Reminders for December
cut
dig
gather
heel in
lift
protect
Author’s note: The words and title of this poem were taken from a tatty book I bought from a second hand fair called The Vegetable Garden Displayed, published in 1949. I like the instructional quality of the words when re-applying them from gardening to something like loss or heartbreak – as though it can be that simple to recover! The off-piste quality for me is the amount of blank space. The poem appears in my new book Bad Things, where each word stands alone on a separate page, which is a little dramatic – I’m grateful to have an understanding publisher who will go along with my vision! I liked how all that space cushioning each word, isolates and intensifies the emotions they may contain.
Louise Wallace‘s third collection of poems, Bad Things, will be published in August by Victoria University Press. In 2015 she was the Robert Burns Fellow at the University of Otago, Dunedin. In 2016 she represented New Zealand at the Mexico City Poetry Festival. She is the founder and editor of Starling, an online journal publishing the work of young New Zealand writers.
Louise’s new book will be launched on Thursday 10th August. Details here plus details for Writers on Mondays this Monday because Louise is with Hannah Mettner, Maria McMillan & Airini Beautrais. Unmissable!
From Paula: For Poetry Shelf’s Winter Season, I invited 12 poets to pick one of their own poems that marks a shift in direction, that is outside the usual tracks of their poetry, that moves out of character, that nudges comfort zones of writing. It might be subject matter, style, form, approach, tone, effect, motivation, borrowings, revelation, invention, experimentation, exclusions, inclusions, melody …. anything!
