TUESDAY POEM | I Saw Her Dancing by Marge Piercy

                                     I SAW HER DANCING 

                                     Nothing moves in a straight line,
                                     But in arcs, epicycles, spirals and gyres.
                                     Nothing living grows in cubes, cones, or rhomboids,
                                     But we take a little here and we give a little there,
                                     And the wind blows right through us,
                                     And blows the apples off the tree, and hangs a red kite suddenly there,
                                     And a fox comes to bite the apples curiously,
                                     And we change.
                                     Or we die
                                     And then change.
                                     It is many as raindrops.
                                     It is one as rain.
                                     And we eat it, and it eats us.
                                     And fullness is never,
                                     And now.

                                     Marge Piercy

This week’s editor on the Tuesday Poem hub is Wellington poet and publisher, Helen Rickerby. Sugar Magnolia Wilson, her chosen poet, is from a valley called Fern Flat in the Far North of New Zealand.

"Pen Pal, by Sugar Magnolia Wilson (or Magnolia, as she is generally known), is a rather twisty sequence of poems, in the voice of a young, not-so-sweet, not-so-innocent, and actually very real girl. . . "

Today's selection from 'Pen Pal' includes a car crash, mangroves, guinea pigs, a falling meteorite and a 'spell for apology'. Enjoy! 

MUNTED - MaO

Today, I have the privilege of featuring a powerfully affecting work made by North Island artists, Meliors Simms and Bethwyn Littler. Munted is their collaborative response to the Christchurch earthquake and I am grateful to Meliors and Bethwyn for offering this handmade book - a significant and meaningful chronicle of these times - to MANY AS ONE. 

A few words from Meliors. . . "The word 'munted' is a wonderfully dry kiwi colloquialism for 'broken' and has become widely used even in formal situations to describe the infrastructure damage caused by the earthquake. Bethwyn and I offer this collaged book with heartfelt compassion, respect and sympathy for everyone who survived that awful day. It is not our tragedy to describe, but we hope that by bearing witness we can contribute in some tiny way to the recovery process."

"Today Bethwyn and I met up for a Frugal with the Bruegel session of collaborative altered book making, our first in many weeks. We spontaneously decided to devote our session to working together on a single book, responding to the Christchurch earthquake. Without any particular preparation or planning, we began making a book which may turn out to be our most coherent narrative yet. Drawing only on our collection of old (mostly) children's books, which includes nothing specific to Christchurch, yet the result feels to us very evocative of our emotional response witnessing the earthquake from a distance.

Making this book feels cathartic and healing: a compulsion to channel survivors' guilt, grief and helplessness into creativity. Working with focus and synchronicity we got about half way through the project this afternoon and hope to have it finished in our next session, ready to auction off as a fundraiser for a Christchurch earthquake response fund. . . " from Melior's blog entry, Rapid Response.

Melior's blog - Bibliophilia

"Like many. . . outside of Christchurch, I have developed a profound sense of appreciation for my flushing toilet, hot shower, endless drinking water, electric power, cosy bed, smooth streets, sweet fresh air, fully serviced city and most of all, the solid ground beneath my feet. It may be a while before everyone in Christchurch can enjoy such amenities again. Bethwyn and I hope that our book can provide some small contribution towards Christchurch's recovery. . "

To check out the updated MaO catalogue, click here. 

To be in the draw for Munted and a selection of other fine artworks for Christchurch, please consider making a donation to the MANY AS ONE appeal. You will find an orange donate button to the right of this page as well as on the MANY AS ONE site. Thank you. 

MoA update vii

Four names were drawn from the MANY AS ONE hat this morning - - - Melissa Green's signed imprint of her first collection of poetry The Squanicook Eclogues will soon be on its way to a Dunedin poet (who I know will be thrilled when she hears her name was drawn with Melissa's) 

&

Australian artist Lisa Robert's delicately engraved perspex artwork titled Coccoliths: carbon sequesterers has been paired with a Dunedin crime writer, who also happens to have a soft-spot for uni-cellular creatures (why, she even included a foraminiferan in one of her novels?!) 

Thanks all. 

Oh, and do keep an eye on the MANY AS ONE site - - - I'll be posting another rare and collectible new artwork there in the next day or two. . . 

  

Book Matters - MANY AS ONE

For a number of reasons, I've decided to keep this blog for my personal musings and to create a dedicated blog for MANY AS ONE - Artwork for Christchurch - - -

Please click on this logo to visit the new site - thanks.

MANY AS ONE v

I was a few steps behind myself for most of last week - and late with the latest MANY AS ONE announcement. . .  apologies. Four names were drawn  as usual, so we have two happy pairings. 

Rob West's collograph Forest will be going to a Dunedin family and Kari Morseth's Silkworm Ring was drawn by an Otago peninsula artist. Congrats and thanks to all. 

I've reformatted the MANY AS ONE page - hopefully it will hold its shape/behave better this time.  New works are being regularly listed, the most recent being a pair of books by Dunedin writer Maxine Alterio and a compelling black and white photograph titled Muses by Timothy Cahill. I will post more on Muses tomorrow. 

*

Oh - whoop, pang - this evening Tomas flies to Northern climes to embark on Life's next big adventure. He will make his way from Heathrow to London tomorrow, then catch a train to Kent where my parents will be at the station to welcome him. Meantime, those of us seeing him off at Dunedin's endearingly rural International airport (you can catch the whiff of fertile earth from 30 000 ft, have your breath taken away by the snow-capped Southern Alps, our brooding harbour and volcanic peninsula; wave at cows, sheep and tractors as you fly in or out?). . . those of us seeing Tomas off will have our hearts in silk hammocks.  


At times like these, we must become what my writer friend Emma Neale refers to as Iron Marshmallows. 


That's all for now. . . I'm off to light a grove of candles and cook up nutty, cinnamon-y oats for my daughter and I for breakfast.  Love, IM xo 

Wed nes day

(It still is in the Northern Hemisphere. . .) 

Like so many of you, I have felt stunned into silence - wordlessness - lately. I've not been able to find words - 'right' words, 'relevant' words, 'resonant' words. Thankfully, one of the gifts of living in community is that sooner or later, some amongst find a way to articulate in writing what the rest of us are feeling but cannot yet speak. Antares Cryptos & Angella - thank you. And last night, Penelope - whose blog The Intertidal Zone will be known to many of you - found her voice (and, by proxy, ours?) and penned Dawn breaks - - - 

"Venus hangs fat and gold. The old ring-barked sycamore gleams white under a pale blue sky. Leaves fidget in the first breeze. I sit on a cushion and light a candle in the window where a fine-limbed spider makes delicate purchase, trying to climb the glass. The garden, the spider and the star are reassuring, each in its own way, steadfastly doing what its species does: living and dying, web-making, burning bright.


Reassuring because I feel increasingly uncertain what’s required of me on a planet that’s quivering with its own potency and undermining centuries-old assumptions about our place upon it. . ." 


To continue reading Penelope's thoughtful reflection, click here.

*

Last night, two sets of names & artworks were drawn in our MANY AS ONE Christchurch appeal - All Directions Lead Home by Kate Alterio will soon be on its way to a writer/ reader in South Portland, Main and my small ink drawing Many Islands has been matched to a reader in La Jolla, San Diego.  Warmest thanks, all. 

    

MANY AS ONE iv

A new artwork has been donated to the MANY AS ONE stockroom - this sterling silver Snowflake Pendant 'All Directions Lead Home' by Wellington jeweler, Kate Alterio. This piece is from Kate's 2009 series titled 'The snow falls, each flake in its appropriate place.'

All Directions Lead Home - KATE ALTERIO (NZ)
Snowflake pendant 2009
Sterling silver & enamel paint

Tomorrow is Wednesday which means there'll be a draw & accompanying announcement before the day is up. I'm going to need your help to keep the momentum going; artworks are continuing to come in from near and far, so please keep word about this small fund-raising effort circulating? Together we have raised $1355.00 so far. . . 


Thank you for your beautiful snowflake pendant, beautiful Kate.   

MANY AS ONE iii

Today is Sunday which means it's time for this week's MANY AS ONE draw. Stephen Inggs's Clock was drawn from the 'hat'* (pictured below). I will be sending an e- to one lucky person before the day is up. Meantime, let me say that Stephen will be mailing this Clock from his studio in Cape Town, South Africa to a writer in N. East Pennsylvania - happy! Congratulations and many thanks to all artists and donators. 

A new piece has been added to the stockroom catalogue - an embroidered fossil, a tessarolax, created by Meliors Simms and hand-stitched onto a piece of vintage blanket beside a 'distressed' Kaiapoi Mill label. 

Fossil - tessalorax - MELIORS SIMMS (NZ)
Hand-stitched embroidery on vintage Kaiapoi Mill blanket
framed size 240 x 212 x 43 MM (box frame)

Meliors writes, 'Right from the time of the September earthquake it has been my intention to donate this piece, somehow, to Christchurch earthquake recovery because of the obvious Kaiapoi connection. There are a couple of blog posts about the making and exhibiting of this piece that you can read about here -  http://meliors.blogspot.com/search?q=tessarolax.' 

Click on these links to visit Meliors' Facebook and Etsy pages and discover more of her work; everything she creates carries an ethos of mindfulness and communicates the importance of fostering right relationship with our natural world and everything in it. . . Meliors and her collaborative partner, Bethwyn have also been working on an 'altered book' in response to the Christchurch earthquake and have generously offered to donate this work to our MANY AS ONE initiative once they have completed it. . . Many thanks, Meliors & Bethwyn.    


The next draw will be on Wednesday 16 March 2011. 

* MANY AS ONE 'Hat'.

With mind and heart turned to the people of Christchurch, Japan, Bahrain, Libya, North Africa and our own immediate challenges. . . I was reminded today of John Donne's 17th Meditation -

"No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main. If a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as well as if a manor of thy friend's or of thine own were. Any man's death diminishes me because I am involved in mankind; and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee. . . "

May we find ways to keep ourselves and each other fortified so that we can in turn send love, hope and light to our grieving world XO

*

PS. I regret I've been absent from Comments' threads lately - yours and mine both - sorry; I hope to be back & catching up with you soon. I am still reading, though - oh, yes. . . xx

A day's play

In amongst life's muddle, uncertainty and fray, this ever-so-welcome day clambering and cavorting with my barefoot trio. . . It could be years till the next time we're able to do this - so, yes, this small window of time away from it all was a very great gift. . . 

Cathedral Caves & coastline

Lake Wilkie forest walk

McLeans Falls

Tautuku Confidence Course & estuary boardwalk.

XO

New artworks are being added daily to the

MANY AS ONE Artwork for Christchurch page.

Please support this initiative by clicking on the link and having a look-see. . . 

Up, up & away

I'm heading away for a day or two, making a short road trip with my three adult offspring. My youngest son is leaving New Zealand very soon and is likely to be away for a good many years. . . Post-grad. study in the UK is calling him; philosophy, alternative currencies and co-operative financial structures are calling him; engagement with the wider world is calling him. I will write more about this - what it means for him, what it means for me - in the next wee while. I will also write the story of the small boy Tomas with his passion for garden sprinklers and hovercrafts, and his nighttime travels on the back of a magic moss. 

Here now, it's time to finish packing the picnic basket and hunt out my wind-sheeter, camera batteries and sunblock. . . We'll be revisiting some of my trio's childhood spots around the Caitlins coastal native forest reserve. The weather report is fine; the tide will be low at noon. We're planning to make our way over, under, around and through Tautuku's timber orienteering course (first tackled fifteen years ago), will picnic on the beach at Cathedral Caves then meander through lush coastal forest to McLeans Falls. . . Supper will be early at a quaint little place called 'The Whistling Frog.'

It'll be good to get away, to soften a few rough edges. Have yourselves a fine few days, too. . .

*

Clock is an enigmatic photographic image (archival pigment ink on hand-coated silver gelatin emulsion; 100% rag paper) gifted to the MANY AS ONE Christchurch appeal by Cape Town artist and friend, Stephen Inggs. Many thanks, Stephen - Big Ben's a beauty.  

VII

Clock - Stephen Inggs (South Africa)

 Archival pigment ink on hand-coated silver gelatin emulsion; 100% rag paper

200 x 200mm

Several new artworks are on their way and will be posted on the MaO page when I return from the Caitlins (Thursday or Friday). 

Tuesday Poem - Mule Heart by Jane Hirshfield

One of the books that lives in the pile on my bedside table is a collection of interviews with poets - Fooling With Words by Bill Moyers (you won't spot it in this pic because right now it's on my bed!). . .

On page 110, Jane Hirshfield introduces her poem Mule Heart with the following story - 

"I was in Greece many years ago and saw how they put pannier baskets on the sides of the mules to carry things up and down the steep coastline. In the poem, the basket placed on the one side of the stubborn heart is filled with all the things you would want to keep: the fragrant lemons, the things you love. The other basket is for holding your griefs, your sorrows, everything that has abandoned you - which of course by the end of our lives will be everything, including our lives themselves. Each of these aspects of life the mule heart must carry: it carries our joys, and it carries our suffering. Maybe the two baskets mean that they balance, somehow. 

Many years passed between my seeing the little mules of Santorini and writing the poem. I wrote it to help me get through a time in my life when I thought a certain stubbornness would help. I told myself, 'Just last out the moment, and rely on the truth that everything changes; if you can simply hang in there, you'll be alright.' And from that feeling, the poem came. A wonderful thing about poetry is that at any moment a poem draws on everything you have ever known, seen, experienced. A poem is like those baskets, needing to be filled, and so your whole life must be available to each poem as you write it. This poem needed those mules, their flies and braided, belled bridles. Sometimes I think that poems use us in order to think, to their own work. You know, most of the time I feel as if I am in service of the poem - a poem isn't something I make, it's something I serve. . . "

              MULE HEART


              On the days when the rest 
              have failed you, 
              let this much be yours - 
              flies, dust, an unnameable odor,
              the two waiting baskets:
              one for the lemons and passion,
              the other for all that you have lost.
              Both empty, 
              it will come to your shoulder,
              breathe slowly against your bare arm.
              If you offer it hay, it will eat.
              Offered nothing,
              it will stand as long as you ask. 
              The little bells of the bridle will hang
              beside you quietly, 
              in the heat and the tree's thin shade.
              Do not let its sparse mane deceive you,
              or the way the left ear swivels into dream.
              This too is a gift of the gods,
              calm and complete.


             Jane Hirshfield 

 For more Tuesday Poems, please click on the quill. 

Janis Freegard has chosen This new place, a tender poem by Robert McGonigal

Donations for Christchurch - creative & financial - are coming in from near and far. The basket is filling. . . Please click on the MoA link below to view new artworks as they're being added to the Stockroom. THANK YOU XO 

MANY AS ONE