{"id":18798,"date":"2013-02-12T06:30:25","date_gmt":"2013-02-11T17:30:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/?p=18798"},"modified":"2013-02-11T20:10:54","modified_gmt":"2013-02-11T07:10:54","slug":"tuesday-poem-at-the-workingmens-club-picnic-by-gail-collier","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/2013\/02\/12\/tuesday-poem-at-the-workingmens-club-picnic-by-gail-collier\/","title":{"rendered":"Tuesday Poem: “At the Workingmen’s Club Picnic” by Gail Collier"},"content":{"rendered":"

At the Workingmen\u2019s Club Picnic<\/strong><\/p>\n

In a forest of legs,
\nI watch bulging sacks jump haphazardly
\nAnd eggs pirouette on spoons
\nBefore I turn to look for you \u2013
\n………….<\/span>All the way around
\nAnd back again:
\nLooking down, shoes I do not recognise
\nLooking up, page after page of faces.
\nThe world has slowed,
\nIt is filled with other children\u2019s fathers.
\nMy mouth is sticky,
\nIn my chest there is some other kind of race.
\nFerris wheel buckets tumble
\nIn a kaleidoscope of red, yellow and blue,
\nChildren\u2019s voices float
\nBack and forward on the air.<\/p>\n

I turn and the long moment shatters,
\nYour hand wraps around mine;
\nIts puckered knuckles
\nAnd calluses, roughly reassuring.<\/p>\n

Together, we stride back
\nTo cars circling brightly coloured blankets,
\nStripes crossed like swords.
\nMum has emerged from the car
\nAnd sits on a folding chair,
\nHer red cardigan draped across her shoulders
\nWhile the sleeves just hang.
\nYou reach into a cardboard box in the boot
\nAnd bring out a flask with two white cups
\n(Like a man with two hats)
\nAnd an egg
\nFor me to peel.
\nThe shards of brittle white shell
\nEdge beneath my nails
\nAs I reach for the wobbly moon
\nWith a shadow inside.<\/p>\n

\u00a9 Gail Collier<\/p>\n

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

—<\/p>\n

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

“As my father has aged and become ill, I found myself coping with\u00a0a sense of loss but was unable to write about this due to its immediacy. I found I was able, instead, to access a childhood memory of a moment of loss – of being lost in a crowd and the sheer physical panic that overcomes a child as they lose sight of their parent.<\/p>\n

I also found that the setting enabled me to recapture objects and experiences familiar to annual picnics in the sixties, but much less so now: cardboard boxes carrying picnic foods, hard-boiled eggs, three-legged races.<\/p>\n

Because it is a very biographical poem, I also wanted to be true to the particular circumstances of my family. I\u00a0tried to use\u00a0my mother’s cardigan to symbolise the passivity of a parent suffering from mental illness, without commenting on it directly which would have been incongruous with a small child’s consciousness.\u00a0 The ambivalent tone created at the end of the poem, as the hopefulness of the white of the egg is tempered by the\u00a0 the dark yolk within, was also an attempt to project the precarious uncertainty which was always, therefore present.” — Gail Collier<\/p>\n

—<\/p>\n

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

Gail Collier is an English teacher\u00a0who squeezes her poetry writing between the demands of NCEA marking. She is raising the last of four children in the southern suburbs of Christchurch, where she grew up, and hoping for a hiatus before grandchildren appear. Gail is\u00a0a member of the Canterbury Poets’ Collective and has been published in The Listener, The Press, Micropress, Manuka Musings, Takahe<\/em> and the infinity we swim in <\/em>(NZ Poetry Society, 2007).<\/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","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

At the Workingmen\u2019s Club Picnic In a forest of legs, I watch bulging sacks jump haphazardly And eggs pirouette on spoons Before I turn to look for you \u2013 ………….All the way around And back again: Looking down, shoes I do not recognise Looking up, page after page of faces. The world has slowed, It […]<\/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-18798","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-poetry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18798","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=18798"}],"version-history":[{"count":12,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18798\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18810,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18798\/revisions\/18810"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18798"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18798"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18798"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}