The Bruise Palette

Helen Lehndorf

Firestarter Press

 

Reviewed by Hamesh Wyatt

 

Back from her debut poetry collection 15 years later, we get a new one from Helen Lehndorf.

The Bruise Palette contains poems written since her first collection, The Comforter, was published in 2011.

There are poems about caring for place, for people and the “bruises” of community entanglement.

Lehndorf never forces the creative process and that might explain the delay between collections.

The Bruise Palette was entered and longlisted in the Kathleen Grattan Poetry Award for an unpublished manuscript.

These are quick fire poems over 82 pages.

The title poem talks about things we do not always know.

“Johanna tells me to make a wish” is a sustained piece over three pages.

The second section is “Nature is just too damn much”.

Scenes of urban wilds, gritty community spaces and polluted city waters populate writing which asks more questions than it answers.

A couple of death poems include “Everyday Matters” for Paula and “Palmerston North Death Cleaning”.

Lehndorf has been writing, publishing and performing her poetry for 20 years.

This is great new stuff full of raw radiance with a deep nature connection.

A few years ago Lehndorf said: “In my writing I am always teasing out the ambivalences, contradictions and small hypocrisies which I believe to be very human. I’m more interested in muddy waters than clear ones.”

Lehndorf uses observation and feeling.

She processes her thoughts about the world.

In saying this we know poets are the best.

If literature is a Christmas tree, poets like Lehndorf are up the pointy end with angels. She says a lot with few words.

Lehndorf starts with the personal and makes it universal.

Poetry is who we are and who we best can be.

This is not too bad from a Taranaki writer who lives in the Manawatū.

 

Hamesh Wyatt lives in Bluff. He reads and writes poetry