{"id":12383,"date":"2012-03-20T06:30:03","date_gmt":"2012-03-19T17:30:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/?p=12383"},"modified":"2012-03-18T22:40:43","modified_gmt":"2012-03-18T09:40:43","slug":"tuesday-poem-siobhan-harvey-and-day-of-delivery","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/2012\/03\/20\/tuesday-poem-siobhan-harvey-and-day-of-delivery\/","title":{"rendered":"Tuesday Poem: Siobhan Harvey and “Day of Delivery”"},"content":{"rendered":"

Day of Delivery<\/strong><\/p>\n

It wasn\u2019t simply your name
\nor how it arrived at twilight,
\na dream, somehow Jungian,
\ninstinctive and ancestral.<\/p>\n

It was my whole day:
\na journey, a crossing,
\na boy who appeared
\nand forgot to check
\nfor danger. A thrash of brakes;
\nthe way the boy slipped
\nbeneath my silver bonnet;
\nthe way I was emptied
\nof breath: this was a landscape
\nas uneven as the beginnings
\nof motherhood.<\/p>\n

And the way the boy reappeared,
\nunscathed, smiling, moments later
\nand ran away: this was a window opened
\non a newly decorated room, the paint drying,
\na cot emptily expectant, a mobile waiting
\nto play its music, and a woman
\nin a chair rocking herself to sleep.<\/p>\n

(c) Siobhan Harvey<\/p>\n

Reproduced here with permission<\/p>\n

.<\/span>
\n—<\/p>\n

About the Poem:<\/strong> The Poet\u2019s Note—<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cOut of the quarrel with others we make rhetoric; out of the quarrel with ourselves we make poetry,\u201d W. B Yeats<\/p>\n

While compiling a first New Zealand poetry collection for publication, <\/em>my life was consumed by the wrangle I conducted with myself. I needed to row, deliberate and re-examine a lot: which poems to include; which to discard; which to edit and how; which to write from scratch. \u2018Day of Delivery\u2019 is a poem which falls into the latter category. Compiling the poetry collection, it became clear that I needed to write \u2018Day of Delivery\u2019 because it would maintain the themes of family and ancestry which underpin the book, particularly the section, \u2018My Son and I\u2019 in which it\u2019s placed. In truth, however, it\u2019s a poem which I\u2019ve struggled with wanting and not wanting to write ever since the experience behind the poem occurred 6 years ago. In 2003, while driving along the undulating Tripoli Road in Tamaki, Auckland and with the afternoon sun low and strong enough to nearly blind me, a boy ran out in front of my car. I put my brakes on, but not before the child disappeared under my bonnet. I can still feel the panic I experienced, exacerbated as it was by the certainty that I\u2019d killed somebody. As I fumbled to open my door, however, the child reappeared and ran away. Dramatic and surreal perhaps, but it took on extra, poetic intent because that happened to be the first day I instinctively knew my son was going to be born. Since, my mind has fused the two events, and so the poem attempts to balance the near death of the mysterious boy with the coming life of my son. Even as I write this, I know the reason I long disputed the need to pen \u2018Day of Delivery\u2019 lay in the fact that its grave confessional \u2013 that I almost killed another human being \u2013 would be inextricably entwined with its completion. That internal argument ended once \u2018Day of Delivery\u2019 was written, and there was release in letting it out into the world.”<\/em><\/p>\n

—<\/p>\n

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

Siobhan Harvey is the author of the poetry collection, Lost Relatives<\/em> (Steele Roberts, 2011) and the book of literary criticism, Words Chosen Carefully: New Zealand Writers in Discussion<\/em> (Cape Catley, 2010). Her poems have recently appeared in The Evergreen Review<\/em> (US), Meanjin<\/em> (Aus) and The Tuesday Poem<\/em>. She was runner-up in 2011 Landfall Essay Prize. Recently launched, her Writer\u2019s Page on The Poetry Archive (U.K.), co-directed by Andrew Motion, can be found at: http:\/\/www.poetryarchive.org\/poetryarchive\/singlePoet.do?poetId=15762<\/a><\/p>\n

—<\/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.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Day of Delivery It wasn\u2019t simply your name or how it arrived at twilight, a dream, somehow Jungian, instinctive and ancestral. It was my whole day: a journey, a crossing, a boy who appeared and forgot to check for danger. A thrash of brakes; the way the boy slipped beneath my silver bonnet; the way […]<\/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-12383","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-poetry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12383","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=12383"}],"version-history":[{"count":17,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12383\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12429,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12383\/revisions\/12429"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12383"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12383"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12383"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}