Hamesh Wyatt reviews recently published works.
TENDER MACHINES
Emma Neale
Otago University Press
Tender Machines is the fourth volume of poetry by Dunedin's Emma Neale.
This latest collection explores the state of the human condition. These poems are compelling, witty and moving. Many are domestic, some concentrating on children growing up fast.
Domestic concludes:
. . . you're our darling, you're our
treasure.
You fling a tea cup at the cat,
plump up her spine like a goose-
down pillow,
jab your thumbs at your father's
face
as if to pull out its two blue plums
but ah, little fisty-kins, honeyghoul,
thorny-pie,
grapple hook of your daddy's
flooded eye,
stitch by stitch hope's small black
sutures
sew love's shadow behind you.
Tender Machines is forthright and deeply personal, oscillating between being completely vulnerable and confidently in charge.
Richard Reeve
Otago University Press
Generation Kitchen is Dunedinite Richard Reeve's fifth book of poems. The intrigues of fossil fuel companies, ecological despoliation, personal rites of passage, relationships, deaths and turns of the seasons are integral here.
The last poem is Backcountry:
Now and ever
the mountain river.
A fantail flits.
Moss over branch,
the trees hurry.
Undying stone
continues the rhyme:
there is no time.
These poems unspool in strange directions shaking us out of our couch-potato torpor to recognise things that go on around us.
FAILED LOVE POEMS
Joan Flemming
Victoria University Press
Joan Fleming also has links with Dunedin. Now she lives mostly in Melbourne.
Failed Love Poems is her second full collection of poems. Fleming knows what can be told about love, and what cannot. She weaves magic.
First loss begins:
When we met, all the songs were about loss.
all the television shows contained it,
it was in everything, like sugar.
We'd come home
late, after passing through the gates
of the day, its shocks and offerings,
and you'd close your eyes a minute
under the river
of my voice. The spell of loss
is heavy.
It is a kind of gift, also a kind of theft.
You can be with someone for
months, a year, and not know
whether you've lost them.
Sometimes,
you keep on losing someone even
after they've left . . .
SHAGGY MAGPIE SONGS
Murray Edmond
Auckland University Press
Quardle oodle ardle wardle doodle is that famous phrase from Denis Glover's The Magpies.
Murray Edmond is a poet and critic. Shaggy Magpie Songs is a small collection of poems that are a little bubbly, a little absurd and have a little absurd laughter ringing through them.
Edmond has taught theatre and drama at Auckland University for more than 25 years. A sense of drama fills these 64 pages.
Accentuate the Negative
I went to visit a tree
but the tree was no longer there
so I said to the tree
tree oh tree
tell me
why you are not here
and the tree
it said to me
get rid of your technology
a tree is not a tree is not a tree
Edmond keeps offering up new ideas.
Dinah Hawken
Victoria University Press
Dinah Hawken's seventh collection of poetry Ocean and Stone contains striking drawings by John Edgar.
Hawken's poetry can be a way of walking in the world, of navigating streets, people and weather.
The women and children
They were there. The women and children.
They were there. They must have been.
To keep us going
In The Little History of the World
they arrive on page 106.
But not for long because they're piled high
in creaking ox-carts, with goods and chattels
bumping and jarring
over broken Roman roads
on the way to war.
Some poetry shouts to get the point across, other poetry, like this, simply whispers to ensure the reader or listener leans in close and pays attention.
SOME OF US EAT THE SEEDS
Morgan Bach
Victoria University Press
Morgan Bach's debut collection of poems is Some of Us Eat the Seeds. What a great title.
This Wellington poet concentrates on childhood, family, travel and relationships here. This is the real deal, honest and true.
Bach will make a mark on the New Zealand literary scene.
Postcards
There are never the right postcards.
The first thing I saw in Mexico as we halted in traffic funnelling to
the centre
was a boy gripping his cloth and
wiper
by the taxi window, wanting
the work of washing for a dollar
and wearing a T-shirt saying I am
the American Dream.
• Hamesh Wyatt lives in Bluff. He reads and writes poetry.
