Tuesday Poem: “For a new Technician” by Sarah Jane Barnett
For a new Technician
The room is shuttered by a grey curtain.
There is a red telephone on the corner table
next to the heart monitor. The chair looks
like a La-Z-Boy or the seat an astronaut
would be strapped into, ready for blast off.
The public crowd around the rocket,
well out of range behind a one-way screen,
anxious and stern, the rumble in the walls
crawls inside their stomachs. They wonder
if they will see a light so bright it burns
coral in the clouds? Will they have to look away?
The astronaut mouths, Don’t watch, Mama.
I’m sorry I’ve been such a lazy boy
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(c) Sarah Jane Barnett
Published in A Man Runs Into A Woman (Hue & Cry Press) 2012
Reproduced here with permission
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About the Poem:
Sarah Jane Barnett is a fellow Tuesday Poet and A Man Runs Into A Woman is her first collection, fresh out from Hue & Cry Press on August 10. “For a new Technician” is drawn from a sequence of nine poems that explore the gap between the last words of Texas death row inmates, and the grim police reports of their crimes.
I chose to feature one of the poems from this sequence because I liked their sense of rawness and emotional power and I have always had a preference for poetry that is about something real, something that matters.
In featuring one of Sarah’s poems today though, I also note the comment by Hue and Cry publisher, Chloe Lane, that: “For several years now, Sarah has been building a reputation for striking, original poetry, sometimes unsettling, often very moving.”
Paula Green also affirms Sarah’s work: “As the cartographer of human experience, Sarah Jane Barnett steps boldly into the shoes and lives of others – a cable television engineer, a geographer, a pipeline worker. Her alert mind and canny eye for detail translate and transform what we may have missed in the world into poetic vignettes that are both light-footed and fresh.”
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About the Poet:
Sarah Jane Barnett was born in Christchurch but now calls Wellington home. She moved there in a 2005 to study for a Masters in Creative Writing, and is currently completing a creative writing PhD after being awarded a Massey Doctoral Scholarship. Her PhD combines both creative writing and research to investigate the difficulties of nature poetry.
She has a one year old son and has worked in a government and the private sector as an IT manager.
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