My Lover as Hat

I love you, my hat. 

I love the brim of you

pulled over my eyes. 

I love you thrown

in the air. I catch you.  

I love you crushed

under my foot.  

I love you, my hat,

feathered, ribboned or flowered. 

I love you abandoned

on a chair. 

Worn in the rain

at a funeral, in church  

where the parson

compliments you. 

I love you, my hat. 

I have worn you so long

you are sweat stained.

Blackmail Press #32 is Live

Blackmail Press #32 is live. You can read my poems here.

One Handed Woman is a character I made that reflects some of the questions I have about being a woman with feminism as my birth right. How did it shape me? Advantages, disadvantages, even disabilities? The poem is part of an ongoing dialogue I have with my contemporaries.

Emissary to a Neighbouring Kingdom, The Parson Falls in Love and Goes Mad and One Left for a Hero, came from a paper I read sometime last year on the disconnection men feel from traditional archetypes. These poems are my reflections on this sociological phenomenon, the characters are the king, the cleric and the hero respectively.  I am continuing to write in this series, several more are included in my manuscript, A Machine of Herbs and Flowers

The Water Gleaners is a retelling of the story of Oberon, Titania and the fairy Mustard Seed from A Midsummer Nights Dream. It’s a story built around my concerns for the politicizing and future distribution of potable water.

Enjoy Blackmail Press #32, there are some wonderful poets included. It’s a great read.

Published Poems

A few folk have asked me where they can read my poems. Some are here on my blog  of course. Here's a summary of poems published elsewhere.

E-zines
Snorkel, the literary journal of the University of Sydney, you can read Turning the Seasons with the Dead here

International Literary Quarterly published Biological Name for Moth and Coracle here

Turbine, Literary Magazine of the Victoria University, Wellington NZ published Found Farther and Farther Out here

Shot Glass Journal published Nude on a Staircase here

I've been a Tuesday poet on Catherine Fitchett's blog, with Young Woman Marries the Farmer's Son here

Samuel Peralta featured Drawing Grasses in Okains Bay New Zealand on his blog The Semaphore Anthology

Print Media
In addition I have been published several times in Takahe, which you can subscribe to here. Numerous times in The Press. Voiceprints #3, which is available to purchase through the Canterbury Poets Collective. Also Enamel and Crest to Crest Anthology of Canterbury Poetry and Prose.

Winning the 2011 Margaret Mahy Prize.

“Ok, so you’re pretty prolific, get 100 poems together and let’s see if there’s a book amongst them.”  Thus began the relationship with my Hagley Writers Institute supervisor, John Dickson.

OOOkay… I gulped and got to work and lo, I pulled it off. I narrowed it down to 47, submitted the manuscript for my final folio and it was short listed in the top seven. From these Anne Rogers, editor at Random House chose the winners of the Margaret Mahy Award. I thought I hadn’t heard correctly when my name was called. I stumbled up to receive the award, and then spent the rest of the evening in a grinning daze. Always remember to prepare a winners face, as well as a losers. I have learned by experience now! Pictures of graduation here.

The manuscript is called, A Machine of Herbs and Flowers. It’s my first collection of poetry. Hagley are now sending it to Auckland University Press and one other publisher yet to be decided to be considered for publishing.

2011 was tough, with some 9,500 aftershocks and quakes in Christchurch and the death of one of my best friends. Hagley held me together and gave me purpose and hope. There’s a lot to look forward to and work towards in 2012. I’m returning to Hagley for year two. This year my tutor is the brilliant Frankie Mcmillan who I know will be able to polish my short fiction writing skills.

Review of apple strudel

Thank you to Emmett Wheatfall for his review of 'apple strudel'. It's always a pleasure to be reviewed by a peer. His review can be read here http://emmettwheatfall.tumblr.com/ .

apple strudel

My mum and aunties stretch it with their fists. They coax it thinner and thinner stretch it until it covers the whole laminex kitchen table and I can see the check of the cloth through the membrane of pastry. Stretch out their pride in their children stretch out their cackles of laughter at the stupidity of their husbands stretch out their tears for the sister who died young. At 15 they let me have a go, I try to mimic their hand over hand and rip a big hole in it they laugh at my clumsiness and shoo me away. When I’m 20 they laugh at my university-learned hochdeutsch even though I can stretch the dough as good as them “ooo la di da” they screech taunts at my posh accent and it thins the pastry a little more. Taunts add tartness to the apples they scatter. They add the finely chopped bitter rind of  long standing family feuds, a sprinkle of spicy sugar gossip and roll the whole thing up using the cloth, lifting it so that fold upon fold of pastry swaddles the apples and all the ancient history.

Stubborn as Stone

I sent my love a naked lithotint,

gold print on stone. 

He says I’m a kind of rock

plants grow on,

a stone swallower,

rock borer,

fossilized fruit,

a concretion in his veins.

I assert that

for my fire I have flint,

to furrow the rows of my garden

I have a small stone adze;

live and worship in a stone circle.  

A stone that falls to earth I become

phosphorescent when heated.