{"id":17120,"date":"2012-11-13T06:30:44","date_gmt":"2012-11-12T17:30:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/?p=17120"},"modified":"2012-11-12T20:53:03","modified_gmt":"2012-11-12T07:53:03","slug":"tuesday-poem-is-anybody-in-there-by-johanna-aitchison","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/2012\/11\/13\/tuesday-poem-is-anybody-in-there-by-johanna-aitchison\/","title":{"rendered":"Tuesday Poem: “is anybody in there?” by Johanna Aitchison"},"content":{"rendered":"

is anybody in there?<\/strong><\/p>\n

The sun hits the tips of waves in Lyall Bay, the big wing, your
\nsunglasses as you fly into Wellington again. The blow of water,
\nthe salt salt water, would taste like lips after chips & chips.<\/p>\n

In the last two years you’ve taken to tearing out pages of your
\ndiary and sending them off in screwtop white wine bottles.
\nYou drop them in rivers, the names of which you forget almost
\nimmediately on hearing the splash.<\/p>\n

Your mother says, ‘you should brush your hair.’ You say, ‘I’m
\n33.’ She runs into the house & returns, holding out a plastic
\ncomb. She slams the car door and starts stabbing at the air,
\ntrying to reach your hair.<\/p>\n

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

\u00a9 Johanna Aitchison<\/p>\n

from A Long Girl Ago<\/em>, Victoria University Press, 2007<\/p>\n

Reprinted here with permission<\/p>\n

—<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>About the Poem:<\/strong><\/p>\n

Recently, I posted about reading Johanna Aitchison’s collection A Long Girl Ago<\/em><\/strong>—and you can read how I was finding it, here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Reading the collection followed on from Johanna’s enjoyable and distinctive guest appearance as part of the Canterbury Poets’ Collective’s spring season of poetry readings<\/a>. One of the poems I mentioned in my initial post was in anybody in there.<\/em><\/p>\n

Even though prose poetry is not always my thing, I really liked the way\u00a0in anybody in there<\/em> opens A Long Girl Ago<\/em><\/strong> in a way that characterizes the collection in terms of an essential New Zealand quality: “The sun hits the waves in Lyall Bay…as you fly into Wellington again.” <\/em><\/p>\n

The sense of place is strong, but so too is the sense of both connection and disconnection co-existing uneasily with each other, that is prevalent throughout the book:<\/p>\n

“In the last two years you’ve taken to tearing pages of your diary out…”<\/em><\/p>\n

and comes in through\u00a0relationships within families in particular:<\/p>\n

“Your mother says, ‘you should brush your hair.’ You say, ‘I’m 33.'”<\/em><\/p>\n

but also relationships between people generally, in almost every aspect of life. The poetry speaks to all of this: the sense of place and family and connection, the uneasiness and disconnection coexisting in immediate relationship to it that we all understand intimately—but also see with new eyes through the lens of Johanna’s poems.
\n<\/em><\/p>\n

—<\/p>\n

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

Johanna tells me that the poet: … lives in Palmerston North. She has just turned 40 and, to that end, she is running a lot (about 50km per week) in the hope of doing a marathon. She works as a lecturer at IPC and a tutor at Massey University. She is driven by her love of coffee.<\/em><\/p>\n

I also feel that it is relevant to mention that A Long Girl Ago<\/em> was a finalist in the 2008 Montana New Zealand Book Awards, and that Johanna was recently the Massey University Writer in Residence.<\/p>\n

—<\/p>\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.<\/p>\n

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

is anybody in there? The sun hits the tips of waves in Lyall Bay, the big wing, your sunglasses as you fly into Wellington again. The blow of water, the salt salt water, would taste like lips after chips & chips. In the last two years you’ve taken to tearing out pages of your diary […]<\/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-17120","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-poetry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17120","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=17120"}],"version-history":[{"count":23,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17120\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17144,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17120\/revisions\/17144"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17120"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17120"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17120"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}