Cover image: Anne Ross / Cover design: Timon Maxey /Book design: Mark Pirie
(October 26) Chantal’s Book. ISBN 0-473-08744-8. Wellington: HeadworX, 2002. 112 pp.
- Bronze (20/2-2/12/98)
- Melting the Ice-Block (27-28/12/98)
- E-Mailing Venus (4/12/98)
- Bashō (12/98)
- A Woman Named Intrepid (6/12/98)
- Ngongotaha (12/98)
- There’s Something about Chantal … (20/12/98)
- Situations i: Albany
- Edge City (21/7/98)
- Between OR and Main Campus (10/9/98)
- Situations ii: CBD
- Auckland nach dem Regen (13/7/98)
- Between “The Newton Boys” and “The Big Hit” (31/7/98)
- Situations iii: Tauranga
- Poetry Festival (29/3/98)
- Girls on Film (11/9/98)
- Situations iv: Coromandel (2/9/98)
- The title (12/98)
- Chantal at an Opening (11/12/98)
- "It's not the despair ..." (12/98)
- Chantal’s Housewarming (11/12/98)
- No lonely like tonight (12/98)
- Christmas Cards – Tension Headache – The Madwoman in the Bus – Her Plastic Shopping Bags – Thoughts of Marianne (11/12/98)
- If (12/98)
- Lock, Stock , and … (22/12/98)
- All at Sea (23/12/98)
- Proverbial Philosophy (28/12/98)
- Not the Director’s Cut (6/1/99)
- Body Fictions
- Water-marbling (7/1/99)
- Insight in (12/10/98-16/1/99)
- The music of the rain (4/7-14/10/98)
- Valentine’s Day ’99 (11/2/99)
- The Consolations of Chantal
- Mute (13/7/98)
- Walk Back (16/10/98)
- The Mask of Zorro (17/9/98)
- Bound (15/10/98)
- Aztec (15/10/98)
- Freeman’s Bay (20/2-25/3/99)
- Sound Culture (13/3-9/4/99)
- The Reason Why (21/3/99)
- Idyll (27/3-22/4/99)
- Phoenix (after Giordano Bruno):
- Tell Briar I got a hammer (28/4/99)
- … life is not in our hands … (28/9/98-29/4/99)
- les sages et beaux paysages (30/4/99)
- Dream-Chantal
- ACTS (15/6/99)
- Whatever you do (30/6/99)
- Life-Mask (21/7/99)
- Chantal: A Creed (4/8/99)
- Beloved (13-14/8/99)
- Lessons of the Genji: Around the South Island at New Year
- [Wednesday, 29th December - 4 p.m.] (29/12/99)
- Gathering I: Motueka Midday (30/12/99)
- [Thursday, 30th December - 3.15 p.m.] (30/12/99)
- Gathering II: Canaan Downs (31/12/99)
- [Friday, 31st December - 4 p.m. to Midnight] (31/12/99)
- Gathering III: Zone Five (31/12/99)
- [Wednesday, 5th January - 1.40 p.m.] (5/1/2000)
- Shades of Meaning at Cape Foulwind (5/1/2000)
- Vuelvo al Sur (5/1/2000)
- Time and Space on the Okari River (5/1/2000)
- [Friday, 7th January - 12.40 p.m.] (7/1/2000)
- Perseverence Rd (7/1/2000)
- [Saturday, 1st January - 5.50 p.m.] (1/1/2000)
- Gematria on the Great Divide (7/1/2000)
- [Tuesday, 18th January - 11.15 a.m.] (18/1/2000)
- ART (7/1/2000)
- [Tuesday, 11th January - 3.05 p.m.] (11/1/2000)
- Death and The Maiden (14/1/2000)
- [Sunday, 16th January - 8.40 p.m.] (16/1/2000)
- Approaches to Aoraki (16/1/2000)
- [Monday, 8th March - 23:20:57-0500] (8/3/2000)
- Tautuku Bush Walk (20/1/2000)
- [Monday, 17th January - 1.50 p.m.] (17/1/2000)
- Waituna Gorge (21/1/2000)
- [Monday, 24th January - 8.20 a.m.] (24/1/2000)
- In the Footsteps of Ice Giants (24/1/2000)
- Calypso (24/1/2000)
- Extreme Green (25/1/2000)
- [Monday, 3rd January - 10.55 a.m.] (3/1/2000)
- Der Berggeist (26/1/2000)
- [Sunday, 23rd January – 3.15 p.m.] (23/1/2000)
- Now Entering Parnassus (31/1/2000)
- [Sunday, 30th January - 12.15 p.m.] (30/1/2000)
- Christchurch from the Air (4/2/2000)
- Voyeur (30/12/99-26-27/1/2000)
- Chaos AD (4/2/2000)
- [Tuesday, 25th January - 9.40 p.m.] (25/1/2000)
- What You Read in My Diary (11/2/2000)
- [Monday, 27th December - 10.45 a.m.] (27/12/99)
- The Bachelors of the Quintessence (11/2/2000)
for S-
Blurb:
Jack Ross's new book is a witty addition to our genre of experimental poetry. It explores the male perspective of love in a contemporary relationship, using postmodern styles/forms of analysis of the text, Romanticism and traditional thoughts and feelings. Rich in detail, typography and quotation, the book finishes with a long sequence 'Lessons of the Genji' (extracts from which were first featured in Poetry NZ 22).
'Prose sections and widely various poetic formats meld into each other creating a kaleidoscopic pattern of references and images ... [Ross's work] represents L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E poetry at its best ...' Alistair Paterson.
Jack Ross lives in Mairangi Bay, Auckland, on the North Shore. He has published the book of poems City of Strange Brunettes (Pohutukawa Press, 1998) and the novel, Nights with Giordano Bruno (Bumper Books, 2000). He has been an editor of The Pander, and more recently of the poetry magazines Spin and brief. His articles, reviews and interviews have been widely published.
•
It was customary for a young City gentleman to woo his intended by presenting her with a hand-written anthology of improving texts and stories to demonstrate the principles he would bring to their union.- Richard West, The Life and Strange Surprising Adventures of Daniel Defoe (1998)
Is Chantal bronze? That makes me – what? Lost wax? Bodies are clay, albeit they’ve been washed, and glazed, and fired. Is love smoke? That makes me fire. If water, land. If sea, I am the sky.
(20/2-2/12/98)
Publications:
- Shonagh’s Book / Jack’s Book (Auckland: Perdrix Press, 1999): 84 pp.
- Chantal’s Book (Auckland: Perdrix Press, 1999): 2 pp.
- JAAM 14 (2000): 48-52.
- Chantal’s Book. ISBN 0-473-08744-8 (Wellington: HeadworX, 2002): 10.
•
You know my favourite saying by now: “Nature abhors a vacuum.” I don’t know, though, if you understand how momentous these emotions are for me – how intense, unheimlich. I think about you every day, see you round every street corner. I’m set up, in short, for a fall. But also for the unimaginable joy of success, reciprocation: provoking feeling for myself in another – such another – human being.
(27-28/12/98)
Publications:
- Shonagh’s Book / Jack’s Book (Auckland: Perdrix Press, 1999): 84 pp.
- Chantal’s Book. ISBN 0-473-08744-8 (Wellington: HeadworX, 2002): 11.
•
A tidal slick of water over the grass beside the Northcote exit TIME TO STRENGTHEN above three hatchet chins in the newspaper ahead Were you testing me? Your e-mail came out as indecipherable symbols I suppose I was
(4/12/98)
Publications:
- Shonagh’s Book / Jack’s Book (Auckland: Perdrix Press, 1999): 84 pp.
- Chantal’s Book (Auckland: Perdrix Press, 1999): 2 pp.
- Chantal’s Book. ISBN 0-473-08744-8 (Wellington: HeadworX, 2002): 12.
•
During his 1682 courtship, Daniel Defoe relied, we’re told, on stories from the Roman classics. Do I know any? I do know a story about Bashō, the great Japanese haiku poet. I even wrote a clumsy poem about it when I was – what? Sixteen?Bashō throughout the fastness of a day Took horse with five companions up the track. The mountains plunged in shadow to a gorge, The poet’s mind was moved to stop and pray. The altitude, the river and the day Combined to cranial music in a forge. The advent of an abbot clad in sack In conversation drowned what he would say.It’s not quite the same as the story of Coleridge and the person from Porlock – there the interruption was business [“Porlock Vice Squad, Coleridge – You’re busted,” as a Punch cartoon I saw once had it]; here it was politeness: mere aimless garrulousness.
(12/98)
Publications:
- Chantal’s Book. ISBN 0-473-08744-8 (Wellington: HeadworX, 2002): 13.
•
Questing – like a gun-dog – for a route around Pohutukawa branches at Okura Busting through supplejack – Sportsgirl – above the Piha dams “I can’t climb that” – climbing sheer reservoir walls, you dangle back to lend a hand “It’s cold; you’re used to it” in the clay pool
(6/12/98)
Publications:
- Shonagh’s Book / Jack’s Book (Auckland: Perdrix Press, 1999): 84 pp.
- Chantal’s Book (Auckland: Perdrix Press, 1999): 2 pp.
- JAAM 14 (2000): 48-52.
- Chantal’s Book. ISBN 0-473-08744-8 (Wellington: HeadworX, 2002): 14.
•
Ngongotaha – can you say that name? Ngo-ngo-tà-ha … like the “ng” in “singing”. I can’t. I’ve just spent three days there, coughing and spluttering with hayfever, and performing a strange set of controlled, riskless “death-defying stunts” – the flying fox, the luge, paragliding. Last time it was the rocket bungy, the rope swings at Lake Taupo; the time before, the bungy-jump itself. It’s my extreme fearfulness about these things that commends them to me. The pleasure comes when they’re over. It is, I suppose, a slightly more drastic equivalent to pinching yourself to make sure you’re awake. This dream is so detailed, so comprehensive, so horrible (at least at times – like the one I had last night, where I was forbidden to read my essay out loud to the English class, though I’d been waiting patiently for hours) that you need to convince yourself it’s real.
(12/98)
Publications:
- Chantal’s Book. ISBN 0-473-08744-8 (Wellington: HeadworX, 2002): 15.
•
Tartar brows
hide secrets (Bernice
Bobs Her Hair);
thin waist, slim hips …
That’s not a cop-out,
is it?
Eyes, though!
Akhenaten
optics;
Laugh! Throaty,
hoarse, insane:
the Magna Mater
loose in a storm-drain.
Jags of spleen:
“You’re wrong!”
What is it, then?
She’s kind
to people:
speaks to gallery
guards,
shop-keepers,
has a … a
loving heart
(can I say that?)
I like her upper lip.
(20/12/98)
Publications:
- Shonagh’s Book / Jack’s Book (Auckland: Perdrix Press, 1999): 84 pp.
- Chantal’s Book (Auckland: Perdrix Press, 1999): 2 pp.
- Chantal’s Book. ISBN 0-473-08744-8 (Wellington: HeadworX, 2002): 16-17.
•
Situations i: Albany
No this-ness
in planned landscapes; my effects
depend on being smelt – felt – heard.
“Don’t pull that city face.” So
Julia, six months ago:
no flame-trees in my garden,
rosebud gone: “dark fields
of the republic.” Is it time
to shoulder wood, blue sky?
Albany signs –
a long jog to the light.
(21/7/98)
Publications:
- Shonagh’s Book / Jack’s Book (Auckland: Perdrix Press, 1999): 84 pp.
- The Journal of Australian-Canadian Studies 18 (2001): 189-94.
- Chantal’s Book. ISBN 0-473-08744-8 (Wellington: HeadworX, 2002): 18.
- Wildes Licht: Poems / Gedichte aus Aotearoa Neuseeland, englisch-deutsch. Ed. & trans. Dieter Riemenschneider (Christchurch & Kronberg im Taunus: Tranzlit, 2010): 70.
Notes:
- Wildes Licht: Poems / Gedichte aus Aotearoa Neuseeland, englisch-deutsch. Ed. & trans. Dieter Riemenschneider (Christchurch & Kronberg im Taunus: Tranzlit, 2010): 71.
Ortsverhalte i: Albany
Randstadt
Kein Dies-Sein
in entworfenen Landschaften; meine Wirkung
beruht darauf gerochen - gefühlt - gehört zu werden.
"Mach nicht dein Stadtgesicht." So
Julia vor sechs Monaten:
keine Flammenbäume in meinem Garten
Rosenknospen dahin: "dunkle Felder
der Republik." Ist es Zeit
Holt zu schultern, blauer Himmel?
Albany Schilder -
ein langer Trab zum Licht.
•
But I walk faster
asphalt oyster-
catcher tracks turned cracks
forbid
enamelled synaesthesia
of landscape after
rain shoulder-slung
jacket
outdistance me
the sun goes out
grey storm-front coming yes
outdistance me
(10/9/98)
Publications:
- Shonagh’s Book / Jack’s Book (Auckland: Perdrix Press, 1999): 84 pp.
- The Journal of Australian-Canadian Studies 18 (2001): 189-94.
- Chantal’s Book. ISBN 0-473-08744-8 (Wellington: HeadworX, 2002): 19.
- Wildes Licht: Poems / Gedichte aus Aotearoa Neuseeland, englisch-deutsch. Ed. & trans. Dieter Riemenschneider (Christchurch & Kronberg im Taunus: Tranzlit, 2010): 70.
Notes:
- Wildes Licht: Poems / Gedichte aus Aotearoa Neuseeland, englisch-deutsch. Ed. & trans. Dieter Riemenschneider (Christchurch & Kronberg im Taunus: Tranzlit, 2010): 71.
Ortsverhalte i: Albany
Zwischen OR und Hauptcampus
Doch ich gehe schneller
Asphalt Austern-
fischerspurenumgestülpte Risse
verwehren
glasierte Synästhesie
der Landschaft nach
dem Regenschultergeworfene
Jacke
überflügeln mich
die Sonne verlöscht
graue Sturmfrontkommt ja
überflügeln mich.
•
Situations ii: CBD
NO VACANCIES
at the “City of Sails” motel.
It’s hard to convey how strange that is:
dark, skid-marked streets; day after day
of grey …
Who the fuck’s there?
Two loonies
standing by the road
(blue parka, beige kagoul)
not waiting for anything
– just waiting.
By a roundabout.
It’s ten at night.
Rain-slick streets are cool.
(13/7/98)
Publications:
- Shonagh’s Book / Jack’s Book (Auckland: Perdrix Press, 1999): 84 pp.
- The Journal of Australian-Canadian Studies 18 (2001): 189-94.
- Chantal’s Book. ISBN 0-473-08744-8 (Wellington: HeadworX, 2002): 20.
- Wildes Licht: Poems / Gedichte aus Aotearoa Neuseeland, englisch-deutsch. Ed. & trans. Dieter Riemenschneider (Christchurch & Kronberg im Taunus: Tranzlit, 2010): 72.
Notes:
- Europa nach dem Regen II (1940-42), is the title of Max Ernst's disturbing vision of Europe during the Second World War: "Are we witnesses to an apocalypse, or uncontrolled, cancerous growth? ... The title dates back to an earlier painting sculpted from plaster and oil (and painted on plywood) to create an imaginary relief map of a remodeled Europe completed in 1933, the year Hitler took power." [Max Ernst: Paintings, Biography, and Quotes].
- Wildes Licht: Poems / Gedichte aus Aotearoa Neuseeland, englisch-deutsch. Ed. & trans. Dieter Riemenschneider (Christchurch & Kronberg im Taunus: Tranzlit, 2010): 73.
Ortsverhalte ii: CBD
Auckland nach dem Regen
BELEGT
das “City of Sails” Motel.
's ist schwer zu sagen wie merkwürdig das ist:
dunkle Schleuderspurenstraßen; tagelanges
Grau …
Wer verdammt ist da?
Zwei Verrückte
stehen am Straßenrand
(blauer Parka, beiger Anorak)
warten auf nichts
– warten nur.
An einem Verkehrskreisel.
’s ist zehn am Abend.
Die regenglatten Straßen sind kühl.
•
Jack Ross (*1962) aus Auckland erwarb seinen PhD (Vergleichende Literaturwissenschaft) in Edinburgh und lehrt seit 1991 an der Massey University (Albany Campus). Seinem ersten Lyrikband, City of Strange Brunettes (1998), folgten weitere Sammlungen sowie Prosabände. Er edierte Anthologien, darunter (gemeinsam mit Jan Kemp) Classic, Contemporary und New New Zealand Poets in Performance (2006-2008). Siehe auch http://aonzpsa.blogspot.com/; 2008 erschein EMO, der letzte Band einer Romantrilogie.
Situations i: Albany; Situations ii: CBD, Jack Ross, Chantal's Book, Wellington: HeadworX, 2002 [167]
•
Ground Zero: The line between
man and machine
should never be erased …
Look at your faces, children of
the glass arcade – leaf-brittle.
Chantal’s eyes look past
me, pupils to one side.
Two friends stride by,
waving, laughing; I’ve never seen them
look so happy.
We trade more remarks:
life – jobs – art.
Her skin is chapped
in patches, underneath pale eyes.
I want to kiss them.
We talk for an hour.
(31/7/98)
Publications:
- Shonagh’s Book / Jack’s Book (Auckland: Perdrix Press, 1999): 84 pp.
- The Journal of Australian-Canadian Studies 18 (2001): 189-94.
- Chantal’s Book. ISBN 0-473-08744-8 (Wellington: HeadworX, 2002): 21.
•
Situations iii: Tauranga
Futility is a kind of dislocation
too, whatever Bill
may say – cover yourself
with ordure, vomit in
the gutter, fail to
come on time.
That last time,
sweating, I scarcely
saw in a hollow-cheek’d child
– Sleepyhead mattress torque –
myself, self-satisfied with
Speights.
Look forward to
a morning of revelations:
lightning blasting buzzards from the sky.
(29/3/98)
Publications:
- Shonagh’s Book / Jack’s Book (Auckland: Perdrix Press, 1999): 84 pp.
- The Journal of Australian-Canadian Studies 18 (2001): 189-94.
- Chantal’s Book. ISBN 0-473-08744-8 (Wellington: HeadworX, 2002): 22.
•
Stress Relax like the JANSPORT blue backpack strapped over your shoulders your black pull grey trousers ponytail Don’t frown Sun’s out, tickets in hand. We talked till four the other night – voyeur: You carry a green fabric dinosaur
(11/9/98)
Publications:
- Shonagh’s Book / Jack’s Book (Auckland: Perdrix Press, 1999): 84 pp.
- The Journal of Australian-Canadian Studies 18 (2001): 189-94.
- Chantal’s Book. ISBN 0-473-08744-8 (Wellington: HeadworX, 2002): 23.
•
Who cares what happens when they’re dead?
It’s bad enough now.
Or good. Who knows?
Swimming at Opito,
arguing
Emmanuelle Béart
with an old friend:
La Belle Noiseuse …
Refusing to hear
the story of the ghost
again
at the Brian Boru in Thames –
the carriage trade
a monstrous cat.
(2/9/98)
Publications:
- Shonagh’s Book / Jack’s Book (Auckland: Perdrix Press, 1999): 84 pp.
- The Journal of Australian-Canadian Studies 18 (2001): 189-94.
- Chantal’s Book. ISBN 0-473-08744-8 (Wellington: HeadworX, 2002): 24.
•
The title Situations is cribbed from Jean-Paul Sartre. I was trying to apply the idea of getting a fix on a particular time or place by putting different (contradictory?) impressions in italic and roman script, roughly corresponding with negatives and positives. The other settings are Albany University, The Tauranga Poetry Festival, and the Auckland CBD. The allusions in the last are to Max Ernst’s Europa nach dem Regen [Europe After the Rains], that strange, melting, apocalyptic landscape from the mid-forties; as well (of course) as our first meeting in that Lorne Street café, Alba. The Coromandel poem is here mainly because of its reference to La Belle Noiseuse, a four-hour film starring Emmanuelle Béart, which I didn’t then realise was based on Balzac’s Chef-d’Oeuvre Inconnu, so minutely – somewhat inconclusively? – analysed in that Christmas present you gave me, Dore Ashton’s Fable of Modern Art …
(12/98)
Publications:
- Chantal’s Book. ISBN 0-473-08744-8 (Wellington: HeadworX, 2002): 25.
•
I imagined him (Chantal’s friend) politely asking: “What do you write about?” Chantal. Of course. But I can’t can’t can’t can’t can’t can’t … “No wonder you can’t write women,” Annora says: reified – deified … beatified? No wonder I can’t describe you. You were kind to me today. Not very kind. Just nice. Do I embarrass you? This yule be cool. “I want this year to end.”
(11/12/98)
Publications:
- Shonagh’s Book / Jack’s Book (Auckland: Perdrix Press, 1999): 84 pp.
- Chantal’s Book (Auckland: Perdrix Press, 1999): 2 pp.
- Chantal’s Book. ISBN 0-473-08744-8 (Wellington: HeadworX, 2002): 26.
•
“It’s not the despair that gets me, Sharon, it’s the hope,” gasps John Cleese, as he staggers along a wooded country lane in a monk’s robe, halfway through the movie Clockwise. I realise that what lends this compilation its fatal lack of a consistent tone is, similarly, hope – the fact that I can’t despair of finally showing it to you some day. And, on that day, what would I like it to say, to be? Caring, passionate, well-informed … the list of clichés rolls on, each suggesting a dark alternative: rabid, obsessive, cluttered, gloomy … I want it to say your name.
(12/98)
Publications:
- Chantal’s Book. ISBN 0-473-08744-8 (Wellington: HeadworX, 2002): 27.
•
Expect nothing
and you won’t be
disappointed
Nothing changes
in sidereal time
except the concrete
grows
Exploding into
theatres
why can’t it not
be Saturday?
No lonely like tonight
(11/12/98)
Publications:
- Shonagh’s Book / Jack’s Book (Auckland: Perdrix Press, 1999): 84 pp.
- Chantal’s Book (Auckland: Perdrix Press, 1999): 2 pp.
- JAAM 14 (2000): 48-52.
- Chantal’s Book. ISBN 0-473-08744-8 (Wellington: HeadworX, 2002): 28.
•
David Howard tells me that what I’ve been doing in pursuing this relationship is trying to make love (in the old sense, you understand) to myself – devising a romantic image in order to fall in love with it … Perhaps even simply in order to write about it. Certainly, leafing through these poems, I wonder if he’s right. They’re all about me – my feelings, hopes, despairs – not in the least about you. It’s not that you’re entirely absent – just that you’re not really allowed to speak, express a concrete point of view. Did I start pursuing you because I knew it was safe? Because you constituted no threat to my way of life? It must have been clear to me from the beginning (the way these things always are clear) that you would never feel about me the way I felt I felt about you.
(12/98)
Publications:
- Chantal’s Book. ISBN 0-473-08744-8 (Wellington: HeadworX, 2002): 29.
•
We haven’t said a word
the other heard,
except for silence.
Sitting with Chantal in her underwear
should choke despair
until that dialogue
begins.
Perhaps this afternoon,
tomorrow – sometime soon.
(11/12/98)
Publications:
- Shonagh’s Book / Jack’s Book (Auckland: Perdrix Press, 1999): 84 pp.
- JAAM 14 (2000): 48-52.
- Chantal’s Book. ISBN 0-473-08744-8 (Wellington: HeadworX, 2002): 30.
•
If, like me, you have that puritanical sense that pleasures have to be bought and paid for, you find yourself doing disagreeable things in order somehow to tip the balance onto your side of the scales: I have a terror of needles and hate the sight of blood, so go regularly to the donation centre …I like company – I live alone. I like sex – I sleep alone. I like going out – I’m staying in. I’m lazy – I work too hard. I loved my wife – she’s a stranger now. Is that enough? – I’m not in the mood.
(12/98)
Publications:
- Chantal’s Book. ISBN 0-473-08744-8 (Wellington: HeadworX, 2002): 31.
•
The more we talk,
the less
it happened
places, people,
kisses
You’re leaving
Thursday
Wanganui,
Melbourne, Kawhia
I’m staying here
(22/12/98)
Publications:
- Shonagh’s Book / Jack’s Book (Auckland: Perdrix Press, 1999): 84 pp.
- Chantal’s Book. ISBN 0-473-08744-8 (Wellington: HeadworX, 2002): 32.
•
Did I say
I loved you?
No – that I was
in love with you
(subtle distinction)
But, you tell me
we should just be friends
Is “keen on you”
more apposite, then
(denoting non-reciprocation)?
Obsessional? Psycho
about you?
Fantasising
madly … slave
to your least whim
(23/12/98)
Publications:
- Shonagh’s Book / Jack’s Book (Auckland: Perdrix Press, 1999): 84 pp.
- Chantal’s Book (Auckland: Perdrix Press, 1999): 2 pp.
- Chantal’s Book. ISBN 0-473-08744-8 (Wellington: HeadworX, 2002): 33.
•
Treat every day
as if it were
your last
Spent loafing, cursing, But what does that
darting bare– mean?
foot from Rumours
patch to patch and yourself?
of shade The same old
on Woodend beach; clack? Shut up!
writing this drivel, Ships on fire
making notes off the shoulder of
for more on Orion?
cocktail napkins;
taking a bloody big gulp
of wine
smack on the cheek
(28/12/98)
Publications:
- Shonagh’s Book / Jack’s Book (Auckland: Perdrix Press, 1999): 84 pp.
- Chantal’s Book (Auckland: Perdrix Press, 1999): 2 pp.
- Chantal’s Book. ISBN 0-473-08744-8 (Wellington: HeadworX, 2002): 34.
•
As if one were on the verge
of something extra-
ordinary – blue
highlights? Not precisely;
more a sense
of always inhabiting
night. Not a panther, nor a faun
(The wanton Troopers riding by
Have shot my Faun and it will
dye) exactly, either:
the perfect punk?
Still, unquestionably, one-
self. But that’s the attraction
(allegedly), despite all
obstacles: sandbags,
duff magicians?
Thank you, Tasha,
anyway.
(6/1/99)
Publications:
- Shonagh’s Book / Jack’s Book (Auckland: Perdrix Press, 1999): 84 pp.
- Chantal’s Book (Auckland: Perdrix Press, 1999): 2 pp.
- Chantal’s Book. ISBN 0-473-08744-8 (Wellington: HeadworX, 2002): 35.
•
iWater-marbling … glassie, cool, translucent wave … amber sealed around a soundiiInsight in a booklined room talk on the phone back to the street the light reveals youiii The music of the rain from underneath the duvet “Why can’t she put her feet over her head?” says Heather
(7/1/99 / 12/10/98-16/1/99 / 4/7-14/10/98)
Publications:
- Shonagh’s Book / Jack’s Book (Auckland: Perdrix Press, 1999): 84 pp.
- Spin 34 (1999): 51.
- Chantal’s Book (Auckland: Perdrix Press, 1999): 2 pp.
- Chantal’s Book. ISBN 0-473-08744-8 (Wellington: HeadworX, 2002): 36.
•
I’m only human
out of longing
for you
What would I be
if you loved me?
god … or pig?
Long longing
leaning forward
at Shinchoku
– tender treats –
to give me a chaste hug
and one last kiss
(11/2/99)
Publications:
- Shonagh’s Book / Jack’s Book (Auckland: Perdrix Press, 1999): 84 pp.
- Chantal’s Book. ISBN 0-473-08744-8 (Wellington: HeadworX, 2002): 37.
•
The Consolations of Chantal
Hunc enim vitae immobilis praesentarium statum infinitus
ille temporalium rerum motus imitatur
The doors are open
but the lights are off
Chantal hasn’t arrived
Street-corner man
Hombre de la esquina rosada
prop up that wall
in your well-worn jacket
unanomalous
•
For the perpetual motion of time
imitates
the infinite state of eternal life
– Anicius Manlius Severinus Boethius (c.480-524)
(13/7/98)
Publications:
- The Consolations of Chantal / Torch Songs (Auckland: Perdrix Press, 1998).
- The Consolations of Chantal / Torch Songs, by Bananarama, Amanda Marshall, Kylie Minogue & Jack Ross (Christchurch, 1999).
- Shonagh’s Book / Jack’s Book (Auckland: Perdrix Press, 1999): 84 pp.
- Chantal’s Book. ISBN 0-473-08744-8 (Wellington: HeadworX, 2002): 38-39.
•
cumque eum effingere atque aequare non possit, ex immobilitate
deficit in motum, ex simplicitate praesentiae decrescit in
infinitam futuri ac praeteriti quantitatem
Walk back to seven years ago
the patter of the rain
dissolves in puddles
no more truth tonight
A liner on the thrust of the horizon
I was thin, I think
the streetlights hummed in tune
the streetlights hum
Talk quietly to me
how could I know you then?
don’t turn the computer
off
•
since, however, it cannot feign
or equal it,
it declines from immobility into motion,
from the simplicity of presentness
into an infinite quantity
of future and past
(16/10/98)
Publications:
- The Consolations of Chantal / Torch Songs (Auckland: Perdrix Press, 1998).
- The Consolations of Chantal / Torch Songs, by Bananarama, Amanda Marshall, Kylie Minogue & Jack Ross (Christchurch, 1999).
- Shonagh’s Book / Jack’s Book (Auckland: Perdrix Press, 1999): 84 pp.
- Chantal’s Book. ISBN 0-473-08744-8 (Wellington: HeadworX, 2002): 40-41.
•
et, cum totam pariter vitae suae plenitudinem nequeat possidere, hoc ipso, quod aliquo modo numquam esse desinit, illud, quod implere atque exprimere non potestAs you watch the dust clear, Antonio Banderas and Catherine Zeta-Jones come striding from it con el pueblo [with the people] los de abajo [from the world below] and you think, “She looks like Chantal” narrow, almond eyes, enamelled cheekbones: eucatastrophe•and – because it cannot possess at once the whole round of its life – by never ceasing to exist in some manner, that which it cannot fulfil or express, it seems to imitate to an extent
(17/9/98)
Publications:
- The Consolations of Chantal / Torch Songs (Auckland: Perdrix Press, 1998).
- The Consolations of Chantal / Torch Songs, by Bananarama, Amanda Marshall, Kylie Minogue & Jack Ross (Christchurch, 1999).
- Shonagh’s Book / Jack’s Book (Auckland: Perdrix Press, 1999): 84 pp.
- Chantal’s Book. ISBN 0-473-08744-8 (Wellington: HeadworX, 2002): 42-43.
•
aliquatenus videtur aemulari alligans se ad qualemcumque praesentiam huius exigui voluscrisque momentiThat tale you told of marking the bounds up north a feral child Then, caged in Auckland, waiting till night to roam through darkest Newton Marianne, too, in the Forêt des Soignes no thought of distance then• binding itself to the experience (such as it is) of this tenuous and fleeting moment
(15/10/98)
Publications:
- The Consolations of Chantal / Torch Songs (Auckland: Perdrix Press, 1998).
- The Consolations of Chantal / Torch Songs, by Bananarama, Amanda Marshall, Kylie Minogue & Jack Ross (Christchurch, 1999).
- Shonagh’s Book / Jack’s Book (Auckland: Perdrix Press, 1999): 84 pp.
- Chantal’s Book. ISBN 0-473-08744-8 (Wellington: HeadworX, 2002): 44-45.
•
quae, quoniam manentis illius praesentiae quandam gestat imaginem,
quibuscumque contigerit, id praestat, ut esse videantur
Aztec princess
svelte, dark
bright under white
Popocatépetl
Chimborazo
Aconcagua
I want to sketch you
Am I so self-centred?
You reached over once
to kiss me
it burned all the way home
•
which, since it carries an image of that abiding presence,
gives this benefit to everyone who possesses it,
that they seem
to exist
De Consolatione Philosophiae 5, Prose 6
feign
equal
fulfil
express
tenuous
fleeting
(15/10/98)
Publications:
- The Consolations of Chantal / Torch Songs (Auckland: Perdrix Press, 1998).
- The Consolations of Chantal / Torch Songs, by Bananarama, Amanda Marshall, Kylie Minogue & Jack Ross (Christchurch, 1999).
- Shonagh’s Book / Jack’s Book (Auckland: Perdrix Press, 1999): 84 pp.
- Chantal’s Book. ISBN 0-473-08744-8 (Wellington: HeadworX, 2002): 46-47.
•
He loves her most He loves her most
when she’s when she’s
most there not there
pressed up late night
against him alone
under gossamer lights of the city
tipped in or breath
from a upon
medieval window his arm
He loves her most He loves her most
when she’s when she’s
not there most there
(20/2-25/3/99)
Publications:
- Shonagh’s Book / Jack’s Book (Auckland: Perdrix Press, 1999): 84 pp.
- When the Sea Goes Mad at Night. Ed. Theresia Liemlienio Marshall (Auckland: Christian Gray New Zealand, 1999): 100.
- Chantal’s Book. ISBN 0-473-08744-8 (Wellington: HeadworX, 2002): 48.
•
Your face splits off
the grain
The spire of St John’s
Ponsonby
Here in the windy uplands
Western Park
Someone’s idling
their car
Chantal’s sleeping
in the etching
(13/3-9/4/99)
Publications:
- Shonagh’s Book / Jack’s Book (Auckland: Perdrix Press, 1999): 84 pp.
- Chantal’s Book. ISBN 0-473-08744-8 (Wellington: HeadworX, 2002): 49.
•
what the suicides abandon the living hug
– Herman Melville
MARVEL Is that the secret of the universe?
accomplish every task NOT
THAT without thinking about
what follows? HE
SHOULD
Chantal rises, rifles through her WITH
AVIDITY drawers – from Rajasthan –
takes out her white dress, SEIZE
THESE irons it,
RAGS
WHAT turns on Morning Report,
showers, cooks us breakfast, THE
SUICIDES drives Ed to the airport
(kissing Jack goodbye: ABANDON
THE
until tonight?) LIVING
HUG
(21/3/99)
Publications:
- Shonagh’s Book / Jack’s Book (Auckland: Perdrix Press, 1999): 84 pp.
- JAAM 13 (2000): 95-96.
- Chantal’s Book. ISBN 0-473-08744-8 (Wellington: HeadworX, 2002): 50.
•
Portage, mate
– beach conversation (28/3/99)
Starlight Communicate this moment:
asked When Clouds Collide!
Non- blue steps a mask for space,
Entity the seagull swoops.
“Master, Chantal’s reading
do Ursula Le Guin:
you “what will the mind do,
exist?” each morning, waking?”
He Adam and Eve
received in Mahurangi. “It’s only
no up to here” – sardonic man
answer beside the submerged road.
to Communicate this moment:
his hair filled with sand / pohutukawa
question, tangle / boat coming round the
however. bend / munching a golden delicious /
– Chuang-Tzu naked in the surf.
(27/3-22/4/99)
Publications:
- Shonagh’s Book / Jack’s Book (Auckland: Perdrix Press, 1999): 84 pp.
- JAAM 13 (2000): 95-96.
- Chantal’s Book. ISBN 0-473-08744-8 (Wellington: HeadworX, 2002): 51.
•
Phoenix
after Giordano Bruno,
De gli eroici furori (1585)
Tell Briar I got a hammer
– Small boy at Murrays Bay (28/9/98)
Chi femmi ad altro amor la mente desta,
Chi femmi ogn’altra diva e vile e vana,
In cui beltade e la bontà sovrana
Unicamente più si manifesta;
Quell’è ch’io viddi uscir de la foresta,
Cacciatrice di me, la mia Diana,
Tra belle ninfe su l’aura Campana,
Per cui dissi ad Amor: – Mi rendo a questa. –
Ed egli a me: – O fortunato amante!
O dal tuo fato gradito consorte!
Chè colei sola, che, fra tante e tante,
Quai ha nel grembo la vita e la morte,
Più adorna il mondo con le grazie sante,
Ottenesti per studio e per sorte;
Ne l’amorosa corte
Sì altamente felice cattivo,
Che non invidii a sciolto altr’uomo, o divo.
•
Chi femmi ad altro amor la mente desta
Key femme It’s true the mind closes
ad altro amor la mente desta
adulterer other beauties half-baked somehow
amor la mente desta
hammer in a sea-bound bach at Easter
la mente desta
lamented crossing the dunes with a shovel
She whom I saw trip down the stairs
of the Gallery, dark-skirted Chantal:
“I know I don’t look old enough
to have a grown-up daughter.”
(But it wasn’t for ages yet,
and I don’t talk to myself
… or not all that much – or that often),
yet Love undoubtedly
would have replied:
“life and death lie in that lap.”
In a third-floor flat
captive, watching her sleep
envying neither god nor man.
(28/4/99)
Publications:
- Phoenix – after Giordano Bruno, De gli eroici furori (1585). (Auckland, Perdrix Press, 1999).
- Shonagh’s Book / Jack’s Book (Auckland: Perdrix Press, 1999): 84 pp.
- Chantal’s Book (Auckland: Perdrix Press, 1999): 2 pp.
- Nights with Giordano Bruno. R.E.M. Trilogy 1. ISBN 0-9582225-0-9 (Wellington: Bumper Books, 2000): 74.
- Chantal’s Book. ISBN 0-473-08744-8 (Wellington: HeadworX, 2002): 52-53.
•
… life is not in our hands. You are lived / by
– Kendrick Smithyman, “Idyll” (17/5/71)
Unico augel del sol, vaga Fenice,
Ch’appareggi col mondo gli anni tui,
Quai colmi ne l’Arabia felice,
Tu sei chi fuste, io son quel che non fui.
Io per caldo d’amor muoio infelice;
Ma te ravviva il sol co’ raggi sui.
Tu bruggi ’n un, ed io in ogni loco;
Io da Cupido, hai tu da Febo il foco.
Hai termini prefissi
Di lunga vita, e io ho breve fine,
Che pronto s’offre per mille ruine;
Nè so quei che vivrò, nè quel che vissi:
Me cieco fato adduce,
Tu certo torni a riveder tua luce.
•
Unico augel del sol, vaga Fenice,
Unique, O angel soul, sole, solar phoenix,
Ch’appareggi col mondo gli anni tui,
who’ve paired your years to this ellipsing disc
Quai colmi ne l’Arabia felice,
– burn, are reborn to burn again in Felix
Arabia.
Tu sei chi fuste, io son quel che non fui.
You orbit; I’m eclipsed.
You are what you were, I am …
nothing that I was
what I never was
love’s heat drives me, dries me – I die, unhappy
the sun revives you with his healing rays
you burn in one, I in every place
Phoebus fires you, as Cupid’s fires scorch me
In railway terminals
I track stiff fines
to pimp for me through miles of ruins
I can’t see what I’ll see;
Blind fate blinds me.
You. You’re guided back by your own light.
(28/9/98-29/4/99)
Publications:
- Phoenix – after Giordano Bruno, De gli eroici furori (1585). (Auckland, Perdrix Press, 1999).
- Shonagh’s Book / Jack’s Book (Auckland: Perdrix Press, 1999): 84 pp.
- Chantal’s Book (Auckland: Perdrix Press, 1999): 2 pp.
- Nights with Giordano Bruno. R.E.M. Trilogy 1. ISBN 0-9582225-0-9 (Wellington: Bumper Books, 2000): 142.
- Chantal’s Book. ISBN 0-473-08744-8 (Wellington: HeadworX, 2002): 54-55.
•
les sages et beaux paysages
font les ombres sages aussi
– Jean-Jacques Goldman (85-86)
Questa fenice, ch’al bel sol s’accende,
E a dramma a dramma consumando vassi,
Mentre, di splendor cinta, ardendo stassi,
Contrario fio al suo pianeta rende;
Perchè quel che da lei al ciel ascende,
Tepido fumo ed atra nebbia fassi,
Onde i raggi a’ nostri occhi occolti lassi
E quello avvele, per cui arde e splende.
Tal il mio spirto (ch’il divin splendore
Accende e illustra), mentre va spiegando
Quel che tanto riluce nel pensiero,
Manda da l’alto suo concetto fore
Rima, ch’il vago sol vad’oscurando,
Mentre mi struggo e liquefaccio intiero.
Oimè! questo atro e nero
Nuvol di foco infosca col suo stile
Quel ch’aggrandir vorrebbe, e’l rende umile.
•
Questa fenice, ch’al bel sol s’accende,
Questing phoenix, who brave solar ascent
E a dramma a dramma consumando vassi,
from drama to drama consuming vastly
Mentre, di splendor cinta, ardendo stassi,
Men trade your splendour for ardent ecstasy
Contrario fio al suo pianeta rende;
Contrary flesh back to your planet send
“Perky” – perky nana. D’you remember
that vile expression
from a TV ad? (Nana’s French
for “chick”). We’ve made ourselves
A kind of gutless language,
dirtying everything
it touches: Perky tits, arse, tush …
How can I say
what you mean to me
– Rima, spirit of the forest?
Your soul evades those nets,
black, crusted fogs.
You go out singing in the pouring rain.
(30/4/99)
Publications:
- Phoenix – after Giordano Bruno, De gli eroici furori (1585). (Auckland, Perdrix Press, 1999).
- Shonagh’s Book / Jack’s Book (Auckland: Perdrix Press, 1999): 84 pp.
- Chantal’s Book (Auckland: Perdrix Press, 1999): 2 pp.
- Nights with Giordano Bruno. R.E.M. Trilogy 1. ISBN 0-9582225-0-9 (Wellington: Bumper Books, 2000): 105 & 53.
- Chantal’s Book. ISBN 0-473-08744-8 (Wellington: HeadworX, 2002): 56-57.
•
The forward youth that would appear
Must now forsake his Muses dear
– Andrew Marvell
I
ACTS
on an
articulated
truck
steel snarl
I wrote Chantal
I love you
but do I?
Alexander fights Persians
in the sky
II
Whatever you do
still sounds like you
Ship catalogues, excluded
middles, triple
columns – baked sun on
white buildings
Jie-Young and J. J. Lee,
Gab-Soon, Eun-Sook,
Ichiro, Faisal, me …
(15/6/99 / 30/6/99)
Publications:
- Chantal’s Book. ISBN 0-473-08744-8 (Wellington: HeadworX, 2002): 58-59.
•
Feeding the mutant within
– Fridge magnet
Time out and no
mistake
There’s many ways to watch a wo-
man sleep – demented
and forgiving
Singing
three notes at once (yo-
delling, really) while you
breathe it in: the music
Can’t be bad for
some
I thought I’d had it
but there’s more to take
just no more ways to take
it: iron pills, ant-
oxidants
the fact of want-
ing it’s a smile
(21/7/99)
Publications:
- Chantal’s Book. ISBN 0-473-08744-8 (Wellington: HeadworX, 2002): 60.
•
• She could almost get away
with a black beret
• She’s coming to a cinema
near you
• where she’ll drink merlot
• One hand toys with the fur
behind the car-seat
• The other inches up
your sober leg
• MAINZEAL would welcome her
for sale or lease
• PROJEX would hire her out
• Her destination’s somewhere
south of Rio
• She spells suspense, romance, & …
cranberries
(4/8/99)
Publications:
- Chantal’s Book. ISBN 0-473-08744-8 (Wellington: HeadworX, 2002): 61.
•
after Paul Éluard She is on top of my eyelids her hair is tangled in mine the same shape as my hands the same colour as my eyes she’s swallowed by my shadow like a stone against the sky Her eyes are always open there’s no way I can sleep Her technicolor dreams make the sun dry up make me laugh, laugh and cry, talk with nothing to say
(13-14/8/99)
Publications:
- Happy Six Months Anniversary! (Auckland: Perdrix Press, 1999).
- Three Surrealist Poems, for the Engagement of Lisa Bieleski & Kendall Clements (Auckland: Perdrix Press, 1999).
- Chantal’s Book. ISBN 0-473-08744-8 (Wellington: HeadworX, 2002): 62.
Notes:
- The text of "L'Amoureuse", by Paul Éluard, from Mourir de ne pas mourir (1924), can be found in La poésie surréaliste: Édition revue et augmentée. Ed. Jean-Louis Bédouin. 1964 (Paris: Éditions Seghers, 1970): 164.
•
Lessons of the Genji
Around the South Island
at New Year
Vuelvo al Sur
como se vuelve siempre al amor
Vuelvo a vos
con mi deseo con mi temor …
Te quiero, Sur
– Astor Piazzolla
We are still talking in generalities when suddenly he is off,
murmuring something about there being ‘too many maiden-flowers
in the field.’ I remember thinking how like the hero of a
romance he seemed.
– Diary of Lady Murasaki
_________________________________________________________________
Stilwell Bay
blue sky, shading from chalky to cerulean
banks of cumulus
far-off, the Marlborough ranges
gradations of green
& blue
grained golden
silica sand
_________________________________________________________________
Much thinking as we walked along the Abel Tasman track – mostly
about poetry (a girl stoops to stroke her boyfriend’s hair, green-
blue shorts moulding to her youthful finish – he, a burly, oafish
character follows her blonde perfection up the beach).
(29/12/99)
Publications:
- Chantal’s Book. ISBN 0-473-08744-8 (Wellington: HeadworX, 2002): 66.
Notes:
- Quotations from Murasaki Shikibu's diary come from The Diary of Lady Murasaki. Trans. Richard Bowring. 1982. Penguin Classics (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1996).
•
Motueka Midday
Vertige des pays chauds
– France Gall
A matter of the heart
between two brothers
drive through thistledown
in C’s Toyota sudden
Sensurround
St Thomas FOOD A sausage
sizzle draws the tribes
the Gathering the
Gathering
A simulacrum here
of inner weather talk
last night
from two am
This morning back to tension
Sit on a split-bark bench
in the hot sun
(30/12/99)
Publications:
- Chantal’s Book. ISBN 0-473-08744-8 (Wellington: HeadworX, 2002): 67.
•
It was a relief that no-one could actually recall how anyone else
had looked on that occasion.
– Diary of Lady Murasaki
… A helicopter soars effortlessly by (a snake of metal from his
vantage-point). “Another 5 k up to the turn,” said the man with
orange shades behind us. Someone blows iridescent bubbles up ahead.
“They’re clambering down the bank for their piss,” says Chantal.
“I was going to go down there, but now everyone’s been there I
think I won’t …” Birds sing on, unperturbed. Cyclists barely pause.
A taxi-van trundles past. “A bus went over the bank, & the crane
had to pull it out, but it’s done now, so you should be moving soon.”
At least this long wait’s in the shade.
Girl ahead, in shades, grey trousers, red top, cowboy hat, dips
& blows her bubbles. “I’m going to need a new me, for the new
millennium,” she confides, flipping through a magazine.
“If I was a true radical, a bolshie, I’d hoist up my skirts
& do it here.”
“They’re expecting heavy rain,” says one more passer-by.
From here, it looks like a little parable of the 20th century – a long
line of dusty cars going God knows where as dark begins to fall.
(30/12/99)
Publications:
- Chantal’s Book. ISBN 0-473-08744-8 (Wellington: HeadworX, 2002): 68.
Notes:
- Quotations from Murasaki Shikibu's diary come from The Diary of Lady Murasaki. Trans. Richard Bowring. 1982. Penguin Classics (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1996).
•
Canaan Downs
I can see Richard Killeen walking through here
with a bemused look on his face
– Chantal
In the rain everyone is equal
mustard-soaked hot dogs
in a sodden tent
It doesn’t take that much
to make a legend
three plums make up
a piece of fruit
I just saw a one-legged man
go by on crutches
Chew in your green-blue hood
young lady chew
bite spit swallow bite spit swallow spew
(31/12/99)
Publications:
- Chantal’s Book. ISBN 0-473-08744-8 (Wellington: HeadworX, 2002): 69.
•
On the last night of the year the ceremony of casting out devils
was over very early; I was resting in my room, blackening my teeth
and putting on a light powder, when Ben no Naishi came in ...
– Diary of Lady Murasaki
Gibbon, vol. IV, p.188: “… the enthusiast who entered the dome of
St. Sophia might be tempted to suppose that it was the residence,
or even the workmanship of the Deity. Yet how dull is the artifice,
how insignificant is the labour, if it be compared with the
formation of the vilest insect that crawls upon the surface of
the temple.” [writing interrupted by the returning rain]
Tomorrow? / Just be free / Ecstasy
at the mud-soaked tribal dance area.
The countdown came a few minutes too late, by my reckoning.
There was also a Māori chant and some singing, though somewhat
half-hearted. They were still going at it when we turned & groped
our way back to bed (the car radio had told us that Chch, too,
was grey that night … ditto Auckland, which was charting the life
of Christ in song).
(31/12/99)
Publications:
- Chantal’s Book. ISBN 0-473-08744-8 (Wellington: HeadworX, 2002): 71.
Notes:
- Quotations from Murasaki Shikibu's diary come from The Diary of Lady Murasaki. Trans. Richard Bowring. 1982. Penguin Classics (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1996).
•
Zone Five
The second-coolest place to be at New Year’s
– Oprah Winfrey
Should we be like trees?
A goblin
prompts the question slowing down
the dance to trance
Yellow red and blue on bracken
thunder in the sky
Choose I’d like to tell you
that it’s easy
as the bells are struck
You know it’s hard
to tune in when
the answers
to the questions
are absurd
(31/12/99)
Publications:
- Chantal’s Book. ISBN 0-473-08744-8 (Wellington: HeadworX, 2002): 70.
•
How is it that a little incident like this suddenly comes back to
one, whereas something that moved one deeply is forgotten with the
passage of the years?
– Diary of Lady Murasaki
… Staring down at the lazy-looking kekeno fur seals stumbling
over the rocks near Wall Island. Time to confess my terrible crime.
It took a wee while to back out from the café parking area (with
Chantal booming “plenty of room’). Mr Suave-o with the designer
wife & nuclear kids was close behind me in a grey four-wheel drive,
so I was anxious to escape. As I drove up to the narrow gap between
the banks, another four-wheel drive came in sight. I stopped &
tried to nose in out of the way, but there wasn’t much margin.
He went past & I went on, but caught a glimpse of him in my rear-
view mirror yawing over into the ditch.
I panicked & drove on, hoping to get away before having to:
1. help them out;
2. endure their recriminations;
3. exchange addresses etc. for damages.
Was it my fault? Perhaps – but not very culpably. I am bad,
though, for running away. Maybe they took our licence number &
will hunt us down …
Now sitting on a hill overlooking the sea & rocks, whinging
of birds below us.
(5/1/2000)
Publications:
- “from Lessons of the Genji: Around the South Island at New Year.” [Featured Poet]: Poetry NZ 22 (2001): 11-26.
- Chantal’s Book. ISBN 0-473-08744-8 (Wellington: HeadworX, 2002): 72.
Notes:
- Quotations from Murasaki Shikibu's diary come from The Diary of Lady Murasaki. Trans. Richard Bowring. 1982. Penguin Classics (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1996).
•
How soon the silver fades in the dust! How soon the black figure
slips from the wrinkled sheet! How softly the sheet falls to the
ground!
– Wallace Stevens
Lying with hat on head
tipped over staring up
through the brim at red
more prepositions
yellow inside red inside green-grey reach out
from sweating Panama to touch
her shoulder Chantal
hot in this new sun
supine not stable seals cry down below
Lying present participle Seize
the moment
Why? Is it momentous?
no or glad? sweet? somewhat yes
side-swiped a car three miles back
my fault or his
one slip or less
entanglement with business Tartarus of day
An aphid passes
greetings green
comrade
(5/1/2000)
Publications:
- “from Lessons of the Genji: Around the South Island at New Year.” [Featured Poet]: Poetry NZ 22 (2001): 11-26.
- Chantal’s Book. ISBN 0-473-08744-8 (Wellington: HeadworX, 2002): 73.
•
‘And the duckweed upon the lake,’ came the words of the song.
There was also a flute accompanying them which somehow
intensified the coolness of the dawn breeze. The most
insignificant thing can have its season.
– Diary of Lady Murasaki
Vuelvo al Sur Back to the South
como se vuelve siempre al amor as one returns from love
Vuelvo a vos from fear feared loss
con mi deseo con mi temor desire
Llevo el Sur Dream of the South
como un destino del corazón heart’s destiny
Soy del Sur where I belong
como los aires del bandoneón like the accordion
Sueño el Sur Back to the South
immensa luna cielo al revés blank moon backward
Volto al Sur skies green seasons
el tiempo abierto y su después and their aftermath
Quiero al Sur I love the South
su buena gente su dignidad its gentle people their
Siento el Sur dignity your
como tu cuerpo en la intimidad body’s poise
Te quiero Sur I love you South
Sur South
Te quiero I love you
– Astor Piazzolla
(5/1/2000)
Publications:
- Chantal’s Book. ISBN 0-473-08744-8 (Wellington: HeadworX, 2002): 74.
Notes:
- Quotations from Murasaki Shikibu's diary come from The Diary of Lady Murasaki. Trans. Richard Bowring. 1982. Penguin Classics (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1996).
•
It’s bigger on the inside than the outside
– Doctor Who
Time for the crabs to come out
And scuttle back and forth
Relative to the singing wires
Dimensions foreshore sedge & tussock
In a gnarled white tree-trunk
Space to share
in shallow waters
(5/1/2000)
Publications:
- Chantal’s Book. ISBN 0-473-08744-8 (Wellington: HeadworX, 2002): 75.
•
I was about to send the fan back with the poem:Chrysanthemum dew I brush my sleeve just once restoring the thousand years to youBut then they told me that Her Excellency had already returned to her apartments. There was no point, I told myself, so let the matter drop. – Diary of Lady Murasaki PERSEVERENCE RD – outside Reefton. A message to me in that? BRAZILS RD No Exit. CHATTERTON RD No Exit – near Hanmer Springs. So familiar, all this. Sandwiches at the Jay Walk café: BLT Bacon, Lettuce & Tomato BETR Bacon, Egg & Tomato Relish BLAT Bacon, Lettuce, Avocado & Tomato BLGT Bacon, Lettuce, Gruyere & Tomato SCBLT Smoked Chicken, Bacon, Lettuce & Tomato.
(7/1/2000)
Publications:
- Chantal’s Book. ISBN 0-473-08744-8 (Wellington: HeadworX, 2002): 76.
Notes:
- Quotations from Murasaki Shikibu's diary come from The Diary of Lady Murasaki. Trans. Richard Bowring. 1982. Penguin Classics (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1996).
•
My darling, my beauty, I am not your aunt, but your willing slave!
– Anton Chekhov
I’m very keen on nectarines
at the moment
they taste of Summer
Dragonflies obey
their nature
bowing to the stream
I munch an apple
going round and round
the edges
scoring down
the core
to pips
The road-signs seem to
speak to me
flashing me messages
↗ 45 go
CHATTERTON – No Exit
Perseverence Rd
(7/1/2000)
Publications:
- Chantal’s Book. ISBN 0-473-08744-8 (Wellington: HeadworX, 2002): 77.
•
… but I fear if I single out everything for comment, I will
never finish.
– Diary of Lady Murasaki
Vignette: Whirling cage, seen from afar in the half-light as we
entered the Gathering past that strange ghost army the
first night. It cost me ten dollars to go on it at about
quarter past eleven on New Year’s Eve. It was an
exquisitely unpleasant experience – being bashed against
the cage, with minimal padding. It left me dazed & dizzy
afterwards.
Vignette: Two girls sitting in a white car, crying their eyes out,
expressions of total hopelessness, as we drove past them
on our way out of Canaan Downs. Had they broken down?
For the first time I felt really worried, not just tense
& anxious (the security people seemed nice but
overstretched – the nightmarish quagmire caused by
8,000 cars heading over the same piece of grass hadn’t
yet got home to them).
(1/1/2000)
Publications:
- “from Lessons of the Genji: Around the South Island at New Year.” [Featured Poet]: Poetry NZ 22 (2001): 11-26.
- Chantal’s Book. ISBN 0-473-08744-8 (Wellington: HeadworX, 2002): 78.
Notes:
- Quotations from Murasaki Shikibu's diary come from The Diary of Lady Murasaki. Trans. Richard Bowring. 1982. Penguin Classics (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1996).
•
comme un pharaon en amnésie
– Jean-Jacques Goldman
day more some day
there’ll be
no more no some
blue speck goings
creek the creek all
artist over
former over
ly known nothing
as rest at all
stops on car strewn
the Lew with leaves
is pass so long
some more no more
there’ll be
some day no day
(7/1/2000)
Publications:
- “from Lessons of the Genji: Around the South Island at New Year.” [Featured Poet]: Poetry NZ 22 (2001): 11-26.
- Chantal’s Book. ISBN 0-473-08744-8 (Wellington: HeadworX, 2002): 79.
•
The nobles had been amusing themselves painting small white pagodas
on as many petals as they could …
– Diary of Lady Murasaki
In the Otago Museum. Rather a fine one, actually – excellent,
if creepy, collection of Melanesian artefacts downstairs,
along with Maori canoes, meres, etc. Upstairs now. Chantal
goes slowly though the Egyptian stuff while I sit in a hall
of amulets and clothes, having my hair packaged for remote
posterity.
Very much liked a painting by Monet in the Art Gallery called
“la Débâcle” (1880). A marshy winter landscape with red, cloudy
sky (towards evening?)
_________________________________________________________________
a calm usual
peaceful insanely
coldness. heavy
absolutely &
dead ornate
still frame
_________________________________________________________________
(18/1/2000)
Publications:
- “from Lessons of the Genji: Around the South Island at New Year.” [Featured Poet]: Poetry NZ 22 (2001): 11-26.
- Chantal’s Book. ISBN 0-473-08744-8 (Wellington: HeadworX, 2002): 80.
Notes:
- Quotations from Murasaki Shikibu's diary come from The Diary of Lady Murasaki. Trans. Richard Bowring. 1982. Penguin Classics (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1996).
•
Can all men, together, avenge
One of the leaves that have fallen in autumn?
But the wise man avenges by building his city in snow
– Wallace Stevens
on a camper-van cabbage moths
beside the road
headlights on
Midday squaring the circle
Novalis said
no more than two or three
intelligible stanzas thunderheads mass
across the plain
ex-partner’s friend’s sister
works at Pegasus Bay Welcome to Amberley
Take your time
Is that truck overtaking?
(7/1/2000)
Publications:
- “from Lessons of the Genji: Around the South Island at New Year.” [Featured Poet]: Poetry NZ 22 (2001): 11-26.
- Chantal’s Book. ISBN 0-473-08744-8 (Wellington: HeadworX, 2002): 81.
•
I pulled back the sleeve that covered her face.
‘You remind me of a fairy-tale princess!’ I said.
She looked up with a start.
‘You are dreadful!’ she said, propping herself up. “Waking
people up like that so thoughtlessly!’
I remember being struck by the attractive way her face
suddenly flushed. Someone very beautiful can look even more
beautiful on occasion.
– Diary of Lady Murasaki
Went for a swim in the icy cold waters of Okains Bay to cool down
a bit after playing with C’s pussy through her bikini panties.
Water straight from Antarctica, through the empty leagues of the
South Pacific. Water turquoise-blue against the tawny lion-sand
colour of the hills. I was very cold when I returned & Chantal
proceeded to warm me up by playing with my cock with her hand
while I pulled down my shirt to hide this activity from prying
eyes. Luckily, the beach is vast & the cars and people were some
distance off. I fingered her till she came, but was left tumescent
when a red car pulled up in front of us. A boy got out and started
dancing around in the sand with admirable unselfconsciousness.
Heat-shimmer now between us and the hills. One would scarcely
imagine the scene had ever been different: single sail, three
lines or blocks or areas of green-blue sea, brown, turquoise,
ultramarine, one fat man paddling, another sitting in white
towelling hat to read, three gazing out to sea – Chantal’s
head on my knees as she reads The Alexandria Quartet:
“Alexandria, the capital of memory.”
(11/1/2000)
Publications:
- “from Lessons of the Genji: Around the South Island at New Year.” [Featured Poet]: Poetry NZ 22 (2001): 11-26.
- Chantal’s Book. ISBN 0-473-08744-8 (Wellington: HeadworX, 2002): 82-83.
Notes:
- Quotations from Murasaki Shikibu's diary come from The Diary of Lady Murasaki. Trans. Richard Bowring. 1982. Penguin Classics (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1996).
•
Brief life is here our portion
Brief sorrow, short-lived care
The life that knows no parting
The endless life is there
– Lyttelton cemetery
Fire-dancing on a hillside
tangled in the strings
the laser strikes you
Fog and rain surround you
(14/1/2000)
Publications:
- “from Lessons of the Genji: Around the South Island at New Year.” [Featured Poet]: Poetry NZ 22 (2001): 11-26.
- Chantal’s Book. ISBN 0-473-08744-8 (Wellington: HeadworX, 2002): 84.
•
Each one of us is quite different. Some are confident, open and
forthcoming. Others are born pessimists, amused by nothing, the
kind who search through old letters, carry out penances, intone
sūtras without end, and clack their beads.
– Diary of Lady Murasaki
Signs on the road to Mt. Cook:
MT JACK DEADHORSE
COCK STREAM STREAM
Drawn in the moving car:
_________________________________________________________________
Great rock bluffs a series of foreheads
of massy rock
mist bank
rocky tussock landscape
elephant feet
in the hills
_________________________________________________________________
So much sketching – so little writing: the science of the
vignette. No thinking, that’s for sure.
(16/1/2000)
Publications:
- Chantal’s Book. ISBN 0-473-08744-8 (Wellington: HeadworX, 2002): 85.
Notes:
- Quotations from Murasaki Shikibu's diary come from The Diary of Lady Murasaki. Trans. Richard Bowring. 1982. Penguin Classics (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1996).
•
Mt. Cock
– turnoff sign
no thinking here too cold
warm in the car though
Pukaki turquoise
Arabia Petraea red
only the penitent man
shall pass
A face
grows from the ground
black truck-treads score
blank tar
A Christmas tree is left outside to spoil
(16/1/2000)
Publications:
- Spin 37 (2000): 51.
- Chantal’s Book. ISBN 0-473-08744-8 (Wellington: HeadworX, 2002): 86.
•
His Excellency happened to see that Her Majesty had the Tale
of Genji with her. Out came the usual comments …
– Diary of Lady Murasaki
Jack,
I’ve seen your letter about Genji both at the Amazon and
Suite101 sites. I’ve begun developing a documentary about the
book and its influence. If you have any additional references
or ideas about the book you’d like to send along, I’d like to
hear them.
Thanks, Elliot Berlin
_________________________________________________________________
The first moment of jarring strangeness in Lady Murasaki’s
great novel comes when her hero, the shining Genji, settles
for the embraces of a young boy go-between, rather than his
reluctant sister. From there, the novel goes on to explore
ever more complex psychological dimensions of incest, the
Don Juan complex, and married love. Each chapter is composed
with the care and precision of a poem, and the author’s
elusive/allusive prose conceals the Jane Austen-like
precision with which she charts her two heroes’ foibles
and self-delusions. Somewhere in between Seidensticker’s
robust and spare translation and Arthur Waley’s Proustian
expansion it may, perhaps, be possible for the English
reader to grasp the lineaments of the original work.
The greatest novel ever written? The first psychological
novel in any language? The first anti-hero (Kaoru, Genji’s
nephew) in world literature? Each of these statements
could be defended, but perhaps it would be more to the
point to say that the Genji should be as essential to
the truly educated reader as Homer or Tolstoy …
[12th July, 1997]
_________________________________________________________________
(8/3/2000)
Publications:
- Chantal’s Book. ISBN 0-473-08744-8 (Wellington: HeadworX, 2002): 87.
Notes:
- Quotations from Murasaki Shikibu's diary come from The Diary of Lady Murasaki. Trans. Richard Bowring. 1982. Penguin Classics (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1996).
•
There were many more bones on Cormorant Island, but they were
all fishbones
– Arthur Ransome
Generally very cryptic
and active by night
VPL
visible planty line
Please keep to boardwalks
fragile area
Upside down world
Under brown water
Lancewood?
just a branch
You don’t see a lot of
epiphytes here
Or maybe you do
(20/1/2000)
Publications:
- Chantal’s Book. ISBN 0-473-08744-8 (Wellington: HeadworX, 2002): 88.
•
That was the night Lady Koma had her embarrassing experience.
– Diary of Lady Murasaki
Am I censoring myself? I get the impression this diary is a
hostage to fortune. The official version, then:
Sitting in a sylvan glade on the Lindis pass, where we’ve
been for a swim in an icy-cold swimming hole, complete with
fast-flowing waterslide. Both feeling very Homeric: Chantal
at doing her washing like Nausicäa, me at bestriding the
stream like the resourceful Odysseus (now up to tape 4 of
the Penguin Classics Odyssey).
Driving down lake Dunstan, between Cromwell & Clyde, saw an
immense construction on the hillside: monumental, Egyptian,
_________________________________________________________________
long terrace
pipes
massive frieze for run-off
with (half-effaced?) graffiti
_________________________________________________________________
which I presume must be the Goldfields Memorial.
(17/1/2000)
Publications:
- “from Lessons of the Genji: Around the South Island at New Year.” [Featured Poet]: Poetry NZ 22 (2001): 11-26.
- Chantal’s Book. ISBN 0-473-08744-8 (Wellington: HeadworX, 2002): 89.
Notes:
- Quotations from Murasaki Shikibu's diary come from The Diary of Lady Murasaki. Trans. Richard Bowring. 1982. Penguin Classics (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1996).
•
what on earth is the good of a lighted window?
– T. E. Lawrence
The heavy skies of Southland
Waimakaha
Odysseus
at whose expense you’re living
whose wife you’re courting
whose son you are plotting to kill
Last night the moon’s corona
circled stars
as fog crept up the stream
the chance of returning home
has gone forever
(21/1/2000)
Publications:
- “from Lessons of the Genji: Around the South Island at New Year.” [Featured Poet]: Poetry NZ 22 (2001): 11-26.
- Chantal’s Book. ISBN 0-473-08744-8 (Wellington: HeadworX, 2002): 90.
•
A number of the preachers caused amusement because they kept on
interrupting each other and getting tongue-tied.
– Diary of Lady Murasaki
Had a strange dream last night. I got back to Auckland to find
the whole of Mairangi Bay in ruins – part of a redevelopment
scheme. P. was in charge at the Uni, & laying down the law most
tediously about an essay he’d written in England, republished
here anonymously. The computers wouldn’t work because my
brothers had stuffed them up. Marianne was also in the dream
somehow. She said she couldn’t stand me hanging out with U so
much.
This is not a guide book. Rather it is a journey I want to share
with you. I invite you to see the Catlins through my eyes, but
it might also happen that your own spark of creativity will kindle
when you hear the ocean in counterpoint to the birds of shore
and bush …
– Lynley Millar, The Catlins Collection: Verse & Vistas
– A Personal Journey (Invercargill: Morepork Press, 1998) 2.
(24/1/2000)
Publications:
- “from Lessons of the Genji: Around the South Island at New Year.” [Featured Poet]: Poetry NZ 22 (2001): 11-26.
- Chantal’s Book. ISBN 0-473-08744-8 (Wellington: HeadworX, 2002): 91.
Notes:
- Quotations from Murasaki Shikibu's diary come from The Diary of Lady Murasaki. Trans. Richard Bowring. 1982. Penguin Classics (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1996).
•
Young ones everywhere
holding hands to show they care
– Princesse Stéphanie
don’t want to make up images
combine expected words
Vuelvo al Sur
back to the south
Astor Piazzolla sings
at Latitude 45°
FLATMATES LIVES BARED
TO THE WORLD
beside an ironing board
that beech tree took
600 years to grow
the rock riddle is slow
(24/1/2000)
Publications:
- “from Lessons of the Genji: Around the South Island at New Year.” [Featured Poet]: Poetry NZ 22 (2001): 11-26.
- Chantal’s Book. ISBN 0-473-08744-8 (Wellington: HeadworX, 2002): 92.
•
The Minister of the Right, Akimitsu, became somewhat over-
enthusiastic about the koto playing and started to play pranks
which ended up with his making a dreadful fool of himself.
We all shuddered to watch.
– Diary of Lady Murasaki
Il me disait y’a qu’le look qui compte
Et moi bien sûr j’me suis pas rendue compte
Qu’il regardait par dessus mon épaule
Cette fille lui a fait le coup du sang chaud
Et moi j’avais pas la couleur de peau
Pour le Calypso
besame mucho
Vertige des pays chauds
Il disait let’s go
J’ai besoin d’autre chose
Calypso
Il rêvait tout haut
Danser là-bas bientôt
Le Calypso, tico tico tico Calypso
A chacun ses héros
Lui Dario Moreno
Moi Police ou Toto
Moi Elton ou Bowie
Et lui Luis Mariano …
He told me, all that counts is the look.
Of course, I didn’t know at the time
that he was looking over my shoulder;
eyeing that other girl – the one who made him hot.
Me, I didn’t have the right skin colour …
For Calypso …
kiss me madly,
hot country vertigo.
He said, “let’s go,”
I need a change right now.
Calypso.
His dreams were bold:
dancing there, soon:
the Calypso …
We all have our heroes:
him Dario Moreno,
me Police or Toto;
me Elton or Bowie,
him Luis Mariano.
– Michel Berger / France Gall
(24/1/2000)
Publications:
- Chantal’s Book. ISBN 0-473-08744-8 (Wellington: HeadworX, 2002): 93.
Notes:
- Quotations from Murasaki Shikibu's diary come from The Diary of Lady Murasaki. Trans. Richard Bowring. 1982. Penguin Classics (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1996).
•
I feel that now … my love for her is purer and loftier than it was
in the past; and that is why I want to go up to her, to stamp hard
on her toe with my heel, to hurt her and smile as I do it
– Anton Chekhov
That branch that caught my arm
like a hand
above Lake Wakatipu
did that mean
Track washed out
ahead Turn back unfinished
business Drop-off zone
above the Kawarau?
It’s not as high
as I thought it’d be
A moment’s pause I’ll let you go
then over backwards off the side of the cliff
down the precipice Mother to Child
(25/1/2000)
Publications:
- Chantal’s Book. ISBN 0-473-08744-8 (Wellington: HeadworX, 2002): 94.
•
‘If there were no small pines in the fields,’ he murmured to himself.
Such a fitting reference, I felt; far better than any new poem of
mine could have been. I was most impressed.
– Diary of Lady Murasaki
Leicester has found a strange orchid, which he wishes to collect.
Time for an orange-break.
_________________________________________________________________
Sunlight gleams
the leafy spot
we passed on the track
foaming, tannin-brown stream
miraculously green rock
_________________________________________________________________
“The weather’s not doing what it should be – I don’t have it
properly trained” – Leicester Kyle in the Fisherman’s Rest,
Granity.
(3/1/2000)
Publications:
- Chantal’s Book. ISBN 0-473-08744-8 (Wellington: HeadworX, 2002): 95.
Notes:
- Quotations from Murasaki Shikibu's diary come from The Diary of Lady Murasaki. Trans. Richard Bowring. 1982. Penguin Classics (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1996).
•
Tom’s words laid bare the hearts of trees
– J. R. R. Tolkien
Bush-lawyer glow-worms
in the garden butcher’s
shop ground to stone
slabs Dracophyllum
Mountain Neinei Dr
Seuss Trees the yellow
orchid like
Aladdin’s cave a pothole
in the moors with water
flowing by the Christmas
bush so long
as no-one mentions
anything to do
with Christmas
green like that stone
you picked up last
time from the Gentle
Annie
(26/1/2000)
Publications:
- Chantal’s Book. ISBN 0-473-08744-8 (Wellington: HeadworX, 2002): 96.
•
Poems were composed and we all prepared ourselves, reciting one
just in case the cup should come round to the women … but in the
end, perhaps because they were so busy and it was getting late,
they retired before picking out any of us.
– Diary of Lady Murasaki
The Fishing Frenzy
It begins with one dark-haired boy with a new fishing-rod,
his older sister, and their father. The hook drops, & the
fish gather.
“Are there any big fish there?” asks a little red-headed
boy with a grating voice. “There’s a big salmon,” replies
the father.
“I’ve never seen a salmon – do you have a spare hook?”
asks the boy again. Silence. Much dropping in of bait, fish,
scraps. Red-headed boy: “Where’d you get those mussels?”
Father: “Ulva Island.”
“Sam, have you got a line?” the r-h boy asks of an older
brother. No answer. Soon after he reappears with a line, but
still no hook. By now, older, more capable-looking boys are
gathering, with lines on wooden reels. The r-h boy now begins
vainly requesting bait and hooks of a certain James, who remains
discreetly invisible.
“Look over here!” cries a boy further up the wharf. “Don’t
push me back, Sam,” whines the r-h boy at Sam. ‘This is my fishing
spot,” ripostes the latter. One or two tiny spotties are caught,
but the whole scene dissolves when the Foveaux Express’s engines
start up. The r-h boy is last heard making vain enquiries of his
green-clad, canvas-belted father. ‘What was it, Dad?” his hands
spread wide apart in mute enquiry.
“Die,” says Sam.
(23/1/2000)
Publications:
- “from Lessons of the Genji: Around the South Island at New Year.” [Featured Poet]: Poetry NZ 22 (2001): 11-26.
- Chantal’s Book. ISBN 0-473-08744-8 (Wellington: HeadworX, 2002): 97-98.
Notes:
- Quotations from Murasaki Shikibu's diary come from The Diary of Lady Murasaki. Trans. Richard Bowring. 1982. Penguin Classics (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1996).
•
… all the lousy little poets
coming around
trying to sound like Charlie Manson
– Leonard Cohen
Hills flat as our photograph
Skies green as noon
Are ambulances needed?
– Hanmer Springs –
Police patrol their detour
with a smile
(31/1/2000)
Publications:
- Chantal’s Book. ISBN 0-473-08744-8 (Wellington: HeadworX, 2002): 99.
•
She is a fruit that no one has yet tasted – Who then can smack his lips and talk of tartness?‘I am shocked,’ I replied. – Diary of Lady Murasaki Garrulous girl at the table opposite in the Coffee House: “Guys are cruel to ugly girls … You know how girls tend to do better than guys, generally.” Is she a doctor? Some of her conversation implies as much. “I want to go home – I don’t have a home,” sounds from the kitchen. AUDI VIDE TACE Inscription on the Freemasons’ Hall in Lyttelton HEAR SEE SHH!
(30/1/2000)
Publications:
- Chantal’s Book. ISBN 0-473-08744-8 (Wellington: HeadworX, 2002): 100.
Notes:
- Quotations from Murasaki Shikibu's diary come from The Diary of Lady Murasaki. Trans. Richard Bowring. 1982. Penguin Classics (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1996).
•
The lady Celalta had whispered a thought to her loverand master… “To the stars?” – Cordwainer Smith More trees than buildings more buildings than cars oases of activity Sign o’ the Bellbird in the Port Hills three weeks ago the fog gave me a warning 𖨆 man with red stop sign on the wing
(4/2/2000)
Publications:
- Chantal’s Book. ISBN 0-473-08744-8 (Wellington: HeadworX, 2002): 101.
•
… hanging curtains were all that separated us. His Excellency
was amused.
‘What happens when you entertain someone the other one does
not know?’ he said. A tasteless remark. In any case, we are both
very close to each other, so there would be no problem.
– Diary of Lady Murasaki
[Thursday, 30th December – 12.35 p.m.]
“Watching the people .. you mean, being a voyeur?” (Chantal)
[Wednesday, 26th January – 3.35 p.m.]
I know
on a telegraph pole
in Westland
[Thursday, 27th January – 9.10 p.m.]
At Punakaiki. “A threshy sea,” says Chantal. Indeed. Orange
light through the clouds. Mist steams off the road after rain.
(30/12/99-26-27/1/2000)
Publications:
- Chantal’s Book. ISBN 0-473-08744-8 (Wellington: HeadworX, 2002): 102.
Notes:
- Quotations from Murasaki Shikibu's diary come from The Diary of Lady Murasaki. Trans. Richard Bowring. 1982. Penguin Classics (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1996).
•
While living
be a dead man
– Bunan
Stonehenge on Barrington
Coronation Street
WELCOME HOME
BLAIR
in red on green
(4/2/2000)
Publications:
- Chantal’s Book. ISBN 0-473-08744-8 (Wellington: HeadworX, 2002): 103.
•
… people who have become so precious that they go out of their
way to try and be sensitive in the most unpromising situations,
trying to capture every moment of interest, however slight, are
bound to look ridiculous and superficial.
– Diary of Lady Murasaki
In the Glendhu Camp Toilets:
Sam Harpur For sex [area code a
4 PH: 03 217 8445 nice touch]
Pumpin’ Pubes ask for
Stoody
Richard 2000
For sex DC – 2000
____
2000 some people come
Drunk
JACK? 20'
BRAD
JANES-
sux!!!
It’s beautiful here. The hills were like velvet last night, as C
remarked – egg tempera, by Grahame Sydney. Today, animal pelt
with muscles.
(25/1/2000)
Publications:
- Chantal’s Book. ISBN 0-473-08744-8 (Wellington: HeadworX, 2002): 104.
Notes:
- Quotations from Murasaki Shikibu's diary come from The Diary of Lady Murasaki. Trans. Richard Bowring. 1982. Penguin Classics (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1996).
•
There is no serenity so fair as that which is just established
in a tearful eye
– Henry Thoreau
Start naked while all of the others
are down on the dirt floor
but no-one gets too far
that way
Look up at heaven blue blue ciel
the ceiling take another
breath
I used to know a
woman once
& cry not for yourself nor
destiny nor any two-bit
word but those you’ve hurt
however many times
(11/2/2000)
Publications:
- “from Lessons of the Genji: Around the South Island at New Year.” [Featured Poet]: Poetry NZ 22 (2001): 11-26.
- Chantal’s Book. ISBN 0-473-08744-8 (Wellington: HeadworX, 2002): 105.
•
Why should I hesitate to say what I want to? Whatever others might say, I intend to immerse myself in reading sūtras for Amida Buddha. – Diary of Lady Murasaki In Ohakune. Woke up this morning & looked at Chantal (wrapped in her sleeping-bag – too sulky last night to speak to me) & realised that I didn’t care. It is, to all intents & purposes, over. I know I’ve written – & said – that before, but I really wonder if there’s any going back. I also wonder if she feels the same thing. Certainly it’s a useful discovery for the beginning of a stressful five-week Odyssey around the South Island. “I wrote Chantal / I love you / but do I? / Alexander fights Persians / in the sky.” When she asks me, it is (or seems to be) so. Are these doubts real, or chimerical? I need to be cleansed – away from tension-knots in the stomach, fear of loss, of damage – fear of the other.
(27/12/99)
Publications:
- Chantal’s Book. ISBN 0-473-08744-8 (Wellington: HeadworX, 2002): 106.
Notes:
- Quotations from Murasaki Shikibu's diary come from The Diary of Lady Murasaki. Trans. Richard Bowring. 1982. Penguin Classics (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1996).
•
He was between stories, and he felt despicable
– Raymond Carver
Russell Crowe the man of heart
in Mystery Alaska
Ali off
a lumpish boy is sitting on a car
inside the parking lot as
raindrops cycle
in the lake
Poetic crossing out
the words stamina
baby son not all
the ones that
count
Scrape off
the graveyard
snow turn in your
night-stick dick
above duty
guard
the magic puck
(11/2/2000)
Publications:
- “from Lessons of the Genji: Around the South Island at New Year.” [Featured Poet]: Poetry NZ 22 (2001): 11-26.
- Chantal’s Book. ISBN 0-473-08744-8 (Wellington: HeadworX, 2002): 107.
•
