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Overview
Culled from the author's term as poet laureate, this collection delves into both the present and the past, combining poems of today with those of history. From the inspiring setting of Matahiwi Marae in Hawke's Bay to the beautiful backdrop of Florence, Italy, this anthology explores the fascinating day-to-day life of the poet herself. Serving as an autobiographical narrative, this portrait also illustrates her journey to seek out ancestral relations, finding them emigrating from their homeland and settling in a budding colonial town. Exploring languages within languages, this compendium also touches on the concepts of hearing and seeing, coming and going, and the representations of experience itself. Layered with intense imagery and stirring rhythms, this engaging volume is ideal for budding writers and experienced poetry fans alike.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781775581246 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Auckland University Press |
| Publication date: | 11/01/2013 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 180 |
| File size: | 688 KB |
About the Author
Read an Excerpt
Miracle Dictu
By Michele Leggott
Auckland University Press
Copyright © 2009 Michele LeggottAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-77558-124-6
CHAPTER 1
work for the living
one by one they come out
the piece of paper with the poem transcribed
at five in the morning and folded
into the driver's pocket
another with the words of the song
the Yorkshireman doesn't need
he's brought cucumbers from his garden
she found puriri around the corner
I'm looking up the Latin for big flower
or maybe really big flower
and pulling it from the tree
too many funerals but the road
is clear to the north the driver
puts his foot down
the words in his pocket speed
the conversation the weave of
bad singing bad hearing bad eyes
stopping only for a bad joke
across the road from the Hundertwasser
toilets they call me mellow yellow
the tourist train rolls up the main street
someone takes a picture on a phone
stories flash by Ruapekapeka Ohaeawai
Culloden the Spanish Armada
the wars the families deaths and clearances
at Te Kotahitanga we find him
whose words have brought us
to the north wheear 'ast ta bin sin'
ah saw thee he asks silently
did you clean up the shattered teacup
the milk spilling onto the floor?
the Lake Poet walks in trailing clouds
the Persian Ecstatic takes a spin
around the room and King James
does benison in both languages
body and soul light and air
puriri grieves and the Really Big Flower
opens its lemon soap heart Ephphatha!
the birds in the trees are suddenly uproarious
and then we hear rain outside
it's gone by the time
we emerge and the van has him
safely on the road to Wharepaepae
we are slower getting up there
the carter on the horizon calls out
in the arms of the road a translation
anyone might understand
replying to the voice in the wind
as the old lady opens her arms
and takes him into the earth
lost children
and talk that goes on into the night
around a table in a house on another hilltop
where an old friend pulls out the first book
and inside it another piece of paper
with a handwritten poem she reads
remembering where it came from
taking the path between that coast
and the travellers she is feeding tonight
the cucumbers went into the salad
more books more history more wine
the driver's poem is unfolded
as a full moon gets up over the valley
A red libation to your good memory, friend.
There's work yet, for the living.
in the morning a bird will call from the trees
visible invisible riro she explains
to the man without a hat who knows
the song but can't sing it now
to save his life riroriro little stranger
the wars the deaths the clearances
one who intrudes into my shadow
I don't recognise shadows his face
a translation anyone might understand
poppies and plane trees
two tears ago
we were this city fingers slipping
and the keyboard wet
with years travelling their inexorable
but flimsy course so porous
so full of windows
someone leaning out of the blue
as the ferry leaves the wharf
two decks that could be tiers
two deaths tearing all summers
all journeys as swift as negligent
I was going to say carefree
stepping onto the island's glassy cone
so the city lies behind
can I paint it for you Masaccio's
Expulsion from Paradise those weepers
beginning their hard times and unable
to bear knowledge of
the division the ferry pulling out
nothing but convict labour ahead
and what you have seen behind
can I hear it for you the waves
at the edge always there compensation
for what can no longer be seen
the bird the same bird little stranger
I want to say singing its heart out
and cicadas in the trees
above the black rocks of the lava field
the camera circles the camera
tracks and listens the camera did not see
blue daylight either side of the keystone
in the ruined arch it did not hear
tearful voices the ferry pulling out
the figure in the doorway saying
fiori e pioppi it's true they are poplars
but I want them to be poppies
the sound of one flower reading another
beneath a sky the colour of lions
and now we are the city
from the waterline dropping into
the sea that is no longer provisional
floating kicking splashing the summer
asserting another window
flimsy but who will forget the tears
or the voice calling from the water's edge
we are the city and its scarp
we have the pins and the hinge is set
into the Baptistry doors
two nights ago we missed
a question about a cricket team
we called them the Immortals
they were the Invincibles the difference
between undying and unconquerable
mori et vincere we were close
but we were not perfect the question
slipped between two possibilities
a good guess and much on our minds
the question of mortality
where we are going when we're going
to the island between sea and sky
cerulean a word I liked a lot less
when I learned where the emphasis went
now we look ahead
from the deck where the sound of doves
carries through the trees what
are their names have they always
made this flight between possibilities
hanging on tight to a perch
that might be a globe or a prow
or the start of a seedhead that falls
whump onto the roof in autumn
we journey we are lost and found
over under behind around
preposition proposition no position
so clear as the conversation
of the department of conversation
on a day-trip forever to come
the soft red wine
with the beautiful name big funnels
and two notes on a French horn
to clear a way through the sails
of the five o'clock races a child
waving about in the tree-tops
the dog snoring under my feet
in one head is a winged victory
in one hand a stick that bounces chisels
filled with strangeness
we begin the simultaneous paths
scent of picked basil extending
delicately through a notebook
making for the front gate heat
under salted water coming
to the boil and the curious weight
of granite hollowed for a stone pestle
holding on tight to the world
mirabile dictu
imagine the world goes dark
a bowl of granite or a stone bird
incised by tools the nature of which
is unknown just that they are metal
and therefore from otherwhere
just that the weight of the bowl
precludes light and lightness
of thought my feet take a path
I can no longer see my eyes
won't bring me the bird only now
has my hand found the stones
I could add to the smooth interior
of my despair the world goes dark
I look into the eyes of my stone bird
hammers before memory
silence and the world that is not
that is no country
for the unassigned smell of sunlight
on skin in a darkened room cabbage tree
shadows dancing in the hologram
on the ceiling not here
and not there an in-box the size
of a house I bury my face
in his neck breathe in
butter taste of summer corn
sweet plums an apricot almost
perfect in its remembrance
I took the road to anhedonia
forgetting the child on my hip
burying his face in my shoulder
I am that child only that child
looking into the eyes of stone
she flinches
because my hands surprise her
feeling for the soft coat the place to clip
lead to collar she doesn't see too well
an old dog going deaf but selectively
the nose now only nine thousand times
more acute than mine the back legs
beginning to fold but still good
for a tiptoe raid on the cat's plate
look at her black pearl an old lady
out for a walk in the sunshine slow
and we go into the shadows stumbling
sometimes on a stone step the footing
problematic but the maps still delivering
coordinates and forecasts little dog
black weight on the bed at midnight
love uncloses your eyes the stone bird
is blind and something I must face
sits behind it making a noise like water
descant on that other madrigal
power tools shaping wood and stone
machining a filigree that falls like moonlight
on the workshop floor did I dream this
or did I walk out of the house
asking forgiveness and unable to see
anything but my feet entering the shadow
hearing small waves fall over themselves
at the water's edge now my hand
finds the bird and my fingers trace
the incisions in fantastic replica
not here and not there an otherwhere
pouring itself through the gap
te matau / the hook
urgent it should be a colour
pushing the hot wet air of February
into questions and answers that exhaust
intention jump to it they say
the house the people the mountain the river
and what you have left behind
motions to the burning glass on each leaf
as the cicadas hit stride
two minutes to five and where
did the afternoon go I was there
and now I'm here he's a photo I unframe
looking for the name of the studio a two year old
on a photographer's stool listening
to a watch on a chain he looks
like all of us he bit his grandfather's leg
when that old relic barred his way
he built almost all the houses we lived in
a joiner by trade set up shop
at the south end of Broadway the business
the truck the smell of hot wood and keeping clear
of the machinery uncles farmed or ran
the family furnishers who were also undertakers
a natural connection between wood and death
that recalled him to the small mountain town
when his way was barred and leg-biting
became something to watch for in grandchildren
to come the mountain is not difficult
and determines us all it sleeps in the child
it is always there it calls the biter home
river is not urgent barracuda swim
on the incoming tide confusingly also
the name of a loaf picked up each day
at the dairy the boats came over the bar
they were called Gayanne or Dawn Maree
nieces and daughters and fish so fresh
it leapt into the frying pans of mothers
waiting by the diving board
was sold off the boats for a song
we lived by the sea but really we lived
by the river looping around papa bends
where the volunteer brigade pumped
water into the fire truck when they weren't
out fishing or drinking lazy lazy river and here's
the track to the swing bridge past
chinese lantern bushes and on the other side
the birthplace of Sir Peter Buck a monument
among sheep in a paddock important
because it was the other half
of the concrete prow sticking out of the hill
on the main road north we started school
with the kids from Okoki had no idea
the boy from over the river began there
singing little green frog swimming in the water
the boy hops off the stool and grins
blue eyed and blond in the sepia prints
my fingers have found the embossed stamp
I will ask you to read his grandson
same curls hazel eyes is bending my ear
a week ahead of his twenty-third birthday
when we'll be pulling into Market St
where the photographer had his studio
and a watch to entertain any small boy
turning two his river his mountain
great readers
on the distaff side details
begin to appear Isabella Rose
Jessie Adora Rachel Catherine
and Louisa May the aunts actually
the great aunts their mothers' names
skipping up the line pull in
nieces and daughters Margaret Eda
Isobel Jean together they remember
the beach before the earthquake
and what they wore to family weddings
your mother never forgave me
aunt tells niece the flowergirl in mauve
at ninety-one still ducking
the role I wouldn't wear it the girl
they got was too big and missing
a front tooth one of those white-hot spaces
the family remembers
forever Riverbank or Rosebank she thinks
looking for the house in the photo
but it's over on Willowpark Rd
someone is crossing the street
as we come into town I call her name
jump out of the car but she's gone
inside the building that looks like
a church from the Americas one hallway
full of quake debris and beyond it
the calm room where she's been
copying the important poems next door
in the kitchen devil children arrive
home from school and her dark eyes
break on impact tell Jean I will come
she says I will come and stay with her
we are both thinking of the picnic
on the river and the wild sea thumping
the beach we know the worst
has happened and we cannot stop it
from happening again she sends us
the earthquake before the house falls
under a headscarf of Cuban flowers
fear and the resolution
of fear one morning as the dreamer
wakes on Haumoana Rd in a room
full of light and the sound of the windy sea
where it should be biting at the rivermouth
no bell tongue church no siren
no shaking of earth and sky
lanterns hang in the walnut tree
someone's pinning up a hem
someone else has come for flowers
the aunts put away their breakfast books
and concentrate on the job in hand
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Miracle Dictu by Michele Leggott. Copyright © 2009 Michele Leggott. Excerpted by permission of Auckland University Press.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
Table of Contents
Contents
Title Page,Dedication,
Acknowledgements,
work for the living,
poppies and plane trees,
mirabile dictu,
te matau/the hook,
great readers,
te ahi tapu rakau/jacob's fire song,
tell your mama,
gala apples,
taking it seriously,
nice feijoas,
slow reader,
elevador,
the liberty of parrots,
recombination,
the darwin lecture,
teatro della limonaia,
il mantello/the cloak,
rangehoo,
nonpareil,
te hakari/the feast,
tricky attractions,
ascensore,
passaggiata,
primavera,
redentore,
tessuti,
calypso,
smoke tree,
everywhere instantly,
opening the tomb,
untitled figure,
molly and friends,
shore space,
la chaloupe/the boat,
bad economic news,
heart of the rio grande,
a civilian widow,
vernacular serenade,
letter to dulcie jackson,
gulielmus igitur,
te hahi/the connexion,
their osseous remains,
the year of the elephant,
language and event,
dear stormbird,
town and country,
family sightings on the mainland,
one for murray,
grand moonlight excursion and dance,
timaru march 30 1901,
keep this book clean,
reading the world,
peri poietikes,
wonderful to relate,
winter 1928,
more like wellington every day,
Copyright,