Can poetry make you feel better? Ruth Arnison thinks so. She talks to KIM DUNGEY.
Purple pamphlets sit in neat rows in Ruth Arnison's spare bedroom.
Seven thousand of them. Crisply folded and tidily tucked into envelopes, they await delivery to doctors' waiting rooms, rest-homes, hospices and prisons.
The words inside them, she says, have the power to make people smile and to briefly forget their worries.
Poems in the Waiting Room (NZ), the charity Mrs Arnison started in 2008, supplies short collections of poems for patients to read while waiting to see their doctor.
Initially, 500 cards were distributed in Dunedin.
Now, 7000 are produced every quarter for 720 institutions throughout the South Island and lower North Island.
The purple pamphlets which will
be sent out next month are the 29th edition. Patients can either read and leave the cards or take them away with them.
Each season's poems are also transcribed into braille booklets, which are distributed by the Foundation of the Blind.
Poems in the Waiting Room began after Mrs Arnison - a Dunedin poet whose work has been published in literary journals, ezines and anthologies - came across the UK charity of the same name on the internet.
The aim is to select poems that will take readers away from the sometimes stressful or anxious wait they are experiencing, she says: ''We're more likely to choose poems which are upbeat, aren't complicated and leave the reader feeling happier about themselves and the world.''
They are also an interesting alternative to the magazines often found in waiting rooms: ''You don't always want to read about who's playing around with who and who's had Botox, eh?''
The UK charity has a psychotherapist approve all poems before it uses them but Mrs Arnison stopped doing that after the English clinician told her she could not use Richard Langston's poem, Smoking an eel on holiday, which talked of an eel being beheaded and gutted.
She published the poem anyway and decided from then on, to trust her own judgement.
The part-time administration assistant says there is nothing better than finding a poem she thinks will be ''perfect'' and the New Zealand or overseas author saying she can use it: ''We've had some really famous poets and I've been gobsmacked that they actually answer me ...''
Only two poets and one publisher have not given permission, despite her being able to offer only $10 in payment.
The group's annual poetry competition provides a new selection of poems to use in the cards and the entry fees from it help with printing and postage costs, which are about $1800 for each edition.
Mrs Arnison has plans to extend the venture to the rest of the North Island as finances allow but in the meantime has launched another project based on her love of words, called Lilliput libraries.
At about 40cm square, the ''libraries'' are slighter bigger than a letterbox, located on fence lines and filled with donated books. Passers-by are welcome to take a book and either return it or donate a different one later.
Four book exchanges (in Hunt St, Cashel St, Lees St and Aramoana) are already in use and six more are being painted.
Mrs Arnison says the chance encounters she has witnessed, where two lots of people have arrived at the same time and started chatting about a book, show that the libraries are also becoming focal points ''a bit like the old neighbourhood dairies''.
''I like to do a project every year. It's a way of giving back to the community because I'm always asking for funding and it's a fun idea which has really taken off.''
Hugh Playing the Moonlight
Hugh is playing the Moonlight
to the valley.
In swannie, shorts and
Thursday's socks he takes
the stage before kanuka and
jostling miro.
He begins to play.
The kahikatea in the balcony
adjusts the stars upon her
shoulders.
Tawai on the high terrace
bend to pay attention
and kowhai huddle close
where they can sway in
their yellow ear rings.
Lizard and spider
bird and fish
rock and lichen
creek and tussock
all hold their breath.
Hugh's fingers find the notes like seeds sown
on the stave. He plants
them in the dark and
the music sets leaf. It grows into a
supple vine,
looping
tree to tree.
There is nothing more
beautiful in nature
than a man
in a swannie
playing the Moonlight.
- Fiona Farrell
My Cat is in Love with the Goldfish
My cat is in love with the goldfish.
He's practically head over heels.
He cannot hold back his emotions
or mask the affection he feels.
He'll bring her big bundles of roses.
He'll give her these syrupy notes
declaring undying devotion,
embellished with cute little quotes.
He'll pen the most passionate poems
a pussy could possibly write,
then sit by her bowl in the evening
and promptly proceed to recite.
He'll whisper such sickly sweet nothings
whilst barely averting his gaze.
He'll sing serenades in her honour
whose verses are bursting with praise.
Yes, my cat's so in love with the goldfish,
yet the chances of romance are poor,
for, alas, the attraction's one-sided . . .
the fish loves the tabby next door.
- Graham Denton
The Hundred Names of Love
The children have gone to bed.
We are so tired we could fold ourselves neatly
behind our eyes and sleep mid-word, sleep standing
warm among the creatures in the barn, lean together
and sleep, forgetting each other completely in the velvet,
the forgiveness of that sleep.
Then the one small cry:
one strike of the match-head of sound:
one child's voice:
and the hundred names of love are lit
as we rise and walk down the hall.
One hundred nights we wake like this,
wake out of our nowhere
to kneel by small beds in darkness.
One hundred flowers open in our hands,
a name for love written in each one.
- Annie Lighthart
