What I’m Reading: “Tumble” by Joanna Preston
Tumble by Joanna Preston is the third and final What I’m Reading post on books that I’ve heralded in previous months.
Tumble (Otago University Press, 2021) is Joanna Preston’s second poetry collection, and won the Ockham NZ Book Awards’ Peter and Mary Biggs Award for Poetry earlier this year.
In terms of disclosure, Joanna and I were in a poetry group together for a number of years. During that time, several of the poems contained in Tumble were shared and workshopped with the group. As noted in my Just Arrived post on 23 May, “I love The Summer King (Joanna’s first collection) and am a huge admirer of Joanna’s poetry generally, and have been privileged to feature a number of her poems on this blog.”
In other words, I was predisposed to like Tumble – and like it I did, and do. I have not read its fellow finalists for the Ockham Award, so cannot make any comparative observations. Based solely on its own merits, however, I consider Tumble a worthy winner.
So many of the individual poems are standouts in their own right. I particularly note Lucifer in Las Vegas, The Salmon, Lost, and Earthrise, although these are just a few examples. More importantly, there are no poems in the collection that I consider “also rans” in terms of their presence on the page and Joanna’s execution of the poetic art.
“She has become a sounding bell,
leaden, heavy-laden,
gathering the miles into a rope,
knots of aching anchored
to her spine.
The journey has rung through her,
and now it ends, in muteness,
in the sleepfulness of snow.
~ from Census at Bethlehem
Mastery is a word I often think of when reading Joanna’s work. Gorgeous words and turns-of-phrase build to killer lines and powerful stanzas, culminating in poems that deliver as a whole.
“Coming in to roost
the flocks of starlings
dip and sweep
trailing filaments of dusk”
~from The cold, darkening
Always incisive, and frequently humorous—although often with an edge—the poems range from history (e.g. Chronicle of the year 793; Lijessenthoek), through the Canterbury earthquakes of 2010 – 2011 (e.g. Fault; The Ministry of Sorrow); to works that are more personal in tone (e.g. Lares and penates; Clemency.)
“Every outcrop, every ridge, every stand
of trees – guardians of the border
woven between earth and sky –
so many threads, our stories, braided
and tasselled or tucked
neatly into the backing – ”
~ from Lares and penates
Tumble also includes an ekphrastic* poem, Female, Nude, that was written in response to a Man Ray painting, Ingres Violin, as part of the ekphrastic poems series I curated in 2013. Subsequently, Female, Nude proved to be one of the top ten posts on “…Anything, Really” that year, so I was thrilled to see it again, particularly as the opening poem in the collection.
A link to Female, nude, is embedded in the title. Just click to read in full. 😀
Robert Frost said that “poetry is what gets lost in translation”, which may be true – but there’s plenty to find and to like in Tumble, including poetic resonance, gorgeous words and mastery over their placement, always in company with intellectual rigour and emotional depth.
In all likelihood, winning the Ockham NZ Book Award for Poetry is all the recommendation that Tumble needs. Nonetheless, I am recommending it, especially to those who love poetry and writing that exemplifies “the best words in the best order” (Samuel Taylor Coleridge.)
“and the astronaut, staring down
into the well
of cloud and weather
the gold flash from her visor
as she bends
to take the earth’s confession.”
~ from Earthrise – a Best New Zealand Poem, 2014
I purchased my copy of Tumble from Otago University Press.
* Ekphrastic poems are those that respond to a work of art.