Manifesto Aotearoa: 101 Political Poems

Published by Otago University Press

Level 1, 398 Cumberland Street

Dunedin, New Zealand

university.press@otago.ac.nz

www.otago.ac.nz/press

First published 2017

Copyright © Individual authors as named.

The moral rights of the authors have been asserted.

ISBN 978-0-947522-46-9 (print)

ISBN 978-1-98-859204-6 (EPUB)

ISBN 978-1-98-859205-3 (Kindle)

ISBN 978-1-98-859206-0 (ePDF)

A catalogue record for this book is available from the National Library of New Zealand. This book is copyright. Except for the purpose of fair review, no part may be stored or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including recording or storage in any information retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. No reproduction may be made, whether by photocopying or by any other means, unless a licence has been obtained from the publisher.

Front cover and internal artwork by Nigel Brown.

Ebook conversion 2019 by meBooks

CONTENTS

Poetry changes everything Philip Temple

Song coming Emma Neale

About this collection

[PART ONE] POLITICS

The (Andrew) Little things David Eggleton

First reading Alex Taylor

Power riddle Cilla McQueen

To miss the point entirely Vincent O’Sullivan

A song for happy voters Kevin Ireland

The General wants a new flag Frankie McMillan

My people Philip Temple

Serving notice upon the prime minister Siobhan Harvey

The head of department’s prayer on a change of government Keith Westwater

Bite the bright coin its brilliance Michael Harlow

Boom Richard Reeve

Procyclical Nick Ascroft

How they came to privatise the night Maria McMillan

Rugby Brian Turner

Tornado funnel Vivienne Plumb

Enlightenment Beverly Martens

watchtower Luke Sole

A display case in the Museum of Communism David Howard

Voluntary labour on the Shkumbini River, Albania Chris Else

From The Little Ache: A German notebook Ian Wedde

A revolutionary sonnet Koenraad Kuiper

Streets of Kiev Stephen Oliver

First impressions Paula Green

New Year cartoons C.K. Stead

An international poetry festival in Vietnam Sue Wootton

The Greater Wall Liang Yujing

Underwear James Norcliffe

[PART TWO] RIGHTS

Check Inspector 29 Jeffrey Paparoa Holman

Manufacture Ivy Alvarez

Abrasion Nigel Brown

Boxing Day Peter Olds

Papa de los pobres Serie Barford

Percentages Benita H. Kape

Cabin fever Nell Barnard

Winter coast Nicola Easthope

Chores Judith Stanley

Entitlement Melanie McKerchar

My dad loves the All Blacks Jessie Fenton

The speed of God Rhian Gallagher

Pink Martha Morseth

A late take on the Marriage Amendment Act Heather Avis McPherson

Talking about rape Ruth Hanover

From the house where he took her life Johanna Aitchison

Stomach it Amy Paulussen

Arohata Janis Freegard

tricks of a treaty kani te manukura

anglican prattle Vaughan Rapatahana

The quickest way to trap a folktale Mere Taito

Whenua ghosts Ria Masae

Speaking rights Anahera Gildea

For those of you who insist on using the term Te Urewera 17, 12 or 4 to accompany any newspaper headline or media soundbite Maraea Rakuraku

In her own words Sandi Hall

Shakespeare on Lorne Carin Smeaton

Ah Tonto … watcha gonna do ’bout Aotearoa? Reihana Robinson

Aue Zoe Taptiklis

Poems promoting peace Aroha Yates-Smith

Dis-Oriental Bay Trevor Hayes

Occupy Dunedin Alison Denham

Waimakariri and the hikoi Kathleen Gallagher

First thing Lynley Edmeades

Every day my name is out there Diane Brown

[PART THREE] ENVIRONMENT

Stamps of Dominion Bridget Auchmuty

Recipe for a unitary state Gail Ingram

Water underground Anthonie Tonnon

Ghost stoat Jonathan Cweorth

Super flumina Babylonis Andrew Paul Wood

Water Helen Watson White

Beach Janet Newman

waste management Janet Charman

Story lines Sue Fitchett

Old bones John Howell

Proposal for the Garden City Doc Drumheller

Frankton Supermarket, Queenstown Richard Reeve

Dear ET Harvey Molloy

Ends Carolyn McCurdie

[PART FOUR] CONFLICT

I cannot write a poem about Gaza Tusiata Avia

On the World News page Elizabeth Brooke-Carr

On acquiring an Old Testament tone Peter Bland

Countdown Mary Cresswell

How to train a paratrooper in 28 weeks Elizabeth McRae

He couldn’t stand the sea Marty Smith

The plains of hesitation Adrienne Jansen

The olives Louise Wallace

We’re all exiles, Kevin says Mercedes Webb-Pullman

Calais haiku Sarah Paterson

Dark water Victor Billot

Displaced Majella Cullinane

The view from the space shuttle Jane Graham George

A people’s guide to disarmament Catherine Amey

Global Emma Neale

Dear Messrs Smith & Wesson James Norcliffe

Gangsta as Michael Botur

Protection order Nicola Thorstensen

Reportage Michael Steven

No time like the 80s Airini Beautrais

The heart jumps up in fear to see the mouths Bernadette Hall

The wall: a love story, of sorts Michelle Elvy

Barbarians have crossed at the border Pat White

Prague 2013: the heart of Europe Paul Schimmel

Beacon fire Carolyn McCurdie

About the contributors

A swarm of poets Murray Edmond

Poetry changes everything

Philip Temple

Poetry can begin to change everything when, as Adrienne Rich wrote, it ‘lays its hand on our shoulder [and] we are, to an almost physical degree, touched and moved. The imagination’s roads open before us, giving the lie to that brute dictum, There is no alternative.’ ¹ Nearly 200 years ago, Shelley described poets as the ‘unacknowledged legislators of the world’, not in the sense of their being lawmakers and bureaucrats but in the sense that poetry is ‘the expression of the imagination’ of what we are, where we are and what we may yet become, revealing the alternatives to the often oppressive, illogical and even insane dictates of an unimaginative state. Political poems are the most open and cogent expression of democracy, the most vivid and eloquent calls for empathy, for action and revolution, even for a simple calling to account. To paraphrase Franz Kafka, the best political poems should ‘be the axe for the frozen sea within us’, opening our hearts and minds to what may yet be possible in a chaotic and brutal world.

Political poems have always been part of New Zealand literature. A hundred and thirty years ago, Jessie Mackay parodied Tennyson’s ‘The Charge of the Light Brigade’ in ‘The Charge at Parihaka’, both poets responding to the absurd actions of deadly power in their time. Eighty years ago, A.R.D. Fairburn published his great social and political sequence Dominion, which still speaks to us today with such lines as: ‘… the land is/ the space between the barbed-wire fences,/ mortgaged in bitterness, measured in sweated butterfat’. Or, for those north of the Bombay Hills, ‘This is our paper city, built/ on the rock of debt, held fast/ against all winds by the paperweight of debt’.

In the 1950s, poets like Louis Johnson and James K. Baxter actively challenged the establishment. Johnson wrote:

It was not our duty to question but to guard,

maintaining order; see that none escaped

who may be required for questioning by the State.

The price was bread and a pension and not a hard

life on the whole.

Baxter became increasingly evangelical, sharing and reflecting the lives of the outcast and poor:

But the sweat of work and the sweat of fear

Are different things to have;

The first is the sweat of the working man

And the second of a slave,

And the sweat of fear turns any place

Into a living grave.

In the second half of the twentieth century, Māori voices began to be heard in the mainstream world of New Zealand poetry, none more powerfully than Apirana Taylor’s:

My name is Tu the freezing worker

Ngati D.B. is my tribe

The pub is my marae

My fist is my taiaha

Jail is my home.

There is simply not enough space here to mention or quote all: almost every poet in our history has, at some time, written political poetry. This suggests that perhaps there is another anthology to be assembled of political poems past, because collections of such poetry have been rare. Political poems in New Zealand have tended to be isolated cries, subsumed as part of a greater literary collective. Manifesto Aotearoa may prove a useful precedent.

*

I became more aware of the role of writer as critic and conscience of society—especially as the university’s part in this was becoming more pusillanimous—when I spent time in Berlin during the late 1980s and 90s. During that period of great change in Germany, the voices of such prominent writers as Günter Grass and Hans Magnus Enzensberger in the west and Christa Wolf in the east were heard and heeded by politicians and media in a way that was unimaginable in New Zealand. Their experience, wisdom and imagination were accepted as part of serious political discourse.

This prompted me at that time, during a period of unsettling change in New Zealand, to use whatever writerly skills I could muster to assist in the changing of our electoral system. Last year, in newly uncertain and threatening times, I was moved to propose this anthology, to bring together voices of protest and imagination that might ‘touch and move’ and ‘give the lie to that brute dictum, "There is