Dance lessons

I didn’t join the blue-dressed, barefoot girl

as she pranced alone upon her toes

at the after-wedding dance last Saturday

her male and female partners coming, going.

Neither did I sidle up beside the five men coalesced

each dancing self-obsessed with Saint Vitus

nor crib some space among the solo swayers

nor nudge aside the twos and threesomes.

But this odd menagerie of motion

led me to a dance floor long ago

where matrons with a record player

showed spotty boys and girls with sweaty palms

where to place their feet and hands

should a waltz be struck up by the band.

Funny how memories are triggered – anyone else experience the dance lessons of a previous age? I seem to remember they were pretty excruciating all round.

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Tuesday Poem: The ordinance of clowns

I heard a man on the radio say
there’s more to clowning than

oversize bow ties, banana skins
bandanas, braces, and

button hole flowers that spray.
No, the Whiteface, the Hobo

the Character, the Auguste
(the one with the big nose)

have slapstick codes to uphold.
Unruly tomfoolery

gives clowns a bad name.
True clowns, he said

hose down each other
not the crowd.

How funnily sad, I thought
how comically ironic.

You can’t just bend the rules
when clowning around.



Sometimes I write poems after listening to interviews on Radio New Zealand (usually while driving into town – the listening, not the writing). Visit Tuesday Poem for more poems this week.

Tuesday Poem: A wing and a prayer

The fundamentalists boarded the flight
bearing crosses. Grim-faced, grey-haired women
scarved, not one low decolletage in sight
eyes averted, deferring to their men

the way old handmaidens do. The men got

through security somehow, clay tablets

taped to their chests, bags full of brimstone pots

stones for casting clicking in their pockets.

Silently, on drop-down video screens

Goldenhorse’s female lead was singing.

The clip zoomed in to pink lip-glossed lips, green

long-lashed eyes shadowed black, hair flaming.

I prayed they’d not ask God to smite her down

after our plane unshackled from the ground.


Happy 2012 to all and may your year overflow with poems.

I wrote this sonnet a few years ago after a plane trip. Probably no further explanation is needed. Visit Tuesday Poem for more poems this week.

Tuesday Poem: Kia kaha Canterbury, October 2011

The city wounded at its heart

The steeple shattered in the street

The founder and his plinth apart

Ruamoko not yet replete.

Each tremor the lament repeats –

A severance of peace from place

A déjà vu of loss and grief

A pillaging of time and space.

In sufferance but not defeat

Cantabrians roll sleeves, make fast

then hold each other’s hands and seek

new beginnings, built on their past.

As you may be aware, I am working for EQC and have been since the 4 Sep 2010 earthquake. EQC asked me to write a poem for Canterbury for the front of their Annual Report. This is the poem I wrote (with one or two changes since) but I am not sure it made it to the final version of the report. So, here it is as Tuesday Poem this week. Along with 'Name-calling' (see my 8 Nov Tuesday Poem) I see it forming part of a sequence of poems involving Ruamoko, the Earthquake God. Keep an eye out for future Ruamoko poems on this blog and visit Tuesday Poem for more poems this week.

Tuesday Poem: Polonius: Old Poet by Harry Ricketts

This week I am the guest editor for the Tuesday Poem and have chosen a poem by Harry Ricketts, Polonius: Old Poet.  Head over to the Tuesday Poem hub where you will find a poem by a poet about a poet who likened himself to a Shakespearean character! Check out the other Tuesday Poets at the same time.

Tuesday Poem: In the nation’s bookshop chains

First, forced relocations

lower lodgings in some

draughty cul-de-sac

less room, less light.

All the while

unexplained disappearances

James K, Hone, Ruth, others

gone, gone and not replaced.

Those left behind, thin-spined

less popular, lean on each other

take bets on who will be

the last one standing.

Finally, denial of identity

removal of signs

pointing to pleasure troves

proclaiming different-ness.

Survivors now suffer

mass assimilation and burial

in short stories, non-fiction

literature, or classics.

Poetry? Nah mate

don’t stock it any more

waste of bloody space

nobody buys the stuff.

I wrote this poem some years ago after observing the gradual decrease in poetry titles carried by the major bookshops. If anything, it seems to be getting worse.

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Tuesday Poem: Name-calling

Sam wrote it is wise to remember
the Gods by their names
that we dare not answer back
to one like you,
Ruamoko, Earthquake God
unborn son of Mother Earth.
But I do, oh how I do –
each time you writhe
in your Mother’s womb
each time you liquefact her waters
each time she throws rocks at me
I rail, rant, call your siblings bastards –
what’s-their-names, the Gods
of mayhem, destruction, and death.


Credit note; Sam Hunt wrote a poem titled 'Naming the Gods' some years ago in response to an earthquake he experienced in south Taranaki. My poem is a response to the numerous Canterbury aftershocks I have experienced over the last 14 months.

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