The Tuesday Poem: Refeaturing Siobhan Harvey & “Van Gogh In Aotearoa”
Van Gogh in Aotearoa
The spirit is alive
in Starry Night reproductions
which hang, like crucifixes,
in varsity bed-sits,
petit bourgeois do-ups
and nouveau riche villas
across Aotearoa.
In such replicas, he’s reborn,
picks up his paintbrushes
and begins to set the All Blacks:
McCaw, Howlett, So’oialo,
upon the terra firma of his canvas
as if they’re men at work, harvesting.
Then, he finds his Arles in Akaroa,
where Port Louis-Philippe’s spectre
besets him with visions,
small prophecies, of fresh work:
Landscape under a Summer Sky,
The Rue Jolie Bridge at Akaroa,
Three White Cottages in Rue Balguerie.
Soon, forgetting sunflowers,
he forms a fresh muse
from the soleil-radiance
of kaka-beak and kowhai.
Finally, like Rangi and Papa,
he brings land and sky together
in a blue-black darkness
above the Desert Road
where stars are birthed so crisply
they stand in place of him
and speak of things long dead.
(c) Siobhan Harvey
Reproduced here with the permission of the poet.
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Fine poems should be read and heard more than once, so I’m continuing with my series of relooking at poets who have had multiple poems featured here on “…Anything, Really” since I joined the Tuesday Poem community in June 2010. Siobhan Harvey’s Van Gogh In Aotearoa featured here on October 26, 2010 and I am very pleased to be able to refeature it here today—and to have two more wonderful poems from Siobhan forthcoming over the next two weeks.
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Siobhan Harvey is the author of, Cloudboy (Otago University Press, 2014), which was winner of New Zealand’s richest prize for poetry, the Kathleen Grattan Award for Poetry. Also recently released, with Harvey as co-editor, is Essential New Zealand Poems (Penguin Random House NZ). Her other awards include runner up in the 2014 New Zealand Poetry Society’s International Poetry Competition, runner up in 2012 Dorothy Porter Poetry Prize (Aus) and runner up in 2012 Kevin Ireland Poetry Competition. Her work has recently been published in Books Unbound, Evergreen Review, Pilgrimage (Colorado State University Press), Segue (Miami University Press), Stand (UK), Structo (UK) and the New Zealand Poetry Society 2014 anthology, Taking Back the Sky. Her creative nonfiction has been published in magazines in New Zealand and America, and is a finalist in the 2014 Landfall Essay Prize, as well as being Highly Commended in 2013 Landfall Essay Prize, and runner-up in 2011 Landfall Essay Prize. Between 2006 and 2013, Harvey co-ordinated New Zealand’s National Poetry Day. She lectures in Creative Writing at AUT’S Centre for Creative Writing, and has a Poet’s Page on The Poetry Archive (UK), here: Siobhan Harvey.
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