Tuesday Poem: “My Ancestors Live” by Christina Stachurski
My Ancestors Live
My ancestors live in libraries
now, in tiny type on microfiche,
births, marriages and deaths
reduced to lists and photocopies
of sketchy cemetery maps leading
to names cut in stone, blurred
by decades – some more
than a century – of Taranaki rain.
The museum’s photograph index
brings up very old images
of Rosalia and Maria
with their husbands and babies,
their Polish bones, my nose.
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© Christina Stachurski
Published in Flap: The Chook Book 2, 2010
Reproduced here with permission.
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About the Poem:
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I love the sense of history in this poem and the way the narrative shifts from the past and those who have gone before, to the presence and continuance in that ‘clincher’ final line: “their Polish bones, my nose.”
“My Ancestors Live” is the poem that introduces Christina’s sequence in Flap: The Chook Book 2 (2010), an anthology featuring the work of four Christchurch poets: Victoria Broome, Catherine Fitchett, Barbara McCartney and Christina Stachurski.
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About the Poet:
Christina Stachurski
After acting out the saints and martyrs at primary school, Christina found heaven on earth in a converted billiard saloon, The Cue Theatre in Inglewood.
At university in Christchurch, she carried on acting while studying drama. In her Master of Arts (1993) she studied ancient to modern drama and wrote a thesis entitled Foreskin’s Legacy: Gender, Sex and Violence in Recent New Zealand Theatre.
Christina has a doctorate in New Zealand Literature from the University of Canterbury, and teaches there and at the Hagley Writers’ Institute.
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Great poem – the ancestors “living in libraries” on microfiche – but I was totally arrested by the last line because of Tim’s “The problem of Descendants” where “still someone somewhere has your nose” because I kept on wanting to invent a time machine so the noses could go round in circles. Is that wrong?
Anyway cheers for posting this poem, it was fun.
Alicia, how could a time machine ever be wrong? Clearly though, there is something about noses… Glad you emjoyed the poem.:)
This made connections for me because I have an inherited nose – the nose of my unknown Italian gt grandmother! I have cursed her for it since I was born. But it also belonged to my Italian grandfather (didn’t look too bad on him) and my mother, who endured it stoically. I love going their photos. Thanks for posting the poem!
Glad the poem resonated, Kathleen!
Great poem. I know Christina from her plays and theatre work, but I didn’t know she wrote poetry. And my wife and Christina were friends at Canterbury University. Small world indeed. And now I know that she is undoubtedly related to the Stachurskis of Taranaki! I used to pass a car-sales yard in New Plymouth called Stachurski Motors and I thought “wonder if they are related to Christina?” But I didn’t know she hailed from Inglewood. More than a poem….a historical and contemporary revelation for me!
Clearly a very small world! Two degrees and and all that. 😉