{"id":19750,"date":"2013-04-09T06:30:41","date_gmt":"2013-04-08T18:30:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/?p=19750"},"modified":"2013-04-01T16:54:42","modified_gmt":"2013-04-01T03:54:42","slug":"tuesday-poem-the-autistic-cloudboy-visits-auckland-art-gallery-by-siobhan-harvey","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/2013\/04\/09\/tuesday-poem-the-autistic-cloudboy-visits-auckland-art-gallery-by-siobhan-harvey\/","title":{"rendered":"Tuesday Poem: “The Autistic Cloudboy Visits Auckland Art Gallery” by Siobhan Harvey"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Autistic Cloudboy Visits Auckland Art Gallery
\n.<\/span>
\n<\/strong><\/h3>\n

1. Taranaki (and cloud), Wanganui, 15 April 1986<\/em><\/p>\n

Studying Aberhart, Cloudboy takes up a camera, empties land
\nof everyone except his mother, pictures the bare pathos of
\nwhat remains in photography, in black and white clouds.<\/p>\n

2. A Pair of Godwits<\/em><\/p>\n

Studying Palmer, Cloudboy wings his mother to canvas
\ndesolate as a godwit\u2019s flight; below cadmium sky, in oily air,
\nthey nest until the pull of somewhere else – a cloud – rises
\nthem to portray each other at the edge of the world.<\/p>\n

3. Aotearoa – Cloud<\/em><\/p>\n

Studying Albrecht, Cloudboy paints a shed of cloud
\nas solid as his mother\u2019s nerves; inside, they draw,
\neat, dance and sleep secure in the knowledge
\nthey\u2019ve sewn themselves into skin thin as white paper.<\/p>\n

\u00a9 Siobhan Harvey
\nReproduced here with permission
\n.<\/span>
\n—<\/p>\n

As I noted in March 26th’s Tuesday Poem post<\/a>, I am currently running a series of poems in response to works of art, which will include a note from the poet. This week’s poem and note is from Siobhan Harvey.<\/strong><\/p>\n

You can find out more about the work of New Zealand artists Laurence Aberhart<\/a>, Stanley Palmer<\/a>, and Gretchen Albrecht<\/a> by clicking on the artist’s name.<\/p>\n

—<\/p>\n

Poet’s Note: from<\/em> Siobhan Harvey<\/span><\/h4>\n

\"\"<\/span><\/a>“An intregral part of our landscape, our sense of belonging, clouds continue to remain invisible to many.\u00a0Parenting a child who, at 5 year’s old, became\u00a0fixated with the firmament and the pictures he could\u00a0unlock there, the manner in which so many other people disregarded the clouds was made apparent to me.\u00a0At the same time, as my son charted (what became\u00a0for him) the exceedingly fraught terrain of his first primary\u00a0school,\u00a0during which\u00a0his\u00a0nephology was viewed by peers and teachers alike as esoteric and divorced from the everyday, I realised that in cloud-watching my son had become something akin to the focus of his obsession.\u00a0At 7 year’s old\u00a0he received a diagnosis – ASD, or\u00a0Autism Spectrum\u00a0Disorder. That latter word, disorder, continues to feel like the\u00a0true\u00a0dysfunction to me, for many reason, not least of which is that when I took my son to the newly opened, newly renovated Auckland Art Gallery, we discovered his passion for the clouds replicated time and again in the photographs, paintings and imagery upon the walls. The cloud, we both understood then, is not the matter of dislocation or peculiarity, but the inspiration for and genesis of creativity,\u00a0‘The Autistic Cloudboy Visits Auckland Art Gallery’ is part of a much larger\u00a0body of nephological poems which I’ve written over the course of the last year or two and which, individually, like little clouds journeying hither and thither,\u00a0have found homes in magazines\u00a0in New Zealand, Australia, the US, England and wider Europe.”<\/span><\/p>\n

—<\/p>\n

About the Poet:<\/span><\/h4>\n

\"\"<\/span><\/a>Siobhan Harvey is the author of the poetry collection, Lost Relatives<\/em> (Steele Roberts, 2011) and the book of literary interviews, Words Chosen Carefully: New Zealand Writers in Discussion<\/em> (Cape Catley, 2010). She is also the editor of Our Own Kind: 100 New Zealand Poems about Animals <\/em>(Random House, 2009).<\/span> Her poems have recently appeared in Asheville Poetry Review <\/em>(US), Best New Zealand Poems, <\/em>Five Poem Journal <\/em>(Ned), Landfall<\/em>, Stand <\/em>(UK), Structo <\/em>(UK) and Turbine 12<\/em>. She was runner-up in the 2012 Dorothy Porter Poetry Prize (Aus), 2012 Kevin Ireland Poetry Competition, 2011 Landfall Essay Prize and 2011 Kathleen Grattan Prize for a Sequence of Poems, and nominated for the 2011 Pushcart Prize (US).<\/span><\/span> She has a Poet’s Page on The Poetry Archive (U.K.), here: Siobhan Harvey<\/span><\/a>.<\/span><\/span><\/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":"

The Autistic Cloudboy Visits Auckland Art Gallery . 1. Taranaki (and cloud), Wanganui, 15 April 1986 Studying Aberhart, Cloudboy takes up a camera, empties land of everyone except his mother, pictures the bare pathos of what remains in photography, in black and white clouds. 2. A Pair of Godwits Studying Palmer, Cloudboy wings his mother […]<\/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-19750","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-poetry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19750","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=19750"}],"version-history":[{"count":21,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19750\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19894,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19750\/revisions\/19894"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19750"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19750"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19750"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}