, shedding radiance.
Then slowly, slowly, yet as if compelled
it entered and alighted
its eye dilating in terror
its head inclined.
The poet rose and moved towards it.
His hand shook to close around
the warmth and tremor of its breast,
such trust, such expectation.
“I too am a poet,” whispered the bird,
“My sister the rivermaid sent me.
She told me you would be kind.
The grief of the rainforest
is sometimes hard to bear
and I have had such dreams.”
The poet took up his quill,
it became a flute.
They made music
together until
the rivermaid called time
and the nameless bird
flew back to the rainforest
to its midnight of moonflowers
and fern-fringed pools,
its nest at the centre of grief.
Edward Baugh (Jamaica)
Published in A Tale from the Rainforest (Sandberry Press 1998) & Black Sand: Peepal Tree Press: 2013
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Swallows on Dominion Rd
for Graham Brazier 1952 – 2015
My friend and neighbour phones me over. He’s waiting outside, finger-shushing me. I follow him down the driveway alongside his second-hand bookshop. A small slim bird flits over us. No, two!
We stand, watching the birds. They swoop up, swoop low, swoop round about us. We watch one fly to a nest – a nest! – wedged on the bracket of the bevelled brick ledge directly above our heads. The other bird skims and re-skims the puddle that won’t dry out till November. Their thin black tails fork like hair ribbons.
Ribbons used to come on card spools when I was a kid. A yard did two ribbons for my pigtails, for school. Forked edges wouldn’t fray, but if you cut a straight edge it left a stray thread you tugged until the ribbon unravelled rib by rib into a crimped silk thread fine as hair you wound round and round your finger till your trapped blood swelled dunkelbunt as tight, as hot, as long as you could stand it.
My neighbour lights up. You could sear a straight edge with a flame.
He points above us. We listen.
Chicks!
Anita Arlov (New Zealand)
------
Woman, Bird
“What is that bird?” “A heron,”
she replied before any of the others
at the table had even heard my question.
Her back had been turned to it. There
was no sign she had seen it alight.
She answered as if she had been
wondering when I would ask.
She was delicate, in a slightly
awkward way guardedly watchful.
She could take wing at a careless
remark. She was a poet.
I shall never see her again.
Edward Baugh (Jamaica)
Published in A Tale from the Rainforest (Sandberry Press 1998) & Black Sand: Peepal Tree Press: 2013
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You the gull
just you
and me
you the gull
padding along
the shoreline
in the wavelets
up to your
white buoy
of breast
padding on the
sand and shell
the wrinkle
to and fro
of sunlight
below,
the trill
of shadow
carried
on
just
you me
looking
for something
you the spotless
one of us
two.
Peter Le Baige (New Zealand)
---------
Day off
My Sister and I
Have a speckled past
Like the egg of a tern
How I imagine the speckly anyway
Speck, speck, speckled.
We saw some today
On a walk that healed a part of my psyche
She helped me, in Te Reo, bless some important things
That can be worn.
At a magic spot from my childhood
Fresh water bubbles and flows from a quite close crater lake
Nearby, the sea flows and foams
Further on, the Terns
A hundred or so
Teeming in the air
Dive-bombing for food, then resting
Teem, teem, teeming
Speck, speck, speckled
Rangitoto overlooks us.
Kate Kelly (New Zealand)
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Bird of Passage
The poet is speaking.
The window reflects his face.
A bird crawls out of the sun. Summoned.
Its wings are like tar.
That is because it is very hot.
The poet sweats too.
There is a beak at the back of his throat –
the poem is difficult,
his tongue bleeds.
That is because the bird is not really
dead. Yet.
Clap a little.
Dennis Scott
Published in Uncle Time: University of Pittsburg Press 1973
------
Jailbird at Momona Airport
He kārearea ahau …
I come from the bay of hawks.
Propellers roar my tragedy.
I roar my own ecstasy.
I’m exiled where I walk.
I drool. I hang on my own talk.
I’m between jails coiled in a shroud.
Enter shackled at wrist and ankle.
My feet are bare. I rankle.
I’m off to where I’m sent.
But my stare is proud.
The howl of the mongrel.
The fool’s toothless scowl.
My tinny shack paid back.
Tinfoil, flame and the glass bowl.
I drank. I trespassed. Now I rage.
I don’t utter sounds of doubt.
My rhetoric is renegade.
I return to thoughts of dak.
I chew my cheek. I’m made.
My toes claw the floor.
I am silent as a waiting gun.
I stare at the sun.
David Eggleton (New Zealand)
Next week we present Part II of this special collaboration – Meeting Ground