{"id":17586,"date":"2012-12-11T06:30:32","date_gmt":"2012-12-10T17:30:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/?p=17586"},"modified":"2012-12-10T22:11:21","modified_gmt":"2012-12-10T09:11:21","slug":"tuesday-poem-banana-the-battered-woman-group-by-johanna-aitchison","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/2012\/12\/11\/tuesday-poem-banana-the-battered-woman-group-by-johanna-aitchison\/","title":{"rendered":"Tuesday Poem: “Banana & The Battered Woman Group” by Johanna Aitchison"},"content":{"rendered":"

Banana & The Battered Woman Group<\/strong><\/p>\n

After the other battered women go
\nget chicken for their rolls, after
\nthe coleslaw & instant coffees
\n& fruit bursts, after the video,
\n(in which the man says to his wife,
\n\u201cCome here,\u201d he drags her down
\n& tells her she looks hot & gropes
\nher boobs in front of their son,
\nshe swats him off like a fly,
\n\u201cNot in front of Jarred!\u201d she says;
\n& he suddenly decides her sexy outfit
\nis not so cool if it\u2019s going
\nto be taken out on the street
\nwhere other men will stare at it,
\nso he says to the boy, \u201cMummy
\nlooks like a real slut in that.\u201d
\nThe boy looks up at mummy
\nin a way that makes Banana think
\nhe knows what \u201cslut\u201d means.
\nThe boy drops his head
\nto his bag of chicken chippies),
\nBanana bites into her chicken roll
\n& says, \u201cWhat an arsehole!\u201d
\nthe other battered women laugh,
\n& the very young woman
\ntakes her dark glasses off.<\/p>\n

\u00a9 Johanna Aitchison<\/p>\n

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

—<\/p>\n

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

On November 13, I featured Johanna’s poem is anybody in there?<\/em> from her 2007 collection A Long Girl Ago<\/em><\/strong> (Victoria University Press.) In discussion with Johanna over the poem, we agreed that it would also be exciting to feature a poem from her newer work as well, perhaps one of those she read as part of her guest appearance in the Canterbury Poets\u2019 Collective\u2019s spring season of poetry readings<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Johanna’s work is distinguished by her use of persona characters as “voices'” within her poems: “Miss Red” featured in A Long Girl Ago<\/strong><\/em> — “Banana” and “Miss Dust” make their appearance in her new work. Banana and the Battered Woman Group<\/em> addresses one of the darker aspects of our society and picks up on the same sense of unease and disconnection I discussed in relation to is anybody in there?<\/em><\/p>\n

There’s a wryness, too, a grounding in the mundane detail of chicken rolls and coleslaw that works as counterpoint to the darker elements, the man who “…says to the boy, \u201cMummy<\/em>\/\/looks like a real slut in that.\u201d<\/em>\u00a0 And finally, the moment of connection, a different kind of grounding in the final lines:<\/p>\n

“…the other battered women laugh,<\/em>
\n& the very young woman<\/em>
\ntakes her dark glasses off.”<\/em><\/p>\n

I find it a powerful poem, in part because the “voice” is almost insouciant, the final lines so inconsquential—a young woman takes her dark glasses off—and yet that (almost) inconsequential action tells us so much — perhaps not everything we need to know, but close enough in the case of this particular young woman.<\/p>\n

—<\/p>\n

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

Johanna tells me that the poet: \u2026 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>, Johanna’s 2007 collection fromVictoria University Press, was a finalist in the 2008 Montana New Zealand Book Awards, and that Johanna was recently the Massey University Writer in Residence.<\/p>\n

To read an interview with Johanna, see “Dedicated to the Write Path”<\/strong> on Stuff, here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u2014<\/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","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Banana & The Battered Woman Group After the other battered women go get chicken for their rolls, after the coleslaw & instant coffees & fruit bursts, after the video, (in which the man says to his wife, \u201cCome here,\u201d he drags her down & tells her she looks hot & gropes her boobs in front […]<\/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-17586","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\/17586","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=17586"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17586\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17597,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17586\/revisions\/17597"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17586"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17586"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17586"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}