The Tuesday Poem: Refeaturing Frankie McMillan — “Out of the blue”
Out of the blue
On a morning when I stare
at small things
like the curve of a spoon
or light on a white rimmed plate
you ring, breathless
with talk of wild pigs,
how they swept down
from the Aorere Hills
on a moonlit night
to ravage your garden –
the winter cabbages
pale roots upended
like ghostly masts.
Once our mother buried
broken china in the ground
blue willow blue willow
now you pick shards from the mud
the lovers, you say, still wave
from the arching bridge.
.
© Frankie McMillan
from Dressing for the Cannibals (Sudden Valley Press) 2009
Re-published here with permission of the poet.
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About The Poem:
I am currently engaged in the process of re-posting poets who have had multiple poems featured here on “…Anything, Really” , or by me on the Tuesday Poem Hub, since I joined the Tuesday Poem community in June 2010.
Today I am delighted to reintroduce the wonderful Frankie McMillan. When I first featured Out of the blue, way awa’ back in 2010, I observed that:
“I have known Frankie, and her poetry, for a number of years and elements of her work that I particularly enjoy include her subversive humour, keen observation of the world, and acute but compassionate eye for the foibles of human nature. Out of the blue is a vignette that describes a small moment in time, but at the same time captures something much larger, the paradox of life’s impermanence and continuity caught in the same poem.”
Out of the blue remains one of my favourites among Frankie’s poems.
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About The Poet:
Frankie McMillan is the author of The Bag Lady’s Picnic and other stories, and a poetry collection, Dressing for the Cannibals. In 2005 she was awarded the Creative NZ Todd Bursary. In 2008 and 2009 her work was selected for the Best NZ Fiction anthologies. Other awards include winner of the New Zealand Poetry Society International Competition (2009) and the NZ National Flash Fiction award (2013). In 2014 she held an Ursula Bethell writing residency at Canterbury University. Her second book of poetry, There Are No Horses in Heaven was published by Canterbury University Press in March, 2015.
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To read the featured poem on the Tuesday Poem Hub and other great poems from fellow Tuesday poets from around the world, click here.
Yes it’s a lovely poem and it harks to her roots in Golden Bay so very apt for me reading it.
that’s a nice poem you have put up – i haven’t come upon this poet’s work before (and aren’t you a book buying miracle! thanx)