Kicking it

The fields wind themselves
The fields walk into the moon
Get with what you’ve got
What you’ve got
The maps trickle mica plates
We fall into the trapezoidal air
The bright is darker
We’re all just doing what we can eh
We’re all just doing what we can eh
Walking back down to the base of the ladder
Kicking it
Kicking it

Vaughan Gunson’s new poetry collection

To purchase Vaughan Gunson’s poetry collection this hill, all it’s about is lifting it to a higher level (2012) go to the website of the publisher Steele Roberts. Or send a cheque for $20 (includes postage) to Vaughan Gunson, 71A George Street, Hikurangi, Whangarei (with return address).

“This is a book I’ve been keenly awaiting. We’ve printed a number of Vaughan’s poems in Poetry New Zealand and I’ve come to admire and respect what he writes. His poems merge his concerns for the human and natural worlds into a unity that reflects the human condition and its expression in internal and external experience.”

 - Alistair Paterson, ONZM

“Vaughan Gunson’s this hill, all it’s about is lifting it to a higher level is a startling collection of poetry. Buoyed by Gunson’s eye for the unusual and precise and his cadent tongue, the book mines new and familiar territory in surprising and exciting ways.”

 - Siobhan Harvey, Takahe poetry editor andNational Poetry Day organiser

To listen to the Arts on Sunday (9 Dec 2012) Radio NZ interview with Vaughan Gunson click here.

Blinded in the jungle

I am blinded in the jungle

Walking upon the photosynthetic

Dodging the ferns and low hanging branches

Hopping skip

Doing the bend down

Touch the wet soaking

Terpenes in lignin and cellulose

A braun blanquet on dipterocarps

A chi square measure of association

Take Flight 4 out now

Click on image to download PDF of Take Flight 4 featuring poems by Michelle Elvy, Piet Nieuwland, Aaron Robertson, Arthur Fairley, Jac Jenkins, Martin Porter and Vaughan Gunson.

Phrenology of Food

After the flood
A treasure trove had collected.
Shiny
In the chaos
Each casket
Baptized by ocean
Not yet tainted
Or corroded.

It was believed
That by passing sensitive fingers
Over each crease
In the skin,
Or over the slight swelling
Where the container
Was about to blow,
The contents
In some predictable way
Might be identified.

So tuna and rice pudding
Became anonymous,
Cling peach halves (in syrup)
Were transformed
By the alchemy of madness
From shiny aluminium,
Corned beef
Became edible.

Now
Mystics and mesmerism
Has been replaced by the glint
Of the knife and the opener
And magic
By the turn of the key

Nga Parua 16

trembling archipelagos of birds

gusts and eddies of tribal gull calls

the sky populated

by a deluge of caressses

between black sheets

on fields of extinct lava

the silence of shadows

and the girl of honey who swims there

living in that tree

a glow of lunar light

she spreads out

under her skirt of tui

the fristion of lips

sleeping slips of minute lace dancing

in the marsh of night

perpetual triangles entangled

Prelude

by Aaron Robertson

I
The koru unfurls,
loosening a careful hold
and the sequence starts anew:
bumblebees clamber on stamen,
pistil; branch split by shoot
as red leaf breaks from
green, unconscious of days
fog-filled at noon.

II
Out past the pillars,
we must name the waves
and patterns that bind them;
helmsman to surf is
gannet-led, longship
by light when maps cannot doubt
a knowing ear to wind,
prow pulled to sun.

Puriri Moth Dreaming

by Piet Nieuwland

puriri moth dreaming
under a midnight moon

on ridgelines of obsidian
hangs the emerald cloth of spring

from te moananui a ranginui
floats a rainbow by moonlight

in this sacred night
clouds of kowhai in rivers of stars

the desires of our hearts
are moonbeams of puawhananga

at the dawn moon
a piwakawaka throws jewels of waiata

in the chaos of love
love is chaos dressed in kisses

*   *   * 

This poem is posted as part of the Aotearoa Affair Blog Carnival. It was written during a short stay at Opononi on the shores of the Hokianga Harbour, a singularly romantic place.  The puriri moth is a large black and green moth with characteristic patterns on its wings.  The moon was rising, a full moon.  The dreamtime is a spiritual connection to my ancestry, and the Hokianga has inspired that in me as a human living in Northland.  The poetry I write frequently comes from the places of Northland, and has been doing so for the last thirty years, although there is usually a connection to another part of the world or another culture.   Most of my poetry is love poetry but it is often disguised.  I love to play with the many varieties of language and what is revealed in translation from other cultures.   

Crespuscle with Nellie

by Martin Porter

Thelonious Monk and John Coltrane, Carnegie Hall, November 1957

They were not in his canon. Dizzy,
Billie, Ray, he stomped the same boards,
Chet and Sonny too

Humph he did not meet
but that did not stop
him writing

Effortless his playing
Unique undoubtedly in genius fashion
as peculiar as his hat

Vast

Erratic

The angular notes
strike from the piano strings
like crimes

of Epistrophy:
angular dancesteps, complex,
astringent, roll like a spiked ball

John’s sax is calming. Laminated
sheets of space flow in long solos, probing
discovered corners of this difficult man. The joy is evident
while he plays, not one, not two, but
,fluent,
Many notes, all at once, or in rapid
Punctuation.

Do you feel you have to get up
And dance?

Do you feel you have to sit down
To seize the opportunity?

Well, you needn’t.

Lunch in Marco’s Kitchen With the Artists and Fine Food

In Marco’s kitchen
Dali’s Christ of St John stares down
From the wooden walls.
The wood fired stove has been burning
All morning
Mixing the sounds of sparks and effervescent knots
With the torrential rain.

The damp smell mixes
With the scent of chopped garlic cloves
Not crushed,
Like some porcini mushroom dish.

As Lina plunges pasta into her
History browned, oil encrusted pot
Marco grasps a fist of octopus
To toss with wilted spinach,
Nettles and plum toms from his back yard,
And anchovy in spiteful superheated oil. This is a
Jackson Pollack of a dish,

Or, more like, Warhol’s Marilyns,
Elegant, always the same
Never identical.
Marco hides his aproned pasta paunch
Behind the shadows of the fire, and

Lina drains spaghetti, throws it on the pan
And tips it onto three plain terracotta plates.
This is lunch
In Marco’s kitchen, with Lina
And fine food.

© Martin Porter 2007

This poem, with some addional notes, can also be found at Poetry Notes and Jottings