The lunchtime Writers on Mondays series at The Marae at Te Papa, organized by IIML, is always well-attended with interesting readings and presenters. Last Monday's programme featured four poets with the thematic link of "The difficult second book." All four had published a volume some years earlier and several years had elapsed before their currently published books. Most are involved in some degree with academic life and teaching.
John Newton and Hinemoana Baker were mentioned in the last despatch, so will not be discussed here. The other two poets who read were Anna Livesy and Ingrid Horrocks.
Ingrid read works from her current volume. A whole cycle was devoted to her and her husband's battles with fertility and the IVF programme. These poems were highly personal and highly lyrical. The whole human reproductive machinery made a fruitful pallette for Ingrid's work and she read a few sparse and moving poems about her hopes, aspirations and disappointments around these issues in her life. The harvesting of human eggs, and the attempt to fertilise them in laboratory conditions was exquisitely expressed in her work and well-contrasted with the software of the human body and soul.
Anna read an extremely moving piece about her mother who is living with some form of dementia/ Alzheimer's process. The themes here were also economically and effectively expressed through the medium of poetry. The ideas of memory and loss thereof, the shifting roles of mother and daughter identity through the aging process and the change in identity attendant to such illnesses were all discussed in this poem. One haunting line stayed with me for days, and it was:
"I want another mother,
this one is broken."
These two poets used their own lives as material for personal and gorgeous work that illuminates what it means to be a human being. I love this kind of poetry: tough, honest, real.
Concise and interesting review. Sounds like the kind of poetry I like too. Must look them up.
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