Tuesday Poem: Siobhan Harvey and “Day of Delivery”
Day of Delivery
It wasn’t simply your name
or how it arrived at twilight,
a dream, somehow Jungian,
instinctive and ancestral.
It was my whole day:
a journey, a crossing,
a boy who appeared
and forgot to check
for danger. A thrash of brakes;
the way the boy slipped
beneath my silver bonnet;
the way I was emptied
of breath: this was a landscape
as uneven as the beginnings
of motherhood.
And the way the boy reappeared,
unscathed, smiling, moments later
and ran away: this was a window opened
on a newly decorated room, the paint drying,
a cot emptily expectant, a mobile waiting
to play its music, and a woman
in a chair rocking herself to sleep.
(c) Siobhan Harvey
Reproduced here with permission
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About the Poem: The Poet’s Note—
“Out of the quarrel with others we make rhetoric; out of the quarrel with ourselves we make poetry,” W. B Yeats
While compiling a first New Zealand poetry collection for publication, my life was consumed by the wrangle I conducted with myself. I needed to row, deliberate and re-examine a lot: which poems to include; which to discard; which to edit and how; which to write from scratch. ‘Day of Delivery’ is a poem which falls into the latter category. Compiling the poetry collection, it became clear that I needed to write ‘Day of Delivery’ because it would maintain the themes of family and ancestry which underpin the book, particularly the section, ‘My Son and I’ in which it’s placed. In truth, however, it’s a poem which I’ve struggled with wanting and not wanting to write ever since the experience behind the poem occurred 6 years ago. In 2003, while driving along the undulating Tripoli Road in Tamaki, Auckland and with the afternoon sun low and strong enough to nearly blind me, a boy ran out in front of my car. I put my brakes on, but not before the child disappeared under my bonnet. I can still feel the panic I experienced, exacerbated as it was by the certainty that I’d killed somebody. As I fumbled to open my door, however, the child reappeared and ran away. Dramatic and surreal perhaps, but it took on extra, poetic intent because that happened to be the first day I instinctively knew my son was going to be born. Since, my mind has fused the two events, and so the poem attempts to balance the near death of the mysterious boy with the coming life of my son. Even as I write this, I know the reason I long disputed the need to pen ‘Day of Delivery’ lay in the fact that its grave confessional – that I almost killed another human being – would be inextricably entwined with its completion. That internal argument ended once ‘Day of Delivery’ was written, and there was release in letting it out into the world.”
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About the Poet:
Siobhan Harvey is the author of the poetry collection, Lost Relatives (Steele Roberts, 2011) and the book of literary criticism, Words Chosen Carefully: New Zealand Writers in Discussion (Cape Catley, 2010). Her poems have recently appeared in The Evergreen Review (US), Meanjin (Aus) and The Tuesday Poem. She was runner-up in 2011 Landfall Essay Prize. Recently launched, her Writer’s Page on The Poetry Archive (U.K.), co-directed by Andrew Motion, can be found at: http://www.poetryarchive.org/poetryarchive/singlePoet.do?poetId=15762
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What a wonderfully expressed poem. My hear was in my boots reading it!
Thankyou for sharing this with us siobhan and Helen.
Glad you enjoyed, Helen!