{"id":16487,"date":"2012-10-09T06:30:20","date_gmt":"2012-10-08T17:30:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/?p=16487"},"modified":"2012-10-06T18:14:41","modified_gmt":"2012-10-06T05:14:41","slug":"tuesday-poem-my-ancestors-live-by-christina-stachurski","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/2012\/10\/09\/tuesday-poem-my-ancestors-live-by-christina-stachurski\/","title":{"rendered":"Tuesday Poem: “My Ancestors Live” by Christina Stachurski"},"content":{"rendered":"

My Ancestors Live<\/em><\/p>\n

My ancestors live in libraries
\nnow, in tiny type on microfiche,<\/p>\n

births, marriages and deaths
\nreduced to lists and photocopies<\/p>\n

of sketchy cemetery maps leading
\nto names cut in stone, blurred<\/p>\n

by decades – some more
\nthan a century – of Taranaki rain.<\/p>\n

The museum’s photograph index
\nbrings up very old images<\/p>\n

of Rosalia and Maria
\nwith their husbands and babies,<\/p>\n

their Polish bones, my nose.<\/p>\n

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

\u00a9 Christina Stachurski<\/p>\n

Published in Flap<\/em>: The Chook Book 2<\/em>, 2010<\/p>\n

Reproduced here with permission.<\/p>\n

\u2014<\/p>\n

About the Poem:<\/strong><\/h4>\n

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

\"\"<\/a>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.<\/em>”<\/p>\n

“My Ancestors Live” is the poem that introduces Christina’s sequence in Flap: The Chook Book 2<\/em><\/strong> (2010), an anthology featuring the work of four Christchurch poets: Victoria Broome, Catherine Fitchett, Barbara McCartney and Christina Stachurski.<\/p>\n

—<\/p>\n

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

\n
\"\"<\/a>

Christina Stachurski<\/p><\/div>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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\u2019s Legacy: Gender, Sex and Violence in Recent New Zealand Theatre<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Christina has a doctorate in New Zealand Literature from the University of Canterbury, and teaches there and at the Hagley Writers’ Institute.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

<\/div>\n
Her first play Hot Stuff <\/em>won the Aoraki Festival Play Writing Award in 1996. The second, Domestic Blitz<\/em> was selected for the Adam Play Reading Series (2004), SKOOL!<\/em> for the Aotearoa Playwrights’ Conference (2006), and Pitcairn\u00a0 <\/em>was selected for The Next Stage: Plays on the Way to Production, <\/em>Auckland Theatre Company (2011).<\/div>\n
.<\/span><\/div>\n
—<\/div>\n
.<\/span><\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
\"\"<\/a>To read the featured poem on the Tuesday Poem Hub<\/strong>\u2014and link to other Tuesday Poets posting around NZ and the world\u2014either click here<\/strong><\/a> or on the Quill icon in the sidebar.<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n

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

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 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14,6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-16487","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-other-writers","category-poetry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16487","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=16487"}],"version-history":[{"count":18,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16487\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16506,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16487\/revisions\/16506"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16487"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16487"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16487"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}