{"id":12281,"date":"2012-03-13T06:30:20","date_gmt":"2012-03-12T17:30:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/?p=12281"},"modified":"2012-03-12T21:22:05","modified_gmt":"2012-03-12T08:22:05","slug":"the-tuesday-poem-angelfish-by-bernadette-hall","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/2012\/03\/13\/the-tuesday-poem-angelfish-by-bernadette-hall\/","title":{"rendered":"The Tuesday Poem: “Angelfish” by Bernadette Hall"},"content":{"rendered":"

Angelfish<\/strong><\/p>\n

We\u2019re flying over Australia.
\nBelow us is the desert. In the desert
\nthere\u2019s a wound which is water
\nwhich is a tear with white salt round<\/p>\n

the edges which is a little liquid gateway
\nas hard as marble should we hurtle
\ninto it. There\u2019s a road, a reddish snake-line
\nthat crosses the continent that\u2019s shaped<\/p>\n

like an angelfish. The words are trying
\nto imitate the world as it imitates
\nitself, sand wrinkles like frozen sastrugi,
\ncloud shadows like black poppies<\/p>\n

on the red ground. The brain according
\nto the Novel prize-winning scientist,
\nGerald Edelman, is not at all like
\na computer. It’s more like a rainforest<\/p>\n

‘teeming with growth. decay, competition,
\ndiversity and selection.’ So this word
\nis a toucan, this poem, a yellow
\ncasque hornbill hiding beneath a canopy<\/p>\n

of leaves. My brother went missing once,
\nin the rainforest. He was a soldier,
\npart of the New Zealand Army Reserve
\nsent to fight the Communists in Malaya.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve got the headphones on now.
\nI\u2019m watching Clint Eastwood\u2019s Letters<\/em>
\nfrom Iwo Jima.<\/em> He was my favourite cowboy
\nwhen I was thirteen about the same time<\/p>\n

my brother\u2019s name was in all the papers.
\nI think of my brother hacking his way
\nthrough the jungle with a machete,
\nmaking it back to safety, singing \u2018Figaro<\/p>\n

Figaro, Figaro\u2019 in the shower. He never
\ngot on with my father who wasn\u2019t his father.
\nI think of my mother and my father,
\nthe Catholic harp, the Protestant drum,<\/p>\n

the sad, mad, bad of Irish history:
\nthe flogging and the being flogged,
\nthe burning and the being burnt,
\nthe killing with pike and hoe, sword and gun,<\/p>\n

the starving, the evictions, the bombing.
\nI want to protest.
\nI want to take communion with them.
\n\u2018Think,\u2019 says Edelman, \u2018about the idea<\/p>\n

that each individual\u2019s soul is truly embodied,
\nrather than a spirit; precious
\nbecause it is unique in its physicality,
\nand consciousness, unpredictable<\/p>\n

in its creativity, and mortal.\u2019
\nI close my eyes. I dream that the dead
\nare angelfish drifting through
\na rainforest, its green forgiveness.<\/p>\n

.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a9 Bernadette Hall
\npublished in The Lustre Jug<\/strong> (Victoria University Press) 2009<\/p>\n

Angelfish<\/em> is reproduced here with permission.<\/p>\n

—<\/p>\n

About the Poem<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Last week I quoted two stanzas from Angelfish<\/em> in my post on “On Writing” here<\/a>. And the reason I quoted it is because even though Angelfish<\/em> came out in the collection The Lustre Jug<\/strong>, I still remember the poem and a whole series of the images contained within it—the angelfish, the black poppies, the rainforest, the ‘sad, mad, bad’—quite clearly. Bernadette has a real gift for that I think: the line or indeed the whole poem that ‘sticks’ with you as reader.\u00a0 Although in fact I\u00a0 heard<\/span> Angelfish<\/em> first, on the radio, and remember listening to Bernie read it and thinking: “Yes. Oh, yes!” And that being nearly three years ago now, it’s clearly high time I shared it with you all as a Tuesday Poem!<\/p>\n

.<\/span><\/p>\n

About the Poet:<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Bernadette Hall is recognised as one of New Zealand\u2019s most distinctive poetic voices. She was the 1996 Burns Fellow at Otago University and an Artists in Antarctica Fellow in 2004. The author of nine poetry collections, her work has been published in a range of national and international anthologies. Hall was the 2006 Victoria University Writer in Residence and in 2007 held the Rathcoola Residency in Donoughmore, Ireland. Bernadette\u2019s most recent collection, The Lustre Jug,<\/strong><\/em> (Victoria University Press), 2009, was a finalist for the 2010 NZ Post Book Award for Poetry. Most recently, Bernadette was guest lecturer at the International Institute for Modern Letters, Victoria University of Wellington, and editor for Best New Zealand Poems<\/strong><\/em>\u00a0 in 2011.<\/p>\n

.<\/span><\/p>\n

—<\/p>\n

><\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>To read the featured poem on the Tuesday Poem Hub<\/strong> and other great poems from fellow Tuesday poets from around the world, click here<\/strong><\/a> or on the Quill<\/strong> icon<\/strong> in the sidebar.
\n
\n<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Angelfish We\u2019re flying over Australia. Below us is the desert. In the desert there\u2019s a wound which is water which is a tear with white salt round the edges which is a little liquid gateway as hard as marble should we hurtle into it. There\u2019s a road, a reddish snake-line that crosses the continent that\u2019s […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12281","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-poetry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12281","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12281"}],"version-history":[{"count":16,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12281\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12297,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12281\/revisions\/12297"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12281"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12281"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12281"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}