Tuesday Poem: ‘sewing the world’ by Kerrin Sharpe
sewing the world
my mother’s head
was full of stitches
she waited in the
deep forest as featherstitch
with other small birds
here she sang rickrack and
braided herring bone rivers
here she used chain stitch to
grow mountains here she sat
weaving stitch wheel oceans
to roll out waves
but there are white gaps
between smocking pirie street
and the cross-stitched church
where she married
if I follow the
red wool down woodwood
street it appears as
running stitch in the
napier earthquake
her hat shops are only
tacked to pavements there
is a ladder watching
her needles unsure of
what she remembered
the tram goes home alone
.
© Kerrin P Sharpe
from “Three Days In A Wishing Well” (Victoria University Press) 2012
Reproduced here with permission.
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About the Poem:
Kerrin Sharpe’s credentials as a poet are self-evident from her bio, below, so I shall not elaborate too much, only say that I was instantly taken with the way in which this poem both cleverly and yet seamlessly stitches together the sempstress’s art — “here she sang rickrack and braided herring bone rivers” — with both a physical sense of place — “smocking pirie street” — and the more human geography of a life:
“if I follow the
red wool down woodwood
street it appears as
running stitch in the
napier earthquake”
And may I say, a simply stunning final line that ties off the whole:
“the tram goes home alone”
Needless to say, I am very much looking forward to having time to read the entire collection.
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About the Poet:
Kerrin P. Sharpe is a poet and teacher of creative writing. She completed Professor Bill Manhire’s Original Composition class at Victoria University of Wellington (1976). Over the last four years she has returned to writing and has been published widely in: Best NZ Poems 08, 09, and 10; Best of the Best NZ Poems, Turbine 07, 09 and 10, Snorkel, Bravado, Takahe, NZ Listener, Hue & Cry, JAAM, Poetry NZ, Junctures, Sport, London Grip New Poetry, Blackmail and The Press. She has recently been invited to contribute a selection of her poems to the Oxford Poets Anthology 2013 in England. In 2008, she was awarded the “New Zealand Post Creative Writing Teacher’s Award” from the International Institute of Modern Letters. Kerrin’s first book of poetry, three days in a wishing well, was recently published on 3 September 2012 by Victoria University Press.
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I really enjoyed the line “braided herring bone rivers” — all those rolling r sounds. Lovely.
Lovely, the whole thing, what a world she creates.
Loved every word and line of this – thanks for the intro to Kerrin’s poetry, Helen.
Thank you for your comments: glad you’ve all enjoyed!