Tuesday

A Clearer View of the Hinterland (2014)


Cover image: Graham Fletcher / Cover design: Ellen Portch & Brett Cross



(October 28) A Clearer View of the Hinterland: Poems & Sequences 1981-2014. ISBN: 978-0-473-29640-7. Wellington: HeadworX, 2014. ii + 190 pp.
  1. Tanera Beag (3/6/81)
  2. Antipodes (1998)
    1. Midsummer Xmas (22/12/97)
    2. Strange Meeting (3/1/98)
    3. Morning Swim (11/1/98)
    4. Commuter (5/1/98)
  3. Except Once (17/3/98)
  4. from Travel Sonnets (1998)
    1. Reading U. K. Le Guin (27/1/98)
    2. Simple (3/2/98)
    3. Rental (8/2/98)
    4. After Supervielle & Apollinaire (2/98)
  5. A Clearer View of the Hinterland (7-10/7/98)
  6. God’s Spy (1998)
    1. Cover (20/2/98)
    2. Code (6/3/98)
    3. Stories (5/3/98)
    4. Safe House (23/12/96)
    5. Signs (27/4/98)
    6. The Opposition (31/4/98)
    7. Inside (31/4/98)
    8. Blown (20/5/98)
  7. Withdrawal Symptoms (26/1/99-24/6/2000)
  8. Out Being Alienated (1999)
    1. Came here the other night for a sticky (20/5/99)
    2. The perfect mixer for the perfect city
      1. Viaduct Basin (20/5/99)
      2. Whiplash (18/6/99)
      3. The Street-Vendor (10/6/99)
    3. Be honest (20/5/99)
    4. Give me a reason to boogie down (22/6/99)
    5. The perpetual time of never coming back (21/6/99)
  9. Auckland Girl (9/2/99)
  10. The Britney Suite (2000)
    1. Paul Celan, SCHNEEPART, gebäumt, bis zuletzt … [22/1/68]
    2. Wendy Nu, keith partridge y yo (6/9-21/10/2000)
    3. Paul Celan, ERZFLITTER, tief im … [20/7/68]
    4. Who is Wendy Nu? (25/7-26/8-20/10-26/10/2000)
    5. Nouvelle vague (25/7-26/8-20/10-26/10/2000)
    6. Paul Celan, KALK-KROKUS, im … [24/8/68]
    7. Letter (6/9-21/10/2000)
    8. Wendy Nu, mr darling writes to penthouse forum (6/9-21/10/2000)
    9. Paul Celan, DAS GEDUNKELTE Splitterecho … [5/9/68]
      • Dark (24/10-28/11/2000)
    10. It’s always too late … (4-16/11/2000)
    11. Paul Celan, BEIDHÄNDIGE Frühe … [29/9/69]
  11. After Apollinaire (10/3/99)
  12. from Tiger Country (2001)
    1. Tiger Country (21 & 28-29/3/02)
    2. Dumb (15/7/97-22/11/98-29/10/01)
    3. Civil War (30/1/01)
    4. Disorder and Early Sorrow (26/6-22/10/01)
    5. [your name here] (6-9/12/01)
  13. Quasimodo’s Last Poem (7/9/99-18/2/2000)
  14. Seven Levels of the Waterfall (2002)
      Letter (to Lien Stevens) (12/1/02)
      Trekking
    1. Hill Country
      1. Ban Rim Lai (6/1/02)
      2. Chiang Rai (6/1/02)
      2. In the Opium Museum
    2. Golden Triangle
      1. Mekong Sunset (7/1/02)
      2. Lao-Burmese Border (7/1/02)
      3. On the Frontier
    3. Air-con Bus
      1. Chris (8/1/02)
      2. Daniella (8/1/02)
      4. The Débâcle
    4. Ayutthaya
      1. Victory Chedi of Naresuan the Great (9/1/02)
      2. The Squirrel (9/1/02)
      5. To the River Kwai
    5. Rafthouse
      1. Wat Tam Sua (10/1/02)
      2. Khun Phen (10/1/02)
      6. Erawan
    6. Erewhon
      1. No Fear (11/1/02)
      2. ‘Show a little compassion, guys’ (11/1/02)
      7. The Massage Parlour
    7. Bangkok
      1. The Golden Mountain (12/1/02)
      2. Eurotrash (12/1/02)
  15. Stone Pine Lavender (15/12-19/12/2000)
  16. The Return of the Vanishing New Zealander (2003)
    1. I ♥ NZ (11/2/99)
    2. NZ Golf (and English) Academy (31/12/98)
    3. Boi-Boi on Karaoke (29/12/98)
    4. Language School Picnic (28/3/98)
    5. Journey to the West
      1. Evening (18/6-20/9/98)
      2. Clouds (18/6-9/9/98)
      3. Countdown (18/6-9/9/98)
    6. Index (27/12/01- 4/3/02)
    7. Mysteries: A Christmas Poem
      1. The stones have eyes …. (6/10-29/11/03)
      2. Brought down … (10-29/11/03)
      3. There is no same word … (2/9-29/11/03)
    8. In the Days of The Lord of the Rings (20-27/11/02)
    9. A Question of Faith (22-26/3/03)
    10. Bonfire Gothic
      1. Dogshit at a distance (12/1-5/2/03)
      2. Diaphanous sails (30/1-5/2/03)
  17. Samsara – Breaking through (10-23/1/03)
  18. Love in Wartime (2003)
      Carl sniffed (12/1-8/3/03)
    1. Porphyry skyline (26/2-1/3/03)
    2. Rhinoceros (13/2-1/3/03)
    3. Entering the world again (11/1-2/3/03)
      4. SEX is natural (8-10/3/03)
    4. Bright Flowers (10-11/3/03)
    5. You just don’t have the sympathy (10/2-1/3/03)
    6. Stops when you watch it (17/8/02-6/3/03)
  19. The Miracle (4-13/8/06)
  20. [with David Howard] Three Sisters (after René Char) (9-12/4/04)
      blue pharos love
    1. in the urn of the second
    2. twosies
    3. shoulder your children
  21. Zen and the Art of America’s Next Top Model (17-24/2/06)
  22. from Roadworks: Auckland Geography (2006)
    1. O Canada! (30-31/7/03)
    2. Tentacles of Destruction (14 & 20-27/5/04)
    3. Asbestos Hands of Dr. J. (7/10/04-26/1/06)
    4. DEATH & BEYOND (2-5/6/03)
    5. Refrigerium (20-22/1/06)
    6. Birkenhead (21-22/11/03)
    7. A Sunday Walk (13-31/7/03)
    8. This DVD contains everything you ever wanted to know … (13-15/9/05)
    9. Newmarket (30/6-22/7/03)
    10. Unsuccessful Applicant for Neighbourhood Watch (29/9/05)
    11. Coromandel (26-28/7/03)
    12. Blinds (28/2-11/3/06)
  23. Zero at the Bone (12-15/3/08)
  24. Papyri: Love Poems & Fragments from Sappho & Elsewhere (2007)
    1. When you walked in … (13/1-27/2/07)
      2. The Villa of the Papyri (30/3-2/4/07)
    2. Sappho to Anaktoria (4/8-2/10/06)
    3. Recipe for Making a Dadaist Poem (4/2/07)
    4. Ode to Aphrodite (4/2-28/2/07)
    5. Life among the Surrealists (21-26/11/06; 4/2/07)
    6. Atthis (13/1-9/2/07)
    7. Mnasidika (13/1-11/2/07)
    8. Fragments (22-24/2/07)
      1. I love magnificence … (13/1-22/2/07)
      2. Dying is bad … (4/8/06-22/2/07)
      3. The Moon’s set … (13/1-22/2/07)
      4. This pretty baby is mine … (13/1-24/2/07)
      5. Mum, I can’t thread … (13/1-24/2/07)
      6. Last night you slept on the breast … (13/1-24/2/07)
      7. We love to hear … (24/2/07)
    9. To a girl who doesn’t care for poetry (13/1-12/2/07)
    10. Juicy Root (13/1-27/2/07)
    11. Virgin (13/1-27/2/07)
    12. Sappho’s Epithalamion (13/1-10/3/07)
  25. Eel (after Montale) (25-29/4/08)
  26. from 31 Days (2009)
    1. April Fool’s Day (1/4-18/6/09)
    2. Hiding the Lunch (2/4-6/8/09)
    3. “The archaeologist of the present day” (5/4-18/6//09)
    4. Three fits (6/4-16/7/10)
    5. New Zealand’s Next Top Model Speaks (11/4-18/6/09)
    6. Substitutes only need apply (12/4-18/6/09)
    7. The Assassination Weapon (22/4-18/6/09)
    8. The Darkness (23/4-18/6/09)
    9. Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz (24/4-15/11/09)
    10. Mayday (1/5-18/6/09)
  27. Last Conference before Passchendaele (24/12/09-8/2/10)
  28. The Jay Poems (2012)
    1. Jay & the Mail-Order Bride (25/1-3/2/12)
    2. Jay as Line-Manager (2/11/11-3/2/12)
    3. Jay & the Great Storm (2-3/2/12)
    4. Jay Addresses the Troops (16-25/3/12)
    5. Jay & The Economics of Happiness (5-25/3/12)
    6. Jay on a Friday Night (28/3-25/4/12)
    7. Jay’s Fear of Retirement (29/3-25/4/12)
    8. Jay at the Pataphysics Conference (29/3-22/4/12)
    9. Jay Finds a ’40s Photograph (21-29/9/12)
    10. Jay on Fate (11/12/12-17/1/13)
    11. Jay at the Glowworm Caves (11/12/12-10/1/13)
    12. Jay Checks His Father into a Home (11/12/12-10/1/13)
    13. Jay Gets His Hair Cut at the Mall (13/12/12-10/1/13)
  29. Lounge Room Tribalism (21/1-8/2/11)
  30. from Jueju (2013)
    1. Transcultural Imaginaries (for Yang Lian) (18-23/6/13)
    2. Make-Up (after Wen Tingyun) (6/9-1/10/13)
    3. On City Streets (after Wang Anshi) (6/9-30/10/13)
    4. 40 Bogan Anthems (after Axl Rose) (24/8-5/9/13)
    5. Inferno 13 (after Dante Alighieri) (31/8-1/10/13)
    6. Thinking of My Father (after Liu Ke Zhang) (6/9-17/10/13)
  31. 12-12-12 (after Dante, Inferno 1: ll. 1-30) (11-18/12/12)
  32. The Other Side (21-29/3/13)
    1. 1914 – The Elberfeld Horses (21-23/3/13)
    2. 1966 – The Unknown Guest (21-24/3/13)
    3. 2013 – Rare and Obscure (21-24/3/13)
  33. Howard (5-6/1/14)

  34. Leaving Town (10-12/12/13)



For Bronwyn



•

Jack Ross: A Clearer View of the Hinterland (2014)


Blurb:
Leaving Town


or coming home
either I suppose

pausing to look
down the hill

at the bay
and the houses

boats moored not
too far out

from the shore
the road is

the centre though
those foreshortened cribs

have lost their
meanings the shadow

and weight
of their everyday

the wide grey
road a weathered

fence to stop
you falling off

into the dark
plantation of trees

Jack Ross’s publications include four full-length collections of poetry, three novels, and three volumes of short fiction. He has also edited numerous books and literary magazines, including – with Jan Kemp – the trilogy of audio / text anthologies Classic, Contemporary and New NZ Poets in Performance (AUP, 2006-8).

The first of the 33 poems and sequences reprinted here was written in 1981, the latest in 2014. As Paula Green put it in 99 Ways into NZ Poetry (2010): “Jack Ross writes poetry like an inquisitive magpie, a scholar, a linguist and a hot-air balloonist … The end result, in contrast to some experimental work, promotes heart as much as it does cerebral talk.” 






The gradual evolution of that cry
irrelevant, rain-channelled stone
remembers where the fissure first appeared
that led to an ascendancy of bone
on calcium, the crofts of Achnahaird.

Sheared off, the column need not die,
its imperfections find complete expression
in that late sky
whose dark marauders know no nuclear
fission, rubber is a spy.


(3/6/81)

Publications:
  • Tango, “a literary rage”. Auckland University Literary Handbook 1982. Edited by David Eggleton (Auckland: Auckland University Students’ Association, 1982): 14.
  • A Clearer View of the Hinterland: Poems & Sequences 1981-2014. ISBN: 978-0-473-29640-7 (Wellington: HeadworX, 2014): 9.

Notes:
  • Tanera Beag (in Gaelic: “little Tanera”) is one of the Summer Isles off the West Coast of Scotland, just north of Ullapool, near where my Gaelic-speaking grandmother, Mary Ross (née Maclean) was born in 1894.



•

Antipodes





Ice for dinner
obsidian for eyes

tanned shoulders stand
salt-water guard


(22/12/97)

Publications:
  • Poetry NZ 18 (1999): 63.
  • Golden Weather: North Shore Writers Past and Present. Poems edited by Jack Ross / Prose edited by Graeme Lay. ISBN 0-908561-96-2 (Auckland: Cape Catley, 2004): 162.
  • A Clearer View of the Hinterland: Poems & Sequences 1981-2014. ISBN: 978-0-473-29640-7 (Wellington: HeadworX, 2014): 10.



•




Have you ever fired a gun?
	sailed a boat?
	stroked a sleepy lion-cub?

Can you pick out the nine planets?
	Orion’s belt?
	the Southern Cross?

Will you be there by the river?
	at the city’s edge?
	in the Caravanserai?

I don’t know you at all
	but – take my hand
	it will be dark soon


(3/1/98)

Publications:
  • Poetry NZ 18 (1999): 63.
  • Golden Weather: North Shore Writers Past and Present. Poems edited by Jack Ross / Prose edited by Graeme Lay. ISBN 0-908561-96-2 (Auckland: Cape Catley, 2004): 162.
  • A Clearer View of the Hinterland: Poems & Sequences 1981-2014. ISBN: 978-0-473-29640-7 (Wellington: HeadworX, 2014): 10.



•




On clay-green sea
stress less
the heart is red
down where the kelp grows

Beach-front stripped of sand
to bed-rock
pebbles of falaise
sting at my feet

The wharf ends in four fishermen
guy-roped around
me – quarry
something that’s never caught


(11/1/98)

Publications:
  • Poetry NZ 18 (1999): 64.
  • Golden Weather: North Shore Writers Past and Present. Poems edited by Jack Ross / Prose edited by Graeme Lay. ISBN 0-908561-96-2 (Auckland: Cape Catley, 2004): 163.
  • A Clearer View of the Hinterland: Poems & Sequences 1981-2014. ISBN: 978-0-473-29640-7 (Wellington: HeadworX, 2014): 11.

Notes:
  • Falaise is French for a “cliff overlooking the sea”. There doesn’t appear to be a precise English equivalent for this word.



•




cows graze
beside the Clear Communication
Station

apply lipstick
to tow
a catamaran

a Castle Parcel van
parts the
steel sea

the bridge’s central span
settles on
light


(5/1/98)

Publications:
  • Poetry NZ 18 (1999): 64.
  • Golden Weather: North Shore Writers Past and Present. Poems edited by Jack Ross / Prose edited by Graeme Lay. ISBN 0-908561-96-2 (Auckland: Cape Catley, 2004): 163.
  • A Clearer View of the Hinterland: Poems & Sequences 1981-2014. ISBN: 978-0-473-29640-7 (Wellington: HeadworX, 2014): 11.



•




– Aren’t I always nice to you?
– Except once.
    (Overheard in the Massey @ Albany Refectory)


tap’s still dripping, diesel generators roar
in shop doors, no money rolls
in, lumps of old essay sag
in plastic bags – I type out texts
from Penguin Books of European Verse.
    The water’s too cold
        for swimming.

Focus on externals: tick of death
in Irene’s stomach, Miriel’s scorched flesh,
brain-clots and blood-diseases, Julian’s sister
killed on Saturday night – I like to see
the islands in the gulf, driving
    down the long hill, ships floating
        down the sky.


(17/3/98)

Publications:
  • NZ Listener, vol. 174 / 3140 (July 15-21, 2000): 44.
  • A Clearer View of the Hinterland: Poems & Sequences 1981-2014. ISBN: 978-0-473-29640-7 (Wellington: HeadworX, 2014): 12.

Notes:
  • "On the Occasion of Wet Snow" was the title given to Part II of Dostoyevsky’s Zapiski iz podpol’ya [Notes from Underground] (1864) in Mirra Ginsburg’s 1974 translation.



•

from Travel Sonnets





Give back what you’re given – a wet day
on the Lewis Pass, trees in the mist.
Music at a stopping-place:
“3,000 years, 3,000 miles,
3,000 reasons to stay alive …”
Sie war schon Wurzel.
She had taken root.

Give back what you’re given – horns
of the North at cockcrow: “Rohan
had come at last.”
Not love, not selflessness,
compassion, pain …
what’s there through pain – Anarres,
empty hands.


(27/1/98)

Publications:
  • When the Sea Goes Mad at Night (anthology). Poems by Alison Denham, Robin McConnell, Theresia Liemlienio Marshall, Jade Reidy, Jack Ross, and Apirana Taylor. Ed. Theresia Liemlienio Marshall (Birkenhead, Auckland: Christian Gray New Zealand, 1999-2000): 90.
  • A Clearer View of the Hinterland: Poems & Sequences 1981-2014. ISBN: 978-0-473-29640-7 (Wellington: HeadworX, 2014): 13.

Notes:
  • The novel by Ursula K. Le Guin referred to in the first of these poems is her utopian fantasy The Dispossessed (1982). The words in German are from Rainer Maria Rilke’s “Orpheus. Eurydike. Hermes.”



•




It’s as simple as sex
a cardboard box
I don’t have to excuse
myself for doing it
(or not) each night.

I’d like to wear blue at a bus-stop
not swamp-green, brown
(Panama hat
a too-tight fit).

Is jogging better than
long-distance swimming?
Taking a hot bath
with Miss New Zealand’s
swamp-tussock head?


(3/2/98)

Publications:
  • When the Sea Goes Mad at Night (anthology). Poems by Alison Denham, Robin McConnell, Theresia Liemlienio Marshall, Jade Reidy, Jack Ross, and Apirana Taylor. Ed. Theresia Liemlienio Marshall (Birkenhead, Auckland: Christian Gray New Zealand, 1999-2000): 93.
  • A Clearer View of the Hinterland: Poems & Sequences 1981-2014. ISBN: 978-0-473-29640-7 (Wellington: HeadworX, 2014): 14.



•




As the millennium comes the days get stranger:
today I saw a car smashed on the road
intact behind – starred shards
of windscreen. Qu'est-ce qu'on peut de plus?

Did you polish it every day? Your face?
Were you ready for this? Were you stoked
when the deal went down, the prang,
the stroke?

That sobbing girl on the bus last night,
did she have it right? No comfort
despite the colossal same
around her? Not angels, angles
bruised against; not rentals waiting,
purring, in the rain?


(8/2/98)

Publications:
  • When the Sea Goes Mad at Night (anthology). Poems by Alison Denham, Robin McConnell, Theresia Liemlienio Marshall, Jade Reidy, Jack Ross, and Apirana Taylor. Ed. Theresia Liemlienio Marshall (Birkenhead, Auckland: Christian Gray New Zealand, 1999-2000): 95.
  • A Clearer View of the Hinterland: Poems & Sequences 1981-2014. ISBN: 978-0-473-29640-7 (Wellington: HeadworX, 2014): 15.



•




Don’t be surprised
This tragedy belongs
                    to us
Lower those eyelids
Blank façades
Till they look deep
Into the stone

Your hands reach out
Move on move on everything moves on
In their icy shells
I shall return
Face washed clean

Memories are hunting horns
In a city square
Between two armies
                   bare


(2/98)

Publications:
  • When the Sea Goes Mad at Night (anthology). Poems by Alison Denham, Robin McConnell, Theresia Liemlienio Marshall, Jade Reidy, Jack Ross, and Apirana Taylor. Ed. Theresia Liemlienio Marshall (Birkenhead, Auckland: Christian Gray New Zealand, 1999-2000): 99.
  • A Clearer View of the Hinterland: Poems & Sequences 1981-2014. ISBN: 978-0-473-29640-7 (Wellington: HeadworX, 2014): 16.

Notes:
  • The two French poems sampled from - by, respectively, Jules Supervielle and Guillaume Apollinaire - can be found on pp. 139 & 158 of The Penguin Book of French Verse: 4 – The Twentieth Century, ed. Anthony Hartley (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1969).



•




Leicester at Millerton


Absence of rapids on Ngakawau stream.
Big Ditch and Little Ditch Creek – impious hand bisects the ‘D.’
Cobweb of raindrops in dragon sun.
“Down, down, down from the high Sierras ...”
Electrical storms: intensity of affect.
Fund-raising at the Fire Depot.
Grey & white kitten, black robin, and black fantail.
Huffing into an Atlas stove.
“If you can see the hills, it’s going to rain.”
Jack said: “A succession of inner landscapes.”
Kiwis peck through sphagnum moss.
Leicester said: “A community devoted to male play.”
Millerton speaks – A Cannabis Landslide.
Nature tips – gorse is choked by bush.
Other landrovers get one wave.
Proud grey donkey; manure in a sack.
Quarrelling over the Fire Service.
“Rain has a persistency of grades, much noted by the locals.”
Siren: “I’m always free on Wednesday nights.”
Twin side-logs set for smoke-alarms.
Utopia St, Calliope Rd.
Village hall stained with camouflage paint.
White-packaged videos, too frank a stare.
X of three rocks marks one rare tussock.
“You have to say: Great! Awesome! Choice!”
668 – Neighbour of the Beast.


(7-10/7/98)

Publications:
  • Spin 36 (2000): 51.
  • A Clearer View of the Hinterland: Poems & Sequences 1981-2014. ISBN: 978-0-473-29640-7 (Wellington: HeadworX, 2014): 17.
  • “Jack Ross’s ‘A Clearer View of the Hinterland’." Contribution to "Poetry Shelf Favourite Poems” (13-14/4/23). Paula Green. NZ Poetry Shelf: a poetry page with reviews, interviews, and other things (3/5/23)

Notes:



•

God’s Spy

As if we were Gods spies
– King Lear





That scent of air-conditioned air
as you pass a door,
cave-cold; fur
of condensation
               on a beer:
Auckland midsummer.

The Mexican Navy’s here
in town, picking up
girls in khaki shorts – the lights
are out.
        A yellow-backed cop
claps his hands twice.


(20/2/98)

Publications:



•




                DRIVE	       Drive and sleep          SLEEP
        DRIVE                   in the whorls                 SLEEP
LIVE            AND           the moon creates          AND         LEAP
        SLEEP                      a gap                      DRIVE
                SLEEP         it does, you know         DRIVE

                EUROPE         Europe made easy         EASY
        EUROPE                      Avenue                    EASY
RISE            MADE     des Perdrix, Patrijzenlaan     MADE        REST
        EASY                      I found it                  EUROPE
                EASY             by the birds           EUROPE


(6/3/98)

Publications:



•




Red truck on a stubble field;
red light – BUSH RD –
sparks green. Two figures, finger-
tall, talk: girl,
singlet, overalls, with man in
    yellow coat.

Converging forces. “It is, above all,
to make you see.” Car heading up the hill: 
tan field, red truck, dun
raincloud – static
signing, as I
    vector past.


(5/3/98)

Publications:

Notes:
  • “It is, before all, to make you see” was Joseph Conrad’s classic recipe for realist fiction, as expounded in the preface to his 1897 novel The Nigger of the ‘Narcissus’.



•





Shop-assistants in Dymocks
– Princesses lointaines –
a pack of plastic spines
to give them backbone
(xeroxed inside-out)

the pilot light deceives me
as I fail to sleep
later each night
– high heels, insomnia –


(23/12/96)

Publications:



•




BREATHTAKING!
        Rocks for sale
you are contemplating a change
                would give the htrae

Marina magic
    … sullen, brown, lagoon …
MILFORD PARK PLACE
            No Exit.


(27/4/98)

Publications:



•




School for strangeness:
    “this seat is really warm;
it’s scaring me.”
    Trawling for silence.

Anne Batten MP
can you tell me
    the way to the Mews?

Articulated truck
jack-knifes. Chew Juicy Fruit
    (Alicia’s fault) – up there, the crescent moon.


(31/4/98)

Publications:



•




Indian summer – CK: Calvin Klein;
a grove of lopped, topped
eucalyptus trees.

Smoke-signals over the Waitak’s.
Abdullah Mohamed
lives, with his nephew, in a two-roomed flat:
$210 a week.

We cannot master
the art of parallelism:
so much, so many – so few.


(31/4/98)

Publications:



•




white boat
        you’re blue
contact lens
        horizon
gorse-flower
        buffalo-grass

  headland
 headland
headland


(20/5/98)

Publications:



•




6 MONTHS erase her touch         1 YEAR drowns out her voice

You are: loser, balding, stay-at-home         POSITIVE LAIDBACK GUY
I am: vibrant woman of the world         looking to meet man, woman, horse.
 (abandoned for ten year siege)          Hobbies: conquering Gaul, candle-lit
    Go on, surprise ME!                  suppers, long walks on the ramparts
    With integrity                           sense of h., fin. secure

18 MONTHS to hate her guts        2 YEARS begin all that again

  DON’T BE A DRAG                         Are you a loose cannon? 
Twenty-something home-girl,             A bit of a “slut”? Enjoy dark, 
Pope’s daughter, adores                 mysterious men? Like street-
clothes, cooking, herbal                walking down cul-de-sacs? – 
remedies (ring provided).               Try a relationship with a bit of 
 Will you be my Daddy?                   “meat.” Just for jolly


(26/1/99-24/6/2000)

Publications:
  • NZ Listener, vol. 179 / 3196 (August 11-17, 2001): 62.
  • A Clearer View of the Hinterland: Poems & Sequences 1981-2014. ISBN: 978-0-473-29640-7 (Wellington: HeadworX, 2014): 23.

Notes:
  • The authors of these imaginary ads in the personal columns are intended to be – respectively – Clytemnestra, Julius Caesar, Lucrezia Borgia and Jack the Ripper.



•

Out Being Alienated



I


Came here the other night for a sticky
    – Vulcan Lane


He used to be Mr Slow-mo
now gone grey – with a goofy smile

It was snowing        

bare feet up on the seat
old girls in berets

The city was clean

blue grain of harbour-water
in the sun

Clear and bright        

birds crowd on atolls
don’t alter your nose

like our hearts

black turtleneck girl
it’s noble, aquiline

(Hong Seok Baek)        

no, don’t alter your nose


(5/6/83-7/9/96)

Publications:
  • Orange Roughy: Poems & Stories for Tazey. Edited by Jack Ross & Bronwyn Lloyd (Auckland: Pania Press, 2008): 51.
  • A Clearer View of the Hinterland: Poems & Sequences 1981-2014. ISBN: 978-0-473-29640-7 (Wellington: HeadworX, 2014): 24.

Notes:
  • "On the Occasion of Wet Snow" was the title given to Part II of Dostoyevsky’s Zapiski iz podpol’ya [Notes from Underground] (1864) in Mirra Ginsburg’s 1974 translation.



•




The perfect mixer for the perfect city
    – Schweppes billboard


i – Viaduct Basin


   Dredges – shags                           Clear & soft
   shag flying past                            like sky
     the bridge                             Pure, intimate
outdistancing the traffic                    Cool & fresh
   that hooked neck                          like the Sea

ii – Whiplash

 
The lights, the endless traffic lights
       – okay then. “Gotta get               Deep blue like the
        it right.” Vet + Vet                       deep sea
              24 Hr Vet                        Dark as the sky

iii – The Street-Vendor

 
Ah, said a passer-by:
   I buy from him                      Fresh & pure & calming
   because he has                             I love
    three hearts.                              blue


(20/5/99; 18/6/99; 10/6/99)

Publications:
  • Orange Roughy: Poems & Stories for Tazey. Edited by Jack Ross & Bronwyn Lloyd (Auckland: Pania Press, 2008): 52.
  • A Clearer View of the Hinterland: Poems & Sequences 1981-2014. ISBN: 978-0-473-29640-7 (Wellington: HeadworX, 2014): 25.



•




Be honest
    – Aotea Square



    A statement of financial /         emotional position
A letter from the accountant                 • gross amounts

    A boy sits on two laps /           skateboarders ride the
statue. I wanna see                          Bob Dylan

    the German girl scribbles         industriously 
at her three-page                            letter

    “A Flower’s Day Out”         plus somersaulting bird
	  by EM         	          by
          anonym        / Butt-face




If you feel tired
you can go outside
You can see everywhere
You can see far
Forest and grass
Deep seas and hills
Everything is same colour
Everything is green
This is New Zealand


(20/5/99)

Publications:
  • Orange Roughy: Poems & Stories for Tazey. Edited by Jack Ross & Bronwyn Lloyd (Auckland: Pania Press, 2008): 53.
  • A Clearer View of the Hinterland: Poems & Sequences 1981-2014. ISBN: 978-0-473-29640-7 (Wellington: HeadworX, 2014): 26.



•




Give me a reason to boogie down
    – Tony’s


На раных поездах                (Pasternak)
On early trains
(or buses) off                    Off white like fresh white
to your very first job                Cream is as bright
    in the ‘far / reaching         Eyes are white and clean
    Mediterranean
light’ – iced air                (Smithyman)

Na ranikh poyezdakh                Black like the night
that gesture of the hand           I like navy blue nice
you use to shield your eyes         Water is clean and
from the sea                               white
    chewing dumbly                      (Fang Lin)
    step out briskly
to ‘infect a city’                (Auden)


(22/6/99)

Publications:
  • Orange Roughy: Poems & Stories for Tazey. Edited by Jack Ross & Bronwyn Lloyd (Auckland: Pania Press, 2008): 54.
  • A Clearer View of the Hinterland: Poems & Sequences 1981-2014. ISBN: 978-0-473-29640-7 (Wellington: HeadworX, 2014): 27.

Notes:
  • The references here are to Boris Pasternak’s wartime book of poems Na Ranikh Poyezdakh [On Early Trains] (1942); Kendrick Smithyman’s Atua Wera (1997); and W. H. Auden’s 1938 poem “Gare du Midi.”



•


V


The perpetual time of never coming back
    – Helga Einarsdóttir


like seeing through fog       My name is Hai
    on a clear morning
hand scrubbing                I like bear very much but not dogs
    at the glass’s green
corona of light               I hate the cold and drinking wine

like finding a caravan        I don’t like snails
    blocking your lane
Dark Carnival                 I hate hell
    the surly queues
contracting                   I never sleeping at noon

like stifling a sigh          I hate peoples impolite
    as cock slides into
cunt – the Belgium            I hate hypocrites and telltales
    story, told for the
third time                    My name is Hai


(21/6/99)

Publications:
  • Orange Roughy: Poems & Stories for Tazey. Edited by Jack Ross & Bronwyn Lloyd (Auckland: Pania Press, 2008): 55.
  • A Clearer View of the Hinterland: Poems & Sequences 1981-2014. ISBN: 978-0-473-29640-7 (Wellington: HeadworX, 2014): 28.

Notes:
  • Dark Carnival is the title of Ray Bradbury’s first, 1947, collection of short stories.



•




PERISH	
       TEASE
    – Northcote Motorway Bypass


There’s thousands of her
in a thigh-high skirt,
     dark glasses,
cagey in the wind
by Grafton Gully lights.

She smoothes her hair
back,
     conscious of the van.


(9/2/99)

Publications:
  • Spin 34 (1999): 50-51.
  • A Clearer View of the Hinterland: Poems & Sequences 1981-2014. ISBN: 978-0-473-29640-7 (Wellington: HeadworX, 2014): 29.



•





The Britney Suite (Auckland: Perdrix Press, 2001)


For Dieter Riemeschneider & Jan Kemp


Все поэти жиди
– Marina Tsvetayeva, “Poem of the End” (1924)
[All poets – yids]


  1. Paul Celan, SCHNEEPART, gebäumt, bis zuletzt … [22/1/68]
  2. Wendy Nu, keith partridge y yo (6/9-21/10/2000)
  3. Paul Celan, ERZFLITTER, tief im … [20/7/68]
  4. Who is Wendy Nu? (25/7-26/8-20/10-26/10/2000)
  5. Nouvelle vague (25/7-26/8-20/10-26/10/2000)
  6. Paul Celan, KALK-KROKUS, im … [24/8/68]
  7. Letter (6/9-21/10/2000)
  8. Wendy Nu, mr darling writes to penthouse forum (6/9-21/10/2000)
  9. Paul Celan, DAS GEDUNKELTE Splitterecho … [5/9/68]
    • Dark (24/10-28/11/2000)
  10. It’s always too late … (4-16/11/2000)
  11. Paul Celan, BEIDHÄNDIGE Frühe … [29/9/69]


Publications:
  • The Britney Suite. By Paul Celan, Wendy Nu & Jack Ross (Auckland: Perdrix Press, 2001)
  • A Clearer View of the Hinterland: Poems & Sequences 1981-2014. ISBN: 978-0-473-29640-7 (Wellington: HeadworX, 2014): 30-47.

Notes:
  • All quotations from Britney Spears have been extracted from Marcelle Katz’s interview, “Oops, she did it again …” NZ TV Guide (October 13, 2000) 6-7. The “Cut Above” advertisement was taken from the New Zealand Herald (November 6, 2001) C7. The passages in French in “Nouvelle vague” are quoted from ]ean-Luc Godard, Nouvelle Vague (München: ECM, 1997). They can be translated as follows: “Islam is not a religion of doubt, like ours: there is certainty there.” “Mr Darling,” in the sixth of these poems (attributed to “Wendy Nu”) is intended as a reference to the character in J. M. Barrie’s play Peter Pan, or The Boy Who Wouldn’t Grow Up (1904).



•




	    Il y a des petits ponts épatants
I	    There’s a big steel harbour bridge
	    Il y a mon coeur qui bat pour toi
crush	    There’s my heart beating for you
	    Il y a une femme triste sur la route
you	    There’s a woman trundling across the road
	    Il y a un beau petit cottage dans un jardin
against	    There’s a fibrolite bach in a garden
	    Il y a six soldats qui s’amusent comme des fous
my	    There’s six skateboarders crapping out like loons
	    Il y a mes yeux qui cherchent ton image
breast	    There’s my eyes searching for you

like	    There’s a stand of eucalyptus trees on Forrest Hill
	    (& an old campaigner who pisses as we pass)
the	    There’s a poet dreaming about his Chantal
	    There’s a beautiful Chantal in that big Auckland
dove	    There’s a pill-box on a cliff-top
	    There’s a farmer trucking his sheep
a	    There’s my life which belongs to you
	    There’s my black ballpoint scribbling scribbling
little	    There’s a screen of poplars intricate intricate
	    There’s my old life which is definitely over
girl	    There’s narrow streets near K Rd where we’ve loved each other
	    There’s a chick in Freemans Bay who drives her friends INSANE
strangles   There’s my driver’s licence in my wristbag
	    There’s Mercs and Beamers on the road
without
	    There’s love
noticing    There’s life
	    I adore you


(10/3/99)

Publications:
  • Poèmes à Lou [Chantal] – after Guillaume Apollinaire, Poèmes à Lou [Ombre de mon amour] (1915) xxxi & xlix. (Auckland: Perdrix Press, 1999).
  • Shonagh’s Book / Jack’s Book (Auckland: Perdrix Press, 1999): 84 pp.
  • Dear Heart: 150 New Zealand Love Poems. Edited by Paula Green. ISBN 978-1-86979-762-1 (Auckland: Godwit, 2012): 104-5.
  • A Clearer View of the Hinterland: Poems & Sequences 1981-2014. ISBN: 978-0-473-29640-7 (Wellington: HeadworX, 2014): 48.

Notes:
  • Il y a des petits ponts épatants
    Il y a mon coeur qui bat pour toi
    Il y a une femme triste sur la route
    Il y a un beau petit cottage dans un jardin
    Il y a six soldats qui s’amusent comme des fous     …
    – Guillaume Apollinaire, “Il y a,” from Poèmes à Lou [Ombre de mon amour] XXXI (1915).
    Text from Guillaume Apollinaire, Oeuvres poétiques. Ed. Marcel Adéma & Michel Décaudin. Préface d’André Billy. 1956. Bibliothèque de la Pléiade, 121 (Paris: Éditions Gallimard, 1966): 423.



•

from Tiger Country

the Buddha was a barbarian turd
– Zen master



Notes:
  • some Zen masters, speaking with their customary earthy directness, heaped scorn on Zen scriptures, masters, and images. One of them warmed himself with a statue of Buddha he had set afire. Another said, starkly, that the Buddha was a barbarian turd and sainthood an empty name.
    – Ben-Ami Scharfstein, “Introduction.” In Yoel Hoffmann. The Sound of The One Hand: 281 Zen Koans with Answers. 1975 (St Albans, Herts: Paladin, 1977): 10.
    .





Before I left for India, I was in a strange mood. Working at the 
Language School – talk, talk, what do you think, Myung-Sook, 
Min-Hee, Charles? What’s your sign? What jobs would you be willing 
to do (nude model, race-car driver, surrogate mother/father, soldier?). 
Exchange ideas.
   Sometimes I’d wander round the streets photographing things, trying 
to trace patterns in the gaps.
   I’d forgotten how to write poems (if I ever knew; I can see some of 
you are in considerable doubt about that). What I produced aspired more 
and more to the condition of gibberish.
   I couldn’t read – The Hero with a Thousand Faces, Mary Chesnut’s
Civil War, Brief Lives, Le Rouge et le Noir – all of them sat by 
the bed untouched.
   I just need to get away, I told myself. I just need to lie there, 
somewhere else, in a hotel room, where I know nobody, and twitch.

•	

In tiger country, it’s always raining
Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the war
Here you will learn to hunt and kill
    search and destroy
You will sleep one hour a night
    I know how you feel
I know what you’re thinking
    This is where it starts

Japan was too cold for me
    in Harbin
I lay in bed for a month
    watching the wall
Good job, you move
    like soldiers, Tracy
like the day


(21 & 28-29/3/02)

Publications:
  • Gothic NZ: The Darker Side of Kiwi Culture. Ed. Misha Kavka, Jennifer Lawn & Mary Paul. ISBN-13 978 1 877372 23 0 (Dunedin: University of Otago Press, 2006): 68-79.
  • A Clearer View of the Hinterland: Poems & Sequences 1981-2014. ISBN: 978-0-473-29640-7 (Wellington: HeadworX, 2014): 50.



•




beguiled at first by wild gesticulations
blue, gold    hair, eyes
(I pride myself on never gawping)
smile, alchemic face

then I see she’s dumb

or deaf – n’importe
the other shock of lion hair
older sister?
responds with shuttling hands

they get off at the hospital

I saw my sister once
before she saw me
walked beside her, waiting for a word
she stalked on, staring

down    a stranger

beach landscape, 1981
eating lunch 
with two ex-schoolmates
dumb till she twigged

ran over, beautiful


(15/7/97-22/11/98-29/10/01)

Publications:
  • Tongue in Your Ear 6 (2002): 5.
  • A Clearer View of the Hinterland: Poems & Sequences 1981-2014. ISBN: 978-0-473-29640-7 (Wellington: HeadworX, 2014): 51.



•




Blue waves
upon grey rocks
the Union soldiers
storming Marye’s Heights
at the Battle of Fredericksburg

•	

What shall we do
with the men who did this, General?
surveying the ransacked town
Kill them, said Jackson
Kill them all

•	

The scent never comes off again
said the orderly
as he bandaged Burnside’s head
sawed-off legs and arms
spoiling in heaps nearby


(30/1/01)

Publications:

Notes:
  • Originally published with the following epigraph:
    In my dream, everyone was waving at the Dutch Queen, as she drove slowly down our steep street to the sea. Grey-haired, dignified. I was watching the waves, I suppose, trying to get these lines. A small boy tried to drag me back to the crowd, but I pushed him away. He persisted. So did I. “Can’t you leave me alone?”



•







Please help yourself to the buffet and enjoy all the fresh meat & 
vegetables available for your good health. But please, a special 
request from management, do not waste the food, think of all the 
hungry children in our world – we are sad for the starving children.
    – Jin Joo Meat Buffet Restaurant


His wors do follow him           wars? worse?
Last line of the inscription     squeeze it
in                               His wor^s do follow
him                              words? whores?
His works do follow him

Please take a moment             think
of the starving children         of Somalia
Are you thinking                 about them
ducking round this               plinth
in Eden Crescent?

Afternoon tea                    Blindfolded
in a room                        One after
the other                        like a metronome
(five minutes each)              Swallow
Carry on

Of course one wears              a thong
to pick up kitty                 Stella Maris
Lady of the Sea                  ora pro nobis
as in Th. Mann                   Unordnung
und frühes Leid
                                 cry yourself to sleep


(26/6-22/10/01)

Publications:
  • Gothic NZ: The Darker Side of Kiwi Culture. Ed. Misha Kavka, Jennifer Lawn & Mary Paul. ISBN-13 978 1 877372 23 0 (Dunedin: University of Otago Press, 2006): 68-79.
  • A Clearer View of the Hinterland: Poems & Sequences 1981-2014. ISBN: 978-0-473-29640-7 (Wellington: HeadworX, 2014): 53.

Notes:
  • Some notes on this poem can be found in Paula Green & Harry Ricketts, 99 Ways into New Zealand Poetry (Auckland: Vintage, 2010): 364-66.



•




blue glow-worm on a string
flash-flash of streetlights
through the windows
                   Not doubting,
in any sense, you understand,
your word, Helena
                 dancer
                      cheesecake
kill the messenger

     five children staring at the light
in white, one ponytail
between them
            biting your lip, waiting
as the words evaporate


(6-9/12/01)

Publications:
  • [your name here]: Life Writing. Edited by Jack Ross. ISBN 0-473-09551-3 (Massey University: School of Social and Cultural Studies, 2003): x.
  • A Clearer View of the Hinterland: Poems & Sequences 1981-2014. ISBN: 978-0-473-29640-7 (Wellington: HeadworX, 2014): 54.

Notes:
  • Originally published with the following epigraph:
    Dear Jack,
    I fear that you are the victim of an advertisement, an annoying banner ad which lives at the top of the screen. It is telling you lies. Alas, before the pogroms which drove adult clubs “underground” the ad would have said something like watch me finger fuck my virgin pussy     [your name here] with an appropriate animation.
    – Letter to the author (29 October, 2001)



•




My shadow’s on the other wall
             of the hospital
                            there are flowers here
             At night I ask in
poppies and plane trees from the park
                                      skeleton boughs
             with leaves bled white

The Irish nuns never mention
death
     as they waft about the wards
so casual
         at being young and kind
                     (unanswered
prayer)

I feel like an Ellis Island
immigrant
         lying swaddled on the ground
Perhaps I’ll be dying for good
                              overhearing rumours
which I’ve never understood
                           at the end of theory 

I can’t run away    stuck
with being faithful
                   to my visible means of decay
I can see the absurdity
of choosing between death 
                         and this illusion
boom-boom    the heart.


(7/9/99-18/2/2000)

Publications:

Notes:
  • La mia ombra è su un altro muro
    d’ospedale. Ho fiori e di notte
    invito i pioppi e i platani del parco,
    alberi di foglie cadute, non gialle,
    quasi bianche. …
    – Salvatore Quasimodo, “Ho fiori e di notte invito i pioppi" (Ospedale di Sesto S. Giovanni novembre 1965).
    Text from Salvatore Quasimodo, Tutte le Poesie. Ed. Gilberto Finzi. Grandi Classici. 1995 (Milano: Arnoldo Mondadori Editore, 2001): 259.



•

Seven Levels of the Waterfall

(for Lien Stevens)


Friendship seems like coconuts,
While others appear like Badari fruits …
Even after the lotus stalk is broken,
The filaments cling to each other.
– The Hitopadesha: An Ancient Fabled Classic, trans. G. L. Chandiramani (1995)



Publications:
  • Summer Book from Eye Street. Edited by Raewyn Alexander. ISBN 0254-0193 (Auckland: Bright Communications, 2005): 1-8.
  • "Messenger from Depth". The Imaginary Museum (29/8/06) [Available at: https://mairangibay.blogspot.com/2006/08/messenger-from-depth.html].
  • A Clearer View of the Hinterland: Poems & Sequences 1981-2014. ISBN: 978-0-473-29640-7 (Wellington: HeadworX, 2014): 56-70.

Notes:
  • Quoted from G. L. Chandiramani, trans. The Hitopadesha: An Ancient Fabled Classic. 1995 (Mumbai: Jaico Publishing House, 1999).





Saturday, 12th January 2002
Viengtai Hotel, Bangkok


Dear Lien,

      You were always curious to know exactly what I was writing in
my notebook. Well, here’s part of the answer, at least. The Chinese 
landscape painters – some of them poets also (Wang Wei, for instance) 
– used to compile long scrolls to describe a region or a journey. 
Or else they might follow a river from its source in the mountains 
all the way down to the mouth.
   This is a little scroll I’ve made to evoke our trip. Each tanka 
is composed of observations, bits of conversation, snippets from here, 
there and everywhere.
   You were our guide, our Virgil, so it’s only fitting it should go 
to you.

Love, Jack


(12/1/02)

Publications:
  • Summer Book from Eye Street. Edited by Raewyn Alexander. ISBN 0254-0193 (Auckland: Bright Communications, 2005): 1.
  • "Seven Levels of the Waterfall". The Imaginary Museum (28/8/06) [Available at: https://mairangibay.blogspot.com/2006/08/seven-levels-of-waterfall.html].
  • A Clearer View of the Hinterland: Poems & Sequences 1981-2014. ISBN: 978-0-473-29640-7 (Wellington: HeadworX, 2014): 56.



•




There are four different species of opium poppy – white, purple, 
pink and red. We’re standing beside a field of them now.
   “Quite beautiful,” says Caroline.
   It’s so nice when you stop.
   “24 hours to go,” says Jan.
   “I wish I’d never come,” says Chris.


Little farming shed
ploughed fields    grazing horse
packs and a jacket


•	

Lunchtime. My pen’s gone. Luckily I have another.
   Four dogs are having it off up the hill. “Better get your little 
book out,” says Chris.
   [5 mins later] “Jesus, those dogs are still going for it.” (Jan)
   “We’re lying in the gutter, and some of us are looking at the stars – 
but all of us are looking at the dogs rooting.” (Caroline)

Chris and Daniella have been teaching me Australianisms:
   “I’m jack of this” = sick of it.
   “crack a shit” = have a tantrum.
   “wallaby-tedded” = roo-ted.

•	

Dinner over. Mist creeping in. Three of the cutest little black puppies 
imaginable are frolicking around (Rose is cuddling one of them). I’m 
trying Fabienne’s tried-and-true taught-to-her-by-a-Brazilian remedy 
for hiccups. Surprisingly, it works. For a brief time, at least. I have 
the devil of a headache, but the cold bath may account for that.


(6/1/02)

Publications:



•




To one whose feet are covered by shoes,
Is it not indeed
As if the entire earth were covered by leather?
    – The Hitopadesha


Ban Rim Lai

Elephant-head
she must be friendly with
Meet me in Chiang Rai
tomatoes    paddies    opium
marching up the sky



                                    Chiang Rai

                                    Dusty northern
                                    town    crank up
                                    the volume    Darren
                                    If you look for long enough
                                    the letters come in focus


(6/1/02)

Publications:
  • Summer Book from Eye Street. Edited by Raewyn Alexander. ISBN 0254-0193 (Auckland: Bright Communications, 2005): 2.
  • "Seven Levels of the Waterfall". The Imaginary Museum (28/8/06) [Available at: https://mairangibay.blogspot.com/2006/08/1-hill-country.html].
  • A Clearer View of the Hinterland: Poems & Sequences 1981-2014. ISBN: 978-0-473-29640-7 (Wellington: HeadworX, 2014): 58.



•




Sign in the foyer



Drug addicts are mentally sick people. 
Drug addiction, then, indicates mental 
sickness. Curing mental sickness is the 
only way to help drug addicts.



The smell of opium is the least stupid smell in the world. 
– Picasso to Cocteau


•	

The questionnaire:

In your opinion, opium smells like:
a/ the smell of gunpowder
b/ the smell of sex    [lots went for this.]
c/ factory smoke


Selected replies:

Johny Bravo:       No opion [sic] sample today!
Karen, England:	   how can it smell of
	           anything that its not?


(7/1/02)

Publications:



•




If free scope is granted to her,
Slavery sits on the head.
    – The Hitopadesha


Mekong Sunset

Lines of inundation
sap the fields
dream landscape
water-towers
like Martian war-machines



                                    Lao-Burmese Border

                                    I was in Saigon
                                    waiting for a mission
                                    last seen at a toilet-stop
                                    in Northern Thailand
                                    bound for Vientiane


(7/1/02)

Publications:
  • Summer Book from Eye Street. Edited by Raewyn Alexander. ISBN 0254-0193 (Auckland: Bright Communications, 2005): 3.
  • "Seven Levels of the Waterfall". The Imaginary Museum (28/8/06) [Available at: https://mairangibay.blogspot.com/2006/08/2-golden-triangle.html].
  • A Clearer View of the Hinterland: Poems & Sequences 1981-2014. ISBN: 978-0-473-29640-7 (Wellington: HeadworX, 2014): 60.



•




At the Burmese border. Half of us are paying 250 baht for the 
privilege of crossing. I can’t see the point myself.
   For virtually the first time this trip, I feel a little 
hungry. I was going to have an ice-cream, but Lien persuaded 
me it’d be bad for my sore throat. Dunno, though.
   Bugger it. Bought a chocky ice-cream.
   That triggered an old lady beggar to come up and start hassling 
me. I didn’t give her anything, though. I don’t like being poked and 
prodded.
   “People are extraordinarily rude today,” said Caroline earlier, 
after our run-in with the leathery Englishwoman + statuesque daughter 
who accosted us, begging for a lift to the frontier. “‘Is that a public 
bus? Can we go with you?’ rather than, ‘Would it possibly be conceivable 
for you to dream of allowing us to …?’”

Agreed to take a picture of a guy with his trophy girlfriend: young, 
svelte Asian girl in tight red top and black trousers; older Anglophone 
greyhead (50’s?) in black jeans and blue shirt. She looks peevish; he 
happy. One invents little scenarios in one’s head.

The monks here almost never look cheerful. They scowl or look sullen 
or blank – especially the ones in the slightly muddier orange robes 
coming over from Burma (Myanmar). A frontier is a strange place. 
The Zone. Like the apotheosis of tourist transience, only on a permanent 
basis. The DMZ.

Time for more wandering. I’m getting sunburnt, I fear. They’re playing 
the theme from Indiana Jones in the tuk-tuk [= cheap-cheap] taxi-rank. 
Some tourist behind me is recording his own quacking voice on a camcorder.

Watched a little fender-bender in the car-park. Desultory movements of 
the mind.
   A woman comes out of a shop with a plastic chair for me to sit on. 
Good business, no doubt, but nevertheless exceptionally considerate of her, 
I thought.

Darren bargaining for a jacket.
    Vendor: “300”
    Darren: “100”
    V: “[snort] – 280”
    D [to Tracy]: “She’s not serious if she won’t come down by 50”


(8/1/02)

Publications:



•




A woman is like a jar of ghee,
A man is like a hot charcoal.
So a wise man should not keep the two together.
    – The Hitopadesha


Chris

I’ve been to America
not South America
I’ve not been to South Africa
or Africa …
Red beaded braided hair



                                    Daniella

                                    Show us your ring
                                    You mean like this?
                                    bend over
                                    Throwing the yarrow stalks
                                    before Guanjin


(8/1/02)

Publications:
  • Summer Book from Eye Street. Edited by Raewyn Alexander. ISBN 0254-0193 (Auckland: Bright Communications, 2005): 4.
  • "Seven Levels of the Waterfall". The Imaginary Museum (28/8/06) [Available at: https://mairangibay.blogspot.com/2006/08/3-air-con-bus.html].
  • A Clearer View of the Hinterland: Poems & Sequences 1981-2014. ISBN: 978-0-473-29640-7 (Wellington: HeadworX, 2014): 62.



•




I would rather have stayed in the temple. That’s the point I need 
to stress. There was a moment when the chanting began, and the 
curtains were pulled, and the monks were sitting inside shielded 
against the chill of the mountain air, when I wanted to join them, 
put on an orange robe, give myself permission to be an ascetic, 
instead of this fatal inversion: mixture of boredom and concupiscence.
   The guy videotaping the monk’s blessing was a good example. Whatever 
you think of the merits of such gestures, filming it makes it experience 
kept at a perpetual second-hand. The only thing the girls took seriously, 
I noticed, was the fortune-telling with yarrow stalks. Frighteningly so.
   All of which leads me to last night. I knew the others were intending 
to find another bar, but I needed to collect my jacket and go to the men’s. 
There was a queue in there, and when I got out I stood for quite some time 
at the front waiting before I realised that they weren’t coming. Going back 
in, I found Chris, who informed me that they’d gone “next door.” But the 
main bar, the riverside one which they’d been talking about, took a lot of 
hunting through. I should know. I ransacked the whole place twice.
   After the first futile effort to find them, I set off to walk home, 
only to realise I wasn’t even sure which side of the river our Guesthouse 
was on. Or any other details about it. Like its name. After that I went back 
and searched again, more desperately and assiduously. No-one. I finally 
remembered that it was near a McDonald’s and a Starbucks, as Jeff had been 
using them as landmarks.
   Luckily the tuk-tuk driver knew McDonald’s, and still more luckily it was 
the only one around, so I did find my way back.
   I felt a bit peeved with them for ditching me, but it now seems to me part 
and parcel of the attitude – the arm’s length approach to experience. Empathy 
is impossible for the voyeur, as it wipes out the element of desire. It’s 
therefore unnecessary to worry at all about other people’s feelings or 
convenience.
   I guess I’d like to contrast it with the temple. The almost – just possibly – 
successful eclecticism of all that garish gold, and decoration, and absurdity, 
and silliness, and dignity. Just a pipe-dream? Who can say?
   Those frescoes were the best thing of all. Damaged, but still beautiful genre 
scenes, life under the beneficial influence of the Buddha, in all its variety 
and outpouring. One must have something to rely on, after all. Scam vs. 
transcendent domesticity.


(9/1/02)

Publications:



•




The following should not be trusted:
Rivers, persons holding weapons,
Those with claws and horns,
Women and royal families.
    – The Hitopadesha


Victory Chedi of Naresuan the Great

That fish they caught
the Mekong catfish
was half the height
of this thing …
A cat inclines one ear



                                    The Squirrel

                                    Put flowers in your hair
                                    the spirit-house
                                    has Pikachou in plastic
                                    wrappers    yellow billows
                                    round Buddha’s behind


(9/1/02)

Publications:
  • Summer Book from Eye Street. Edited by Raewyn Alexander. ISBN 0254-0193 (Auckland: Bright Communications, 2005): 5.
  • "Seven Levels of the Waterfall". The Imaginary Museum (29/8/06) [Available at: https://mairangibay.blogspot.com/2006/08/4-ayutthaya.html].
  • A Clearer View of the Hinterland: Poems & Sequences 1981-2014. ISBN: 978-0-473-29640-7 (Wellington: HeadworX, 2014): 64.



•




At the train station. Romance of the departing express. “The onlookers 
go rigid as the train goes by …” (Kafka). Copying down the sights – 
hawkers, stalls, our luxurious sleepers.
   “Got some beers,” says Jeff as he passes on the platform, gnawing 
a chocolate bar.

The teletext spells out a perpetual stream of complex instructions:

20 baht charge for ordinary fan seat 50 baht for Air-Con 
seat or berth (seeper) tictek Allowed twice only Refund 
of fare Have to apply for the refund more than 3 days 
from the date of travel deduct 20% and not more than 
1 hour from the train departure time deduct 50% …


Drunken orgy in the train. On my second Singha beer now (donated 
by Jeff).
   Amazing misty Northern Thailand landscape streaming past.

•	

At the War Grave cemetery in Kanchanaburi. Almost unbearable to read 
the inscriptions. So much emotion there. One in Gaelic. Some from 
the Bible – others little verses. Immaculately maintained.
   The most interesting thing was the display of pictures of old POWs 
revisiting the camp. The colour prints have sun-faded to virtual 
invisibility, like ghost photographs. Only the oil paintings survive.

•	

Our luggage was taken to the hotel by some very spirited Samlar 
[=rickshaw] drivers, who then bicycled us around town in a little 
tour.
   “Otherwise the ancient art may die,” says Lien.


(10/1/02)

Publications:



•




A king, a family woman, a Brahmin,
A minister and breasts;
When displaced from their proper positions,
Do not appear attractive.
    – The Hitopadesha


Wat Tam Sua

A B D    Another Bloody
Dog    the more you wait
the worse it gets    Screaming
gibbons captured
when they come to drink



                                    Khun Phen

                                    It’s gonna be hard
                                    we could’ve eaten them
                                    a horse a sword the soul
                                    of an unborn child    bats
                                    roost inside the cave


(10/1/02)

Publications:
  • Summer Book from Eye Street. Edited by Raewyn Alexander. ISBN 0254-0193 (Auckland: Bright Communications, 2005): 6.
  • "Seven Levels of the Waterfall". The Imaginary Museum (29/8/06) [Available at: https://mairangibay.blogspot.com/2006/08/5-rafthouse.html].
  • A Clearer View of the Hinterland: Poems & Sequences 1981-2014. ISBN: 978-0-473-29640-7 (Wellington: HeadworX, 2014): 66.



•





END OF TRAIL
Seventh level of the waterfall …


The best pool was definitely number three, with a little cave behind 
the waterfall where one could climb in and sit, safe from the white 
squall outside.

•	

“Thailand slut” uniform – this consists of as few clothes as possible, 
as tight as possible, with as much cleavage and arse showing as possible. 
The male equivalent is even more disturbing. It’s called showing respect 
for local customs.

•	


Sidewalk Restaurant Menu:
Steak Muu/ Steak Kai
Brawnie (served with ice-cream)

Easy.com
let’s click

Beside a teddy bear and boy on a moonbeam:
HAPPINESS IS A DREAM 

FOR GET ME NOT [on the side of a blue van]


(11/1/02)

Publications:



•




At the royal gate and in a crematorium,
One who stands by others is indeed a true friend.
    – The Hitopadesha


No Fear

Umbrella on a
motorbike    Buddha
above the wheel
Conveyor-belt
for flowers and offerings



                                    ‘Show a little compassion, guys …’

                                    Blood nose mosquito
                                    bites hip bruises
                                    sandal sores
                                    cyber-egg or Samurai pork
                                    burger    Feed your head


(11/1/02)

Publications:
  • Summer Book from Eye Street. Edited by Raewyn Alexander. ISBN 0254-0193 (Auckland: Bright Communications, 2005): 7.
  • "Seven Levels of the Waterfall". The Imaginary Museum (29/8/06) [Available at: https://mairangibay.blogspot.com/2006/08/6-erewhon.html].
  • A Clearer View of the Hinterland: Poems & Sequences 1981-2014. ISBN: 978-0-473-29640-7 (Wellington: HeadworX, 2014): 68.



•




Possibly these are rather uncharitable reflections, but the way 
to operate here seems to be to ask yourself, “What’s the scam?” 
whenever a local speaks to you, rather than “Is there a scam?” 
The sole exception so far is the nice lady from Phuket in the 
temple. She said she was on holiday.
   I met what seemed to be a nice guy; he told me he wanted to 
practise his English, and invited me to go for a drink in the old 
part of town. We did. At his insistence, we had some food to go 
with it.
   The whole thing ended up costing 470 baht – a trifle steep for two 
beers and some bar snacks, I thought. I had to pay, of course, as his 
“bankcard wouldn’t work there.”
   He then persuaded me to go with him to get a massage – traditional 
Thai style, very good, only 500 baht. It seemed a bit much, but he was 
very eloquent, and so we went.
   Man, it was painful! She kept poking and prodding and twisting 
me for what seemed like hours. What seemed like and what indeed was 
hours. An officious bastard came in after a while to demand 1120 baht 
– 500 per hour (I’d gone in at 5 p.m. and it was now 6.30) + 120 for 
“entertainment” (i.e. one cup of tea). I paid, with an ill grace, but 
it kind of negated the interest of the whole experience for me.
   Sure enough, when I went out, the first guy was gone, though he’d 
promised to wait in order to pay me back. He seemed so nice, too. 
Why did he do that? Mislead me so deliberately? Now I’m left with 
roughly 300 baht per day for the rest of the trip ($NZ18) which will 
not be enough. I could strangle the little prick, with his NY 
Yankees cap, and his sad tales of his dead brother (killed in a motor 
bike accident – he was driving. That should have warned me).
   I feel properly pissed off, for the first time in ages. Scamming 
seemed amusing at first, but it’s now become more serious. I must 
become far more bloody-minded if I’m to survive over here.
   Time for a good old sulk/soak and a read. Relaxed? I feel about 
as relaxed as a tiger about to spring. I feel not in the least 
guilty for not having tipped the masseuse.


(12/1/02)

Publications:



•




Two things are degrading to a man:
Learning that is superficial,
Sexual enjoyment that is paid for
And dependence on another for food.
    – The Hitopadesha


The Golden Mountain

How many kids
on that bike? Four kids
The temple stuff’s
not all that nice    millions of stairs
and bells to ring



                                    Eurotrash

                                    It’s really popular
                                    Put your hand
                                    on it    swear-
                                    words in Thai    the Nation’s
                                    stand on child sex    Uncool


(12/1/02)

Publications:
  • Summer Book from Eye Street. Edited by Raewyn Alexander. ISBN 0254-0193 (Auckland: Bright Communications, 2005): 8.
  • "Seven Levels of the Waterfall". The Imaginary Museum (29/8/06) [Available at: https://mairangibay.blogspot.com/2006/08/7-bangkok.html].
  • A Clearer View of the Hinterland: Poems & Sequences 1981-2014. ISBN: 978-0-473-29640-7 (Wellington: HeadworX, 2014): 70.



•




(for Alan Brunton)

Journey to discover the unknown self
    – Nissan tyre cover


Part way through your personal
labyrinth    she was on
a different level said the Maori
    hitchhiker    pause
to turn upriver

last night at the party
my stricken darling    cooed
the crew-cut girl
    who drove you
to the station

walk round Hiruharama
hum of bees    bell-bird
a van with muffled mirrors
    till you’re struck by
what?

not peace    no    not exactly
something more like waste
desuetude
    following what?
your nose

straight ahead    up through
the bush supplies a skidding
kid    you’ve come some way
    to see this
music raps nearby

At the Grave of James K. Baxter
s such a cliché
standing at the spot
    where so much
bullshit stopped

a trifle unkind perhaps?
no doubt    but nothing
seems to happen either
    wherever he is
taint here

in books?
their readers?
words of a dead man
    modified
in the guts of the living?

Stone Pine Lavender
a sign said miles ago
Stone    a nun
	gathers up clothes
you fail to wave


(15/12-19/12/2000)

Publications:

Notes:
  • The italicised words in stanza 8 of this poem are taken from W. H. Auden’s “In Memory of W. B. Yeats” (1939).



•





The Return of the Vanishing New Zealander (Dunedin: Kilmog Press, 2009)


  1. I ♥ NZ (11/2/99)
  2. NZ Golf (and English) Academy (31/12/98)
  3. Boi-Boi on Karaoke (29/12/98)
  4. Language School Picnic (28/3/98)
  5. Journey to the West
    1. Evening (18/6-20/9/98)
    2. Clouds (18/6-9/9/98)
    3. Countdown (18/6-9/9/98)
  6. Index (27/12/01- 4/3/02)
  7. Mysteries: A Christmas Poem
    1. The stones have eyes …. (6/10-29/11/03)
    2. Brought down … (10-29/11/03)
    3. There is no same word … (2/9-29/11/03)
  8. In the Days of The Lord of the Rings (20-27/11/02)
  9. A Question of Faith (22-26/3/03)
  10. Bonfire Gothic
    1. Dogshit at a distance (12/1-5/2/03)
    2. Diaphanous sails (30/1-5/2/03)


Publications:
  • The Return of the Vanishing New Zealander. ISBN 978-0-9864507-6-1 (Dunedin: Kilmog Books, 2009).
  • A Clearer View of the Hinterland: Poems & Sequences 1981-2014. ISBN: 978-0-473-29640-7 (Wellington: HeadworX, 2014): 73-86.



•




How poor the country would be if death were the major problem
    – Vivien Subrata


Restored to life
    like cutting circulation
to an arm or leg

The meteorite
    inside the pool
seen through your viewfinder

Or in the bar
    when they stop talking
Pray    Lower the flag

to half-mast
    Pitch a tent
when you can’t stay inside

Ask your friends to leave
    a flower
by the stupa

as they pass


(10-23/1/03)

Publications:
  • evasion 2.1 (2003): 21.
  • A Clearer View of the Hinterland: Poems & Sequences 1981-2014. ISBN: 978-0-473-29640-7 (Wellington: HeadworX, 2014): 87.

Notes:
  • A stupa is a Buddhist mound or rounded structure containing relics. It should not be confused with a tulpa: an embodied thought-form, as described in Alexandra David-Néel’s Magic and Mystery in Tibet (1931).



•





Love in Wartime (Wellington: Pania Press, 2006)

    Carl sniffed (12/1-8/3/03)
  1. Porphyry skyline (26/2-1/3/03)
  2. Rhinoceros (13/2-1/3/03)
  3. Entering the world again (11/1-2/3/03)
    4. SEX is natural (8-10/3/03)
  4. Bright Flowers (10-11/3/03)
  5. You just don’t have the sympathy (10/2-1/3/03)
  6. Stops when you watch it (17/8/02-6/3/03)

  7. The Miracle (4-13/8/06)


(17/8/02-13/8/06)

Publications:
  • Love in Wartime [gift edition] (Wellington: Pania Press, 2006): 20 pp.
  • Love in Wartime [limited edition] (Wellington: Pania Press, 2007): 20 pp.
  • A Clearer View of the Hinterland: Poems & Sequences 1981-2014. ISBN: 978-0-473-29640-7 (Wellington: HeadworX, 2014): 88-99.



•

Three Sisters

(after René Char)

translated with David Howard



Publications:
  • brief 32 (2005): 95-98.
  • A Clearer View of the Hinterland: Poems & Sequences 1981-2014. ISBN: 978-0-473-29640-7 (Wellington: HeadworX, 2014): 100-03.

Notes:
  • Mon amour à la robe de phare bleue,
    Je baise la fièvre de ton visage
    Où couche la lumière qui jouit en secret. …
    – René Char, “Les Trois Soeurs,” from Fureur et mystère : Poèmes 1938-44 (1948).
    Translated by David Howard & Jack Ross [literal version by Jack Ross; sections i & 1 drafted by David Howard, revised by Jack Ross; sections 2 & 3 by Jack Ross].





            I fear
your rigor
slipping in and out of light

no love	no cry
breaking up your morning
    stiffness
parting
brawling constellations

outside you    pride
wilts in the wind


(9-12/4/04)

Publications:
  • brief 32 (2005): 95.
  • A Clearer View of the Hinterland: Poems & Sequences 1981-2014. ISBN: 978-0-473-29640-7 (Wellington: HeadworX, 2014): 100.



•


I


in the urn of the second
age    the soon-to-be
born of chalk	unknown
                / over
grown with grass

aromatic rains
dissect a flower
        raped
by the cold
its kiss mysterious

filling the bark bed
with tears


(9-12/4/04)

Publications:
  • brief 32 (2005): 96.
  • A Clearer View of the Hinterland: Poems & Sequences 1981-2014. ISBN: 978-0-473-29640-7 (Wellington: HeadworX, 2014): 101.



•




twosies    shout and run away
bee    red limetree
rainy day
throw the blue dice while the pre-
amp hums:    what I say goes

time to shut up now	foresee
the future    be
the tower

the hunter hunts himself    his prey
follows after trustingly
cornfed milksop
        can’t you see
the sisters in
the bone-meal tree?


(9-12/4/04)

Publications:
  • brief 32 (2005): 97.
  • A Clearer View of the Hinterland: Poems & Sequences 1981-2014. ISBN: 978-0-473-29640-7 (Wellington: HeadworX, 2014): 102.



•




shoulder your children
lack and luck
the orchids burn
by the wind-break

in the garden
manna falls
the serpent hoards
casual windfalls

no eye can spy
more than the word
slash the mirror
toss the hide

break your compass
start alone
frail as we pass
the olives shine


(9-12/4/04)

Publications:
  • brief 32 (2005): 98.
  • A Clearer View of the Hinterland: Poems & Sequences 1981-2014. ISBN: 978-0-473-29640-7 (Wellington: HeadworX, 2014): 103.



•




Don’t listen to
what we say
but what we mean

when the dancer tried
not looking like
a dancer

at her next photo-shoot

•	

Now we’re in heaven
above the clouds
but soon

we’ll go back down
the semi-finalists
on Table Mountain

awful with energy

•	

Miss Tyra
seven feet of bone & lust
rolling on the floor

displaying passion
screaming at a loser
to wipe that smirk

off her pinched face

•	

The photo-shoot
inside
an open grave

for the girl
whose schoolmate
had just

passed away

•	

Watching it with Simon
as I prompted him
to see the subtleties

you’ve got to write this, Jack
no-one would dream
the bollocks you think up

about this crap

•	

Too commercial
not high fashion
not versatile enough

too young
too fat
too old

never too thin

•	
 

The art of teaching
breaking down
the will

not because you’re right
because
they’ll never start to learn

without it


(17-24/2/06)

Publications:



•

from Roadworks
Auckland Geography


The city is a map of the city
– Ciaran Carson, Belfast Confetti



Publications:





Birds crack like a whip
as Kathleen sings
  Myself I shall adore
                 abhor?

On the truck
  sheep graze
a carpet green

O Canada!
  those snowy peaks
  the maple leaf
  that hand tapping its ash
            out in the road


(30-31/7/03)

Publications:



•




Machines alone have realised that sleep is no longer permitted
    – W. G. Sebald, Vertigo


Inconceivably melancholy
traffic lights
against the sky


You might be lucky
they might just go away


just at that moment
when the blue 
turns black


ours was foaming
at least our dog gets plenty


a deeper blue
the evening
before you


there’s stuff that you can get
our daughter got a husky


fade in
Great Lash
the sea


(14 & 20-27/5/04)

Publications:
  • "Roadworks: Auckland Geography." The Imaginary Museum (14/6/06) [available at: https://mairangibay.blogspot.com/2006/06/upper-harbour-highway-600-pm.html].
  • Eye Street Book: Poems by Jack Ross, Raewyn Alexander, Rosetta Allan, Ila Selwyn, Alice Hooton, Jacqueline Crompton Ottaway & Lee Dowrick. Ed. Raewyn Alexander. ISBN 978-0-473-20575-1 (Auckland: Bright Communications, 2012): 7.
  • A Clearer View of the Hinterland: Poems & Sequences 1981-2014. ISBN: 978-0-473-29640-7 (Wellington: HeadworX, 2014): 108.



•




The sparrow inside
   my letterbox
      hopped out

when he caught my eye

•	

Patron Saint
    Atticus
Memorial Day
    6 November
Martyred in Phrygia
    Nothing else
    is known about him

•	

3 in the morning
   mosquito-net
      tangled

around me
   car-alarms
      still howling

overhead
   I tot up
      the crapola

that I’ve written
   Not a lot
      to kindle

when I’m dead 


(7/10/04-26/1/06)

Publications:



•




ALL WELCOME
    – Forrest Hill Presbyterian


New & Pre-Loved
    Patroklos

O my rider
    does that ring a bell?

Have we been here before?
    Or never

supped    tupped    napped
    rapt

hips above a skirt
    that tilt

of innocent intent
    Patroklos    O my rider

Hektor has you now
    Osama-bearded

laughing as he kills


(2-5/6/03)

Publications:



•




the damned have holidays – excursions … to this country
    – C. S. Lewis, The Great Divorce


Acc. to St. Thomas	                     It came to me
    Aquinas	                         like a light
        the smallest pain        in the centre of my vision

        blanking out             in Purgatory
    all	                             is greater than
but the peripheries	                      the greatest on earth

Screaming	                              walking up Rangitoto
    I buried my face	              stopping
        in my teacher’s robes     winded

        halfway up                The morning! The morning!
    to read out verses	              I am caught by the morning
to the scoria	                          & I am a ghost

it being relieved	                      down by the wharf
    however	                          we waited		
        by the certitude          for the ferryman

        to take us                of salvation
    to the asphodels	              establishing Holy Souls
the farther shores of	                  in deepest


(20-22/1/06)

Publications:



•




Out of this universal feast of death, out of this extremity 
of fever, kindling the rain-washed evening sky to a fiery glow, 
may it be that Love one day shall mount?
    – Thomas Mann, The Magic Mountain


If you can’t park in Birkenhead
    where can you park?
Slip Inn

Play the Big Game
    Dollars & Dealers
money talks

but bullshit walks
    exchange the orange baby
for the panda bear

Since the All Blacks lost
    ’s such a hassle
two mouths crooked so

mother & daughter	
    Full prog
& bikini underarm

Black on white
    & white on brown

Breaking the norm


(21-22/11/03)

Publications:



•




Heteroglossia is as close a conceptualization as is possible 
of that locus where centripetal and centrifugal forces collide …
    – Michael Holquist

	
   MT           Chalk butterfly
VICTORIA        etched in the pavement
                faded to two wings
                an eye open on each

                bridge binding up the harbour
                sails becalmed
                stick-figure
		              mother
                halfway up the slope
 


… as such, it is that which a systematic linguistics must always 
suppress.
    – The Dialogic Imagination: Four Essays by M. M. Bakhtin
	
 
NORTH           • How did you do that?
HEAD            • I’ll scrub them when I get home
                • Whatever
                • Have you had an inspiration?
                • Uh
                • Get up and stop being stupid
                    – to a fallen child –


(13-31/7/03)

Publications:



•






Everything there is to know
& more

They got it slightly wrong
for

Everything
you ever wanted to know

Tempting, though
to take them at their word

fill in the blanks
fulfil the prophecy

Just like that waitress
pulled back from

her breaktime cigarette
by one more customer

arriving
or the cell-phone girl

left in the middle
of her afternoon

TRUST UP sewn
on her Bermuda shorts


(13-15/9/05)

Publications:



•




Everybody’s got to
have plans
        my magnum opus

For a hard-earned
thirst
        face caked with clay
		
fixed-rabbit stare
from the kid who
        cut me off

Everybody’s got to have
this headache
        sick to your stomach

Everybody’s got to
dress
        dress to impress


(30/6-22/7/03)

Publications:



•





I like to see
what people do
in private
in secret
in the dark


(29/9/05)

Publications:



•




Es ist Zeit, daß es Zeit wird
    – Paul Celan, “Corona”


bird stalks by
    5-fingered sky
        Sunday

in the rearview mirror
    Autumn gnaws my hands
        we’re friends

van reversing
    past the
        pharmacy

check out those jeans
    swap spit
        talk shit
		
don’t stare at
    us
        it’s
		
time she said
    it’s time the asphalt
        bled

it’s time


(26-28/7/03)

Publications:

Notes:
  • This poem was partially inspired by Paul Celan's "Corona” [Text and literal prose version available in The Penguin Book of Twentieth-Century German Verse, ed. Patrick Bridgwater, 1963 (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1968): 268]. You can find a further discussion of it here.



•




blocking
    the wind’s
        wolf-howl
    as students
scribble

Judith
    F.
        walks past
    towed by
her seeing-eye

dog
    Hi!
        won’t stop
    I stop
remember her

three months
    after
        the funeral
    where Fairburn
walked
	
that poem
    she cut out
        read out
    by me
he’s buried

over there


(28/2-11/3/06)

Publications:
  • "Roadworks: Auckland Geography." The Imaginary Museum (14/6/06) [available at: https://mairangibay.blogspot.com/2006/06/coda.html].
  • A Clearer View of the Hinterland: Poems & Sequences 1981-2014. ISBN: 978-0-473-29640-7 (Wellington: HeadworX, 2014): 118.



•




The dark looniness
    of your leaping
        worries me

no pause to reflect
    furry paws
        outspread

food comfort sleep
    combine in
        strange parentheses

(just like the town
    they found you in
        dodging

post-Xmas traffic)
    beating up
        poor Smudge

before you’d met us
    even
        now hounding

Otis
    forgiving? maybe
        needy

certainly
    roving emblem
        of desire

claws outspread


(12-15/3/08)

Publications:
  • Our Own Kind: 100 New Zealand Poems about Animals. Ed. Siobhan Harvey. ISBN 978 1 86962 160 5 (Auckland: Godwit, 2009): 73-74.
  • A Clearer View of the Hinterland: Poems & Sequences 1981-2014. ISBN: 978-0-473-29640-7 (Wellington: HeadworX, 2014): 119.
  • "Zero at the Bone." The Imaginary Museum (23/4/23)
  • "The Zero Suite." Papyri (2/5/23)

Notes:
  • Zero was the name of our cat. The reference in the title is to Emily Dickinson’s poem “A narrow fellow in the grass”.



•





Papyri (Auckland: Soapbox Press, 2007)

Love poems & fragments
from Sappho & elsewhere

  1. When you walked in … (13/1-27/2/07)
    2. The Villa of the Papyri (30/3-2/4/07)
  2. Sappho to Anaktoria (4/8-2/10/06)
  3. Recipe for Making a Dadaist Poem (4/2/07)
  4. Ode to Aphrodite (4/2-28/2/07)
  5. Life among the Surrealists (21-26/11/06; 4/2/07)
  6. Atthis (13/1-9/2/07)
  7. Mnasidika (13/1-11/2/07)
  8. Fragments (22-24/2/07)
    1. I love magnificence … (13/1-22/2/07)
    2. Dying is bad … (4/8/06-22/2/07)
    3. The Moon’s set … (13/1-22/2/07)
    4. This pretty baby is mine … (13/1-24/2/07)
    5. Mum, I can’t thread … (13/1-24/2/07)
    6. Last night you slept on the breast … (13/1-24/2/07)
    7. We love to hear … (24/2/07)
  9. To a girl who doesn’t care for poetry (13/1-12/2/07)
  10. Juicy Root (13/1-27/2/07)
  11. Virgin (13/1-27/2/07)
  12. Sappho’s Epithalamion (13/1-10/3/07)


(4/8/06-10/3/07)

Publications:
  • Papyri: Love poems & fragments from Sappho & elsewhere. ISBN 978-0-473-12397-0 (Auckland: Soapbox Press, 2007).
  • Papyri: Love poems & fragments from Sappho & elsewhere (Auckland: Pania Press, 2007).
  • Papyri: Poems, Imitations & Translations. (February 3, 2007 - )
  • A Clearer View of the Hinterland: Poems & Sequences 1981-2014. ISBN: 978-0-473-29640-7 (Wellington: HeadworX, 2014): 120-34.

Notes:



•




(after Montale)


frigid ice-queen
    of the Baltic
who quits her haunts
	
to plumb our river
    mouths
branch to branch
	
capillary to capillary
    deeper deeper
into the rock

writhing through ditches
    till one day 
a flash of light

glancing off chestnuts
    ignites her
in the stagnant pond
		
eel
    lightstick birchwand
Love’s arrow on earth
		
led downhill through
    Apennine gullies
to green fields

still waters
    through dust & drought
 the spark that says 

Just do it
    when everything’s
burnt toast

your spitting
    image
iris recognition

would suggest
    mired in this life
can you not call her

sister?


(25-29/4/08)

Publications:
  • Corno inglese: An anthology of Eugenio Montale's poetry in English translation. Edited by Marco Sonzogni. ISBN-13: 978-88-7536-203-4 (Novi Ligure: Edizioni Joker, 2009): 218-19.
  • A Clearer View of the Hinterland: Poems & Sequences 1981-2014. ISBN: 978-0-473-29640-7 (Wellington: HeadworX, 2014): 135-36.

Notes:
  • L’anguilla, la sirena dei mari freddi che lascia il Baltico per giungere ai nostri mari …
    – Eugenio Montale, “L’Anguilla,” from La bufera e altro (1956).
    Text from Eugenio Montale, Tutte le Poesie. Ed. Gilberto Finzi. Grandi Classici. 1995 (Milano: Arnoldo Mondadori Editore, 2001): 259.



•

from 31 Days





Dure plus que fer à mâcher
– François Villon


Dure plus que fer à mâcher 
harder than iron to chew 
the nine o’clock start 
on the road by five to eight
    – You’re sillier than I am
    – No, you’re sillier
Farewell to the great kitten of time

– She knows she’ll get disturbed
every quarter of an hour
while I’m around
– Even though she sleeps
    for four hours at a time
    when we’re not here?
– She’s pining

Security barrier down
reverse to try the other one
A truck in front of it
Drake Security Services
    & then the pen / this pen
    I keep by the dashboard
in case I have a thought

whilst driving
slips out of my hand
A sign? It’s dangerous enough
to scribble stuff
    when the traffic lights are red
    but groping for a ballpoint
under the seat

must rate way over that
The certainty of aggravation
To be up & moving, good
The simultaneous lure
    of ten more minutes in bed
    combined with the cud
of problems to be chewed

& brooded over
Free-floating anxiety
seizing on what’s to hand
Dure plus que fer à mâcher
    The day
    awaits its – what?
Its spark?

The day awaits its dark


(1/4-18/6/09)

Publications:



•




It began with a bag of yesterday’s rolls
bought from the bakery
& taken down the bay
to feed the gulls
but then the café owner
wanted to donate
leftovers too

The seagulls started to scorn
stale bread
preferring muffins
They’d pick up loaves
& drop them off the roof
to the smaller birds
below

So every morning bread & muffins
must be collected
carried to the beach
tossed to the flocks
that gather there
& then another bag is thrown
on the roof of the bach

They come for miles around
huge pterodactyl flocks 
descending
squawking like banshees
sentries on every lamppost
ready to signal
Action!

In hospital
my father’s only thought was
what would become of his birds?
He has his favourites
the chief who marshals them
on the corrugated iron roof
the little waxeyes

The monkeys in the zoo
were looking bored
until the keepers learned
to hide their food
from them
in a different place
each day

Karl Stead
said Kendrick Smithyman
wrote much like that
those little details hinting why
it’s all so urgent & important
those birds who look up
longingly 

asking for bread


(2/4-6/8/09)

Publications:
  • The Argo & The Wahine. By Jack Ross & Bronwyn Lloyd (Auckland: Pania Press, 2009).
  • A Clearer View of the Hinterland: Poems & Sequences 1981-2014. ISBN: 978-0-473-29640-7 (Wellington: HeadworX, 2014): 139-40.



•




When you can say anything
    it’s hard
        to think of anything to say

In poetry, for instance
    theoretically
        the sky’s the limit

You can curse, blaspheme
    pile scatologies
        on all your enemies

So what?
    The form exacts its tribute
        we demand our 

chains
    Today, for instance
        three movies back to back

a drive through Autumn country
    out to Bethells Beach
        Chomsky to read

“Don’t you feel discouraged
    sometimes?”
        “Every evening”

Noam replied


(5/4-18/6//09)

Publications:



•




My mother called us
over to the house
because my father
was having a fit
& she couldn’t
lift him
off the couch

When we came in
he was lying
half-on
half-off the floor
so we heaved him
feet-first
into bed

A few hours later
another fit
(my mother thought
he’d gone to sleep)
this time he fell
& hit his
forehead

Bleeding
black eye
lying on the
carpet
half-out
half-under
the wirewove mattress

Later in hospital
another fit
no-one was watching 
except my mother
& possibly
they’d never have
known

Later they said
the medication
to stop his mind
deteriorating
was blocking out
the medication
to stop his fits

You don’t have to be
a Solomon
to work out
that one
immediate
need
outweighs

the far-off gain


(6/4-16/7/10)

Publications:



•




I’m trying to be flirty with the camera
& relax my eyes
What these other girls don’t realise is
I’m the tallest one here
I can learn to show emotion
Can they grow taller?
I don’t think so

Hosanna is a genius
We all laughed at her
when she started practising
12 hours a day
walking
looking in the mirror
I’m going to do the same

I’ve got a good body
I’m not going home
I’ve got a future in this industry
Those other girls are bitches
5 of them said that I was going home
They’re going home, not me
I’m here to stay

Hosanna is an idiot
I’m going to New York
I’m going to be a star
If they tell me to eat myself
I’ll do it
I’ve dieted before
Nobody’s getting any sleep

until we’ve cleared this up


(11/4-18/6/09)

Publications:
  • Massey University: Defining NZ (Summer 2009/10): 7.
  • A Clearer View of the Hinterland: Poems & Sequences 1981-2014. ISBN: 978-0-473-29640-7 (Wellington: HeadworX, 2014): 146.



•




Lying in an early morning fug
in that old house at Lyttleton
I heard the footsteps
creak up to the room
that I was in
(door open to the hall)
& look inside

There was nothing there
She scoffed at me
my girlfriend
then
next morning
lying in the same room
in the same bed

at the same time
she heard the selfsame thing
Old houses
lots of noises
unexplained subsidences
contractions
switches going on & off

Is that all that it is?
The fish-smell
perceptible only
at a certain height
in various locations
Grant Road, Wellington
Now again

in Mairangi Bay
A sense of mystery?
Of forces
overpowering
our workaday
depression?
Fear (above all)

of the real thing?


(12/4-18/6/09)

Publications:



•




(For J. G. Ballard)

Ballard remained the backbone of New Worlds’ policy. His 
influence was seminal and it was profound. We were soon 
publishing his first ‘concentrated novels’ …
– Michael Moorcock, New Worlds: An Anthology (1983)


The assassination weapon world with its inorganic growths 
is relieved only by the balloons flying in the i. m. J. G. 
Ballard cars drumming two hundred 15/11/30-19/4/09 
illuminated like the sutures some of us have the ability 
to think for ourselves & suck dick on this terminal concrete 
beach under a different sun this girl is not Coma my Debbie 
Mansell recording in a doll

Looking up from numbers of the first twelve marking journals 
Nagamatzu gazed at him for my Life Writing course explicit 
insolence this elegant bitch I went online Warren Commission 
to check the dates to the power of 120,000 for J. G. Ballard 
objects Jackie Kennedy only to find he’d died outskirts of 
the city there are hundreds two days before among the reservoirs 

It made me think municipal disposal teams of the time strangest 
was Xero that I changed lanes on the embankment of the / on the 
motorway but now & then he would coming home from to each other 
by contrast Christmas lunch invert behind him at my cousin’s 
place head what are you trying to build?

The car lost traction knelt on the floor for what in the wet 
handhold of reality & skidded eyes runes glowed but I was able 
to perfect cube its walls & to steer it through silently as she 
spoke my mother’s face behind him then passed dead-white beside 
me distance marking the horizon

Nobody said bottles Guam in anything began to piece except for 
me out of curiosity ran going on & on documents & a coke about 
it Pontiac sits in the trying to apologise keys missing he picks 
out wanting to be told incomplete isolation drill it was not my 
million-year girl Coma’s fault writing you can use it appears & 
sits at if it’s in another moving among the oil medium Lancaster 
wrote says Bronwyn of perpetual & irresistible De Chirico in 
the case

 Waking this morning display which he repeated from dreams of 
 Grace documents laid out on Dr Lancaster’s park & Emily tarmac 
 & take-off checks blunt 6 1945 of the cat to Dr Lancaster on 
 my dressing-gown contours of a corpse not in the fresh coffee 
 false in the sense brewed by Bronwyn named the universe 
 unidentified in her early morning the car onto the farm track 
 paroxysm kill except the sky of activity on Neuro-Psychiatry

I pick up Raymond feet high he told her Carver’s poems the 
radio-telescopes or by the bed set off at a run across 
heartless every nerve alert the wound under her left breast 
ready to kill or not & the echoes of the gun-shots

No safety net spat out the blood or none that mattered as here 
yes faded she caught the first definite beyond the control 
portrait of the car intently the inner landscape of head then 
fell sideways across our mid-century were moving away along 
using its own language

Webster however you must understand & manipulative techniques 
analytic activity whose main aim is to isolate its own fantasies 
different from Lautréamont & nightmares operating table 
identifying & if you couldn’t be him Theory of Relativity & 
the Principia why not be concluding phase the Nazca lines 
sensed that something that underlay hut in a technical his 
avatar bomber crashed 

THORACIC DROP was alive when they got him AUTOGEDDON as if 
something is missing GOOGOLPLEX perhaps his soul the capacity 
the father of sees he’s trying to his child embankment formed 
a hoped to be reborn the radial geometry the rim interested him 
hidden behind a dune the hut sticking up from the sand he 
continued to examine the wheel nothing happened


(22/4-18/6/09)

Publications:
  • brief 38 (2009): 46-48.
  • A Clearer View of the Hinterland: Poems & Sequences 1981-2014. ISBN: 978-0-473-29640-7 (Wellington: HeadworX, 2014): 147-48.

Notes:
  • Background texts sampled from J. G. Ballard, “The Assassination Weapon.” New Worlds: An Anthology. Ed. Michael Moorcock (London: Flamingo, 1983): 141-47.



•




My father had a plan to float down
part of the Waikato River
on a lilo
through the darkened canyons
seeing things
that you could never see
from up above

The plan was for my mother
(They were newly courting
not yet married
Junior Hospital
House Surgeons
in Hamilton)
to let him off at one reserve

then drive downriver 
& pick him up
at the other end
She drove downstream
& waited
for hours
(it seemed)

She worried that he might have fallen off
The airbed gotten tangled at a bend
When he finally floated
out of the darkness
he was soaked to the skin
chilled to the bone
 ‘I don’t remember anything about it”

“No, but I do,” she says to him


(23/4-18/6/09)

Publications:
  • The Argo & The Wahine. By Jack Ross & Bronwyn Lloyd (Auckland: Pania Press, 2009).
  • A Clearer View of the Hinterland: Poems & Sequences 1981-2014. ISBN: 978-0-473-29640-7 (Wellington: HeadworX, 2014): 149.
  • Let It Rain E UA TE UA Tukuna ki te Mārama: Poetry from Aotearoa in Multilingual Translation. Ed. Antonella Sarti Evans & Maringikura Mary Campbell (Paekakariki, NZ: Earl of Seacliff Art Workshop, 2023): 196.

Notes:
  • Let It Rain E UA TE UA Tukuna ki te Mārama: Poetry from Aotearoa in Multilingual Translation. Ed. Antonella Sarti Evans & Maringikura Mary Campbell (Paekakariki, NZ: Earl of Seacliff Art Workshop, 2023): 197.
    Il buio

    A mio padre venne in mente di scendere a galla
    lungo un tratto del fiume Waikato su un lettino gonfiabile
    attraverso canyon imbruniti
    per vedere cose
    che no si vedono dall'alto

    Il piano era che mia mamma
    (Stavano insieme da poco
    non erano ancora sposati
    medici d'ospedale pediatrico
    precari a Hamilton)
    lo lasciasse in una riserva naturale

    e poi scendesse in macchina
    a riprenderlo
    in fondo alla valle
    Andò giù
    e aspettò
    per ore (così lo sembrò)

    Era preoccupata che fosse caduto in acqua
    che il lettino si fosse impigliato a un'ansa
    quando finalmente apparve gallegiando
    dal buio
    zuppo fradicio
    infreddolito sin dentro le ossa
    "Non me lo ricordo"

    "Tu no, ma io si" dice lei

    - Translated into Italian by Antonella Sarti Evans



•




Nada veía sin refleja
    – Juana Inés de Asbaje y Ramírez de Santillana (c. 1651-1695)


Once they found me a confessor
who believed that study was the province
of the Inquisition
& ordered me not to read
I obeyed him
– for the three months that his power lasted –
& did not pick up a book in all that time

However as far as studying goes
since that does not lie in my power
I could not do it
Although not studying in books
by seeing God’s creation
& making use of letters
I read this universal machine just like a book

I could see nothing without reflecting on it
hear nothing without thinking
because since there is no creature
however lowly
who does not know God made me
so there is nothing which does not amaze
if one considers to whom it is owed

From the people I spoke to
& their replies
a thousand thoughts arose
Whence could come
such a variety of wits & spirits
within the one species?
What are the secret qualities that cause it?

I walked sometimes in the dormitory 
(a very large room) 
& found myself observing
that though the parallel lines
of its two sides & roof
were on one level
sight led me to believe

its lines inclined to each other
& that its ceiling was lower
in the distance
than the foreground
hence I concluded that the lines
of vision run straight
not parallel

ending in a pyramid not a square


(24/4-15/11/09)

Publications:
  • brief 40 (2010): 9-13.
  • A Clearer View of the Hinterland: Poems & Sequences 1981-2014. ISBN: 978-0-473-29640-7 (Wellington: HeadworX, 2014): 150-51.

Notes:
  • This poem samples from a passage in Sor Juana's “Respuesta a Sor Filotea de la Cruz.” The complete text of this essay can be found in Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, Obras Completas. 1951-1957. Prólogo de Francisco Monterde. 1969. “Colección Sepan Cuantos …”, 100 (Ciudad de México: Editorial Porrúa, S. A., 1977): 827-48 [837-38].



•




After the 1918 Spanish flu pandemic
some of the children
who’d gone deaf
were sent to a school
in Titirangi
to study sign
& lip-reading 

They put them up
in the Treasure House
at the back of the Grand Hotel
When Bronwyn worked
at Lopdell House
she organised a gathering
of the survivors

Their guide signed anecdotes
through an interpreter
Once, he said
they told them to look up
at the Roof Garden
& there was Santa
scattering sweets

They used to slide down
the banisters
until the matron
got wind of it
& planted buttons there
to tear
their clothes

Later
climbing up the spiral
Bronwyn noticed
little
dents
left in the wood
of the staircase

still


(1/5-18/6/09)

Publications:
  • The Argo & The Wahine. By Jack Ross & Bronwyn Lloyd (Auckland: Pania Press, 2009).
  • A Clearer View of the Hinterland: Poems & Sequences 1981-2014. ISBN: 978-0-473-29640-7 (Wellington: HeadworX, 2014): 152-53.



•




(5-7 January, 1917)


Everyone knew it wouldn’t work, but nobody
could think of a way not to go through
with it. Lloyd George knew
Douglas Haig was self-deluded,
believing every ‘intelligence report’
from crystal-gazing Colonel Charteris
– God (after all) was on his side.
Sir William Robertson (Chief
of the Imperial General Staff) knew
Haig was next door to an imbecile
but backed him – lacking better –
against any alternative. Haig knew
the Fifth Army Staff, Gough’s boys,
were capable of stuffing up
the most elegant and foolproof
plan. Everyone knew
it always rains in Flanders
in the Autumn. The result was
the ‘most indiscriminate slaughter
in the history of warfare.’
No-one could find
a good way to avoid it.

Without losing face, that is.


(24/12/09-8/2/10)

Publications:
  • Poetry NZ 47 (2013): 93-103.
  • A Clearer View of the Hinterland: Poems & Sequences 1981-2014. ISBN: 978-0-473-29640-7 (Wellington: HeadworX, 2014): 154.

Notes:
  • Most of the details in this poem were provided by Ian Wolff’s classic account of Passchendaele: In Flanders Fields: The 1917 Campaign (1958).



•

The Jay Poems


Ere Babylon was dust,
The Magus Zoroaster, my dead child,
Met his own image walking in the garden.
That apparition, sole of men, he saw

– Shelley, Prometheus Unbound. Act I, ll. 191-94 (1820)




Jay didn’t know what he was
    getting into
        really

Fantasies of freshly laundered sheets
    and folded linen
        foundered on

the fact that she could
    hardly speak his language
        so he couldn’t

tell her how to use the
    washer
        ended up

waiting on her
    instead
        Once he slapped her

on the butt
    while they were standing
        at a bus-stop

Friendly-like
    not roughly
        what a fuss that caused!
		
He had to face it
    However angry
        and determined

you may be
    sheer incomprehension
        is a weapon

hard to overcome


(25/1-3/2/12)

Publications:
  • A Clearer View of the Hinterland: Poems & Sequences 1981-2014. ISBN: 978-0-473-29640-7 (Wellington: HeadworX, 2014): 156.



•




I trust you have not dis-
seminated your views

on the committee’s decision
to anyone other than

the present addressee
freedom of speech

– of course –
is a central value

of the workplace
it is not an open

invitation
to opine


(2/11/11-3/2/12)

Publications:
  • A Clearer View of the Hinterland: Poems & Sequences 1981-2014. ISBN: 978-0-473-29640-7 (Wellington: HeadworX, 2014): 157.

Notes:
  • "On the Occasion of Wet Snow" was the title given to Part II of Dostoyevsky’s Zapiski iz podpol’ya [Notes from Underground] (1864) in Mirra Ginsburg’s 1974 translation.



•




Snow like a wall of salt
collapsing

A wind as physical
as any tackle

Cold like a hammer
clawing at your ear

Cling to those children
in the haystack

dead though
they may be

The need to survive
outweighs

humility


(2-3/2/12)

Publications:
  • Spin 28 (1997): 42.
  • A Clearer View of the Hinterland: Poems & Sequences 1981-2014. ISBN: 978-0-473-29640-7 (Wellington: HeadworX, 2014): 158.

Notes:
  • Certain details in this poem are inspired by Ron Hansen's short story "Wickedness" (1989), included in Tobias Wolff's Picador Book of Contemporary American Stories (London: Pan Macmillan Publishers Limited, 1993): 303-19.



•




 WORKLOADS
SO MUCH TO DO
  SO FEW $$$
    – in the staff toilets


Treat your professional life
   like your love life
   Know when it’s time
      to stop

Cherish the fruits
   of your labours
   like baby photos
      look on them fondly

but don’t read them
   I’m taking a guilty pleasure now
   in watching you reinvent
      yourselves

in interesting ways


(16-25/3/12)

Publications:
  • Spin 28 (1997): 42.
  • A Clearer View of the Hinterland: Poems & Sequences 1981-2014. ISBN: 978-0-473-29640-7 (Wellington: HeadworX, 2014): 159.



•




Sit in Churchill Park
                           look out
over Glendowie
                           It’s clearly verdant
Cicadas everywhere
                           A distant
building block
                           What is that? 
Prison?
                           Old People’s Home?
They’ve got a nice day
                           for it
at any rate


                           Of course he’s wildly early
And that
                           despite traffic
on the bridge
                           through the city
This really is quite
                           a thoroughfare
cars burning past
                           with stereos ablaze
A boy & his grandfather
                           off by the trees
up to nothing
                           very discernible


Break your carbon chains
                           Be free
Live a better life
                           It all sounds rather simple
on the screen
                           sunlit gardens
apple-cheeked oldsters
                           watching kids at play
Too simple	he thinks
                           but that isn’t it
too – somehow – inadequate
                           to the way we can always
find a way


to stuff ourselves (& others) up


(5-25/3/12)

Publications:
  • from The Jay Poems. brief 47 – The Mid City Arcade Project (2013): 32-33.
  • A Clearer View of the Hinterland: Poems & Sequences 1981-2014. ISBN: 978-0-473-29640-7 (Wellington: HeadworX, 2014): 160-61.



•




Summer’s gone
        Say goodbye
with a Gloria Jean’s
        Fruit Smoothie

Out in the city
        at night
as the Asian girl
        sings

with a poignancy
        past belief
to the King of Kings
        Our Lord

(Somehow they omit
        to give him
one of the scrunched-up
        pamphlets)

Shame

Fix the lippie
        & mascara
at the bus stop
        ladder in your tights


(28/3-25/4/12)

Publications:
  • from The Jay Poems. brief 47 – The Mid City Arcade Project (2013): 34.
  • A Clearer View of the Hinterland: Poems & Sequences 1981-2014. ISBN: 978-0-473-29640-7 (Wellington: HeadworX, 2014): #.



•




I think of all the
                     others I’ve seen
taking up pottery
                     travelling
out East
                     hanging around
the office
                     trying to buttonhole
the interns
                     with their well-meant
outmoded advice
                     I’ve got a plan
to get over all that
                     take the commuter bus
at 6 each morning
                     watch the sun come up
from the Bridge
                     then ride the ferries
to & fro
                     all day


(29/3-25/4/12)

Publications:
  • from The Jay Poems. brief 47 – The Mid City Arcade Project (2013): 35.
  • A Clearer View of the Hinterland: Poems & Sequences 1981-2014. ISBN: 978-0-473-29640-7 (Wellington: HeadworX, 2014): #.



•




Work = Money x Knowledge
    – Ya-wen Ho


Weighing
    the books
        to see
    how heavy
they are

Hyperlinks
    from LINE to
        PINE
    show off
the chair’s

elegant curves
    red leggings
        still
    some laughter
at this hour

of the morning
    sparser
        in
    the
afternoon


(29/3-22/4/12)

Publications:
  • from The Jay Poems. brief 47 – The Mid City Arcade Project (2013): 36.
  • A Clearer View of the Hinterland: Poems & Sequences 1981-2014. ISBN: 978-0-473-29640-7 (Wellington: HeadworX, 2014): 164.



•




BARBARA’s
   Everest-like
      bosom’s

big as
   her fist
      (it looks as if

she’s punching
   Glover)
      Curnow

would clearly
   rather be inside
      typing his latest

Lowry
   & friend
      grin madly

through the frame


(21-29/9/12)

Publications:
  • A Clearer View of the Hinterland: Poems & Sequences 1981-2014. ISBN: 978-0-473-29640-7 (Wellington: HeadworX, 2014): 165.

Notes:



•




It takes forever
   to give out change
   on public transport

Scads of twenty-
   dollar bills
   draining the stock

No matter how much
   you started with
   one doofus with a fifty

can exhaust it all
   delay us all
   set up the crash

we’ve all been waiting for


(11/12/12-17/1/13)

Publications:
  • A Clearer View of the Hinterland: Poems & Sequences 1981-2014. ISBN: 978-0-473-29640-7 (Wellington: HeadworX, 2014): 166.



•




Darkness’s not so easy to find
    these days
        Reading aloud

from Grettir’s Saga
    to the thronging spooks
        in the Waitomo Caves Hotel

one can’t help feeling
    there might be something to those tales
        of royal burials

below the hill
    It has to be pitch-black
        for you to see

the light
    You have to trust
        the glowworms

and their fishing filaments
    have to believe
        the boat is coming back


(11/12/12-10/1/13)

Publications:
  • A Clearer View of the Hinterland: Poems & Sequences 1981-2014. ISBN: 978-0-473-29640-7 (Wellington: HeadworX, 2014): 167.



•




We’re looking for something
    fairly urgent here
    he can’t walk very far

so the en-suite
    is apposite
    as for the rubbish bins

below his window
    there’s trees beyond
    even a peep of sea

& the strange feral
    creature roaming
    in his sandals

ratty t-shirt
    haunting hunted
    look might really

be quite kind
    might really
    – who knows? –

turn into a friend


(11/12/12-10/1/13)

Publications:
  • Poetry on Posters Programme. Ed. Kelly Wilson & Iain Dalziel (Auckland: Phantom Billstickers, 2014).
  • A Clearer View of the Hinterland: Poems & Sequences 1981-2014. ISBN: 978-0-473-29640-7 (Wellington: HeadworX, 2014): 168.



•




Too warm today
   but when it’s raining
      I complain about it

just as much
   When I first came
      to New Zealand

10 years ago
   not many people had air conditioners
      in their houses

now it is much warmer
   Product in your hair?
      he nods    self-conscious

at his own corpse breath


(13/12/12-10/1/13)

Publications:
  • A Clearer View of the Hinterland: Poems & Sequences 1981-2014. ISBN: 978-0-473-29640-7 (Wellington: HeadworX, 2014): 169.



•




(for Graham Fletcher)


Faux sauvage
that was the
term we coined
for our in
terior
design phi
losophy
unholy
amalgam
of Gauguin
& Magritte
a strictly
rational
naïve
té subord
inated
to the cor
ridor that
you can't take
beside the
window look
ing out on
that wild lawn


(21/1-8/2/11)

Publications:

Notes:
  • "On the Occasion of Wet Snow" was the title given to Part II of Dostoyevsky’s Zapiski iz podpol’ya [Notes from Underground] (1864) in Mirra Ginsburg’s 1974 translation.



•

from Jueju


Why / are we here?
Where the seagulls cry, in Rawene,
beside the lovely harbour of the
Hokianga.

– Dr John Mackenzie Ross




(for Yang Lian)


Worst smoke in sixteen years says
the Straits Times    stopping
in the lobby of the NTU

Exec Centre I see
the idlers outside wearing their
cloth masks    inside the air conditioning

smells smoky too    it woke me up
above a band of haze stands
the blue sky


The German girl   small-boned   light
& delicate as the faux
London streetlamps aren’t    on the river

walk past busts of Deng
Xiaoping    Nehru    Ho Chi Minh
with her multi-screen phone	flinched

slightly as I put my arm around her
for the photo    maintaining bravely
her inscrutable smile


(18-23/6/13)

Publications:
  • A Clearer View of the Hinterland: Poems & Sequences 1981-2014. ISBN: 978-0-473-29640-7 (Wellington: HeadworX, 2014): 172.



•




(after Wen Tingyun)


Black bands across the bed
a blackbird on her cheek
she freshens her mascara
half asleep

Check yourself out like a rose
front & back
love-birds embroidered
on your Gucci bag


(6/9-1/10/13)

Publications:
  • A Clearer View of the Hinterland: Poems & Sequences 1981-2014. ISBN: 978-0-473-29640-7 (Wellington: HeadworX, 2014): 173.

Notes:
  • Adapted from the rhymed translation (with facing Chinese original) provided by Xu Yuan Zhong in his Golden Treasury of Chinese Lyrics (Beijing: Peking University Press, 1990): 22-23.



•




(after Wang Anshi)


A perverse pride in the count
as the memories rewind
23 years        30
leaving Europe behind

barefoot in London
glaring at the fish-shop
man	further back
to the monkey-apple trees

at Murrays Bay Primary
to my mother receding
gradually     after school
down Sunrise Avenue

day after day


(6/9-30/10/13)

Publications:
  • A Clearer View of the Hinterland: Poems & Sequences 1981-2014. ISBN: 978-0-473-29640-7 (Wellington: HeadworX, 2014): 174.

Notes:
  • Adapted from the rhymed translation (with facing Chinese original) provided by Xu Yuan Zhong in his Golden Treasury of Chinese Lyrics (Beijing: Peking University Press, 1990): 160-61.



•




(after Axl Rose)


There’s a shot in the video where you can see
Slash’s arsehole 	but the vital
question is (of course)
what will be Number One?

Guns ‘n’ Roses	Are you kidding?
What about Ozzy Osbourne?
Meatloaf? All these 
masters of the craft?

What about the April
Sun in Cuba?
I weep like a child
for the past


(24/8-5/9/13)

Publications:
  • A Clearer View of the Hinterland: Poems & Sequences 1981-2014. ISBN: 978-0-473-29640-7 (Wellington: HeadworX, 2014): 175.



•




(after Dante Alighieri)


They say that birds began
as dinosaurs    Today we saw
two children in the bus

whose thumbs were bent like claws
their shoulder-blades
high and distinct    bird

people    making
ready for flight
tap-tapping on their screens

with piping voices
Might we at least hope
that they can

fly away?


(31/8-1/10/13)

Publications:
  • A Clearer View of the Hinterland: Poems & Sequences 1981-2014. ISBN: 978-0-473-29640-7 (Wellington: HeadworX, 2014): 176.



•




(after Liu Ke Zhang)


Again we sit
    in the courtyard café
        with the plastic chairs

& the dragon waitress who insists
    on filling & refilling our glasses
        with Tiger beer

Ron, Derek, Jen & I
    as we order food
        from the somewhat generic steakhouse

recommended by Nick
    & think ourselves fine fellows
        the evening air

drifting across our plates
    like kerosene
        on beach bonfires

back home    home
    where you are
        for good I fear

who might well have liked
    to sit here with us in the shade
        then join us

on the long taxi-ride back


(6/9-17/10/13)

Publications:
  • A Clearer View of the Hinterland: Poems & Sequences 1981-2014. ISBN: 978-0-473-29640-7 (Wellington: HeadworX, 2014): 177.

Notes:
  • Adapted from the rhymed translation (with facing Chinese original) provided by Xu Yuan Zhong in his Golden Treasury of Chinese Lyrics (Beijing: Peking University Press, 1990): 384-89.



•




(after Dante, Inferno 1: ll. 1-30)


12 years into the new millennium
the shops and offices on Albert St.
are emptying    FOR LEASE

ON ADVANTAGEOUS TERMS
                        The bubble’s burst
Only the trees seem satisfied to lean
over the motorway approaches

greener – REDDER – LARGER than before
but on benefit day (as you might guess)
every bar and park-bench’s full    Your old

Ford Laser looks right at home
on Fanshawe St.        Pull over
(no reason why) by Victoria Park

and walk up College Hill
where once the HYDRA bacon sign
frowned down on us with threats of

steel    though you’ve lost sight
of such-like pieties in these 
pre-xmas madness days

So even when you get the fear
at the sight of some photographer’s
shop window full of soon-to-be

knocked-up teenagers in skin-tight 
gowns    with their barely human
dates crammed into tuxedos

horny wrists protruding    like when
you’ve swum sideways out of a rip
and staggered ashore exhausted    glad

you made it but not sure how you did
you look down on spaghetti junction
and resolve to complete your gift shopping 

then see The Hobbit    finally


(11-18/12/12)

Publications:



•

The Other Side


We become possible and probable only on the condition
that we project beyond ourselves on every side
and that we stretch in every direction throughout time and space.
– Maurice Maeterlinck, The Unknown Guest




(Maurice Maeterlinck)


A malicious groom
let a mare into the yard
and Kluge Hans
cut himself open
on the rail
of his locked stall

They had to sew
his entrails
back inside


It seems
at moments such as these
as though humanity
were on the point of breaking
through the crust of matter
that weighs it down


(21-23/3/13)

Publications:
  • A Clearer View of the Hinterland: Poems & Sequences 1981-2014. ISBN: 978-0-473-29640-7 (Wellington: HeadworX, 2014): 180.

Notes:
  • A more extensive account of the Elberfeld horses can be found on pp. 181-297 of Maurice Maeterlinck’s The Unknown Guest, trans. Alexander Teixeira de Mattos (London: Methuen, 1914).



•




(Bishop James A. Pike)


The photographs were left
at a 140° angle
in the Cambridge bedroom
the Bishop
and his son Jim
had shared


We walked through darkness
together
Is there light
over there?
Can we get there?


Left in the desert
he wandered off
and was found five days later
in a dry ravine


(21-24/3/13)

Publications:
  • A Clearer View of the Hinterland: Poems & Sequences 1981-2014. ISBN: 978-0-473-29640-7 (Wellington: HeadworX, 2014): 181.

Notes:
  • The quotation in italics in the poem above comes from Bishop James A. Pike’s 1969 account of his own “experiences with psychic phenomena,” The Other Side (London: Abacus, 1975).



•




(Wainuiomata)



I’ve seen some things myself
If I told anyone
they’d have to put me back
on medication


said the dishevelled man
at his tiny
cluttered table
ringed by a Cretan
labyrinth of shelves

in that valley
cut off by mountains
where we ended up
that morning
on our circuitous way
out of Wellington


(21-24/3/13)

Publications:
  • A Clearer View of the Hinterland: Poems & Sequences 1981-2014. ISBN: 978-0-473-29640-7 (Wellington: HeadworX, 2014): 182.

Notes:
  • Both of the books listed in the poems above were purchased in the bookshop described in this poem.



•




The only time we ever called the police
on one of our noisy neighbours
it was Howard

his mother had just been taken away
to the hospice where she died
and he was sad

(or so he told us later)
he sat in the front room
drinking beer

and started to howl
whilst playing Led Zeppelin
louder and louder

by 2 am we’d had enough
we began to worry
he’d top himself

or so we rationalised it
the fuzz turned up in force
we heard them knocking first

then going round all the doors
finally they broke in
cuffed him

and took him off to jail
a few days later
a week or so before he left for good

Bronwyn met him by the clothesline
Don’t they understand being sad?
he said

One of the neighbours called the cops on me!
I still feel ashamed
we couldn’t admit

it was us


(5-6/1/14)

Publications:
  • From A Clearer View of the Hinterland by Jack Ross. HeadworX website (8/9/14). [Available at: http://headworx.eyesis.co.nz/poetry/clearer_sample].
  • A Clearer View of the Hinterland: Poems & Sequences 1981-2014. ISBN: 978-0-473-29640-7 (Wellington: HeadworX, 2014): 183-84.

Notes:
  • Rogelio Guedea's Spanish translation of this poem is available at Poesía neozelandesa traducido por Rogelio Guedea (1/5/21); a spoken version can be accessed at: “Rogelio Guedea reads Jack Ross’s ‘Howard’.” NZ Hispanic Press: #ElPoemaDelSábado. [available at: Facebook (1/5/21)].
    Howard

    Fue la única vez que llamamos a la policía
    por culpa de uno de nuestros vecinos ruidosos
    era Howard

    estaba triste (así nos lo diría después)
    porque a su madre la habían recién llevado
    al hospicio

    donde finalmente murió
    se sentó en la habitación de enfrente
    a beber cerveza

    y comenzó a pegar de alaridos
    mientras escuchaba a Led Zeppelin
    cada vez más y más fuerte

    a las 2 am ya habíamos tenido suficiente
    y empezamos a preguntarnos
    si no terminaría matándose

    o así lo imaginamos
    un gran operativo policial se hizo presente
    lo oímos tocar primero

    luego husmeó en todas las puertas
    y finalmente irrumpieron
    lo esposaron

    y lo llevaron a la cárcel
    algunos días después
    una semana más o menos antes de que se fuera para siempre

    Bronwyn lo encontró junto al tendedero.
    ¿No entienden lo que es estar triste?
    dijo

    ¡Uno de los vecinos me acusó con la policía!
    Todavía me siento avergonzado
    no pudimos admitir

    que fuimos nosotros

    •


    Jack Ross nació en Auckland en 1962. Es poeta, escritor y editor de ficción. Ha publicado libros ficción corta y de poesía, entre los que se encuentran City of Strange Brunettes (Pohutukawa Press, 1998), A Town like Parataxis (Perdrix Press, 2000) y Chantal’s Book (HeadworX, 2002), entre otros. Ross es profesor de escritura creativa en Massey University y es coeditor de una serie de libros dedicados a capturar a los poetas neozelandeses en performance. En su poesía Ross mezcla géneros y elementos de autobiografía y ficción.



•




or coming home
either I suppose

pausing to look
down the hill

at the bay
and the houses

boats moored not
too far out

from the shore
the road is

the centre though
those foreshortened cribs

have lost their
meanings the shadow

and weight
of their everyday

the wide grey
road a weathered

fence to stop 
you falling off 

into the dark 
plantation of trees


(10-12/12/13)

Publications:
  • brief 51 – the outer link (2014): 5..
  • A Clearer View of the Hinterland: Poems & Sequences 1981-2014. ISBN: 978-0-473-29640-7 (Wellington: HeadworX, 2014): back cover blurb.



•


Acknowledgements


The earliest poem in this book was written in 1981 – and published in a large soft-backed anthology called Tango, “a literary rage”. Auckland University Literary Handbook 1982, compiled by David Eggleton, who now edits Landfall. The latest was written in 2014. That’s thirty-three years I’ve been trying to write poetry – longer, actually, since it was quite some time before I succeeded in getting any into print.

The poems collected here do, admittedly, bulk in the late nineties and early 2000s, which seems to have been a productive period for me. Between 1997 and 2012 I published four full-length poetry collections:

None of the contents of these books have been reprinted here.

Instead, most of this collection comes from the 13 poetry chapbooks of various sizes and descriptions which I published over the same period. Four of them have been reproduced here in full:

I’ve also included extracts from a number of anthologies (thanks again to all the editors – and publishers – concerned):

This, then, is only a selection of the poetry that I’ve published over the past thirty years. Together with the four full-length collections mentioned above, and the following six stand-alone chapbooks:
I suspect that it represents everything from that period which merits reprinting.

I’d like to thank a number of people for their help with this book:

My wife, Bronwyn Lloyd, always my best and most astute critic; the Bookshop (later Eye Street) Poets, Raewyn Alexander, Rosetta Allan, Stu Bagby, Lee Dowrick, Alice Hooton, Leicester Kyle, Jacqueline Crompton Ottaway, Gwenyth Perry, Ila Selwyn, Michael Steven, and Wensley Willcox, who’ve had to listen to most of them in our workshops over the years; Graham Fletcher, for his generous gift of a cover image; Scott Hamilton and those other Salt alumni, Michael Arnold, Hamish Dewe and Richard Taylor, for general aiding and abetting; the inimitable David Howard, for his permission to include his part in our joint translation of René Char (pp. 100-03); my brother K. M. Ross, who’s helped out so much early and late; my mother and father, Drs June and John Ross, for figuring in and inspiring so many of them; Gabriel White, for the neverending stimulation of his work and talk; and all the various editors and publishers who’ve shown faith in my work at one time or another:

Bill Ayton at Narcissus Press; Elizabeth Caffin at AUP; Christine Cole Catley at Cape Catley; Brett Cross and Ellen Portch at Titus Books; John Geraets and his successors at brief; Paula Green and Harry Ricketts for 99 Ways into NZ Poetry; Dean Harvard at Kilmog Press; Jan Riemenschneider-Kemp at the AoNZPSA (Aotearoa New Zealand Poetry Archive) [http://aonzpsa.blogspot.com/]; Jenny Lawn at the SSCS Monograph Series (Massey University); Michele Leggott and Brian Flaherty at the nzepc (New Zealand Electronic Poetry Centre) [http://www.nzepc.auckland.ac.nz/]; Theresia Liemlienio Marshall at Pohutukawa Press; Alistair Paterson at Poetry NZ; and – last but not least – Mark Pirie at HeadworX, who agreed to take on this project out of the kindness of his heart (as well as his pure disinterested zeal for poetry); and too many other people at too many journals and websites for me to list them all here.

You can, however, if you’re curious, find further notes, together with full details of the publication history of each poem at:
http://ovidius-naso.blogspot.co.nz/2012/04/notes-to-clearer-view-of-hinterland-2014.html

– Jack Ross, 12 April-1 June, 2014.


•



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