Sunday, February 11, 2018

The new Minister's brief to the Head of Department

No leaping out
from behind hidden agendas,
no lining lame ducks up
for media pot shots,
no scaring the crap out of me
with revelations or defamations
and definitely no defecations
in my corner.

Hire the best spin doctor going -
one that will guild
your OIA gnome droppings
so they look like
unvarnished truth lollies.

Send your top policy wonk
to work in my office -
they can rewrite
your dreary drivel
to better reflect
what I told you to say
in the first place.

Absolutely NO surprises
or I will make sure you slide down
the gnome stud book
faster than Jack abseiled
the beanstalk when the giant
started fee-fi-fo-ing.

That's all for now -
drop by next week
and brief me on the cock-ups
you've had to cover up.


My apologies to anyone who has visited this blog during the last 18 months in the hope of finding a new post. I took a long break that was neither planned nor caused by physical ailment, nor did it result from anything as mundane as writer’s block – in fact, I have put together another collection of writing over that time. More about that in the next post (which I promise will follow soon after this one).

During the ‘between posts’ interregnum, I also had a poem published in an anthology of political poetry, ‘Manifesto Aotearoa: 101political poems’ (Otago University Press, Edited by Philip Temple and Emma Neale, 2017). The poem was ‘The Head of Department’s Prayer on a change of Government’. I wrote it several years ago and only sent it to the anthology to make up my submission’s numbers. The poem is a parody on the Lord’s Prayer and my thinking was that such writing is a bit naff these days, but what did I know. I had also previously posted it on this blog here, but if you like political poetry, I strongly recommend you take a look at Manifesto Aotearoa, available online at Unity Books and other good booksellers.

The reception the Head of Department poem received was very positive, so I have decided to develop a series of poems based on the departmental and political context that the Head of Department works in. The poem above is one of these. I will post more as they take shape. (An 'OIA' is an Official Information Act request, which anybody can submit to a department in order to gain access to specific information.)

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