{"id":2290,"date":"2010-11-09T06:00:18","date_gmt":"2010-11-08T17:00:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/?p=2290"},"modified":"2010-11-07T23:03:46","modified_gmt":"2010-11-07T10:03:46","slug":"tuesday-poem-the-foreign-office-by-victoria-broome","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/2010\/11\/09\/tuesday-poem-the-foreign-office-by-victoria-broome\/","title":{"rendered":"Tuesday Poem: “The Foreign Office” by Victoria Broome"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Foreign Office <\/strong><\/h3>\n

for Judy and Roscoe <\/em><\/p>\n

He had two great passions and one dream,
\nMozart, The Great Wall and romance. In soft
\nmorning light he rode out on a rented bicycle
\nto see the Great Wall. Smoke and steam rising,
\nthe sound of air rushing through wheels on
\nthe broken road. He felt the hard saddle, his feet
\nin the pedals, he felt hopeful.
\nThe breeze coolly lifted the hair from his neck,
\nevery now and then he turned to watch autumn
\ncolours bleed and fade out in his trail, people
\nflowed past, their voices washed over him.
\nA river around an obstacle, a moment in time.<\/p>\n

A young woman who would become his wife,
\nis travelling on a train to Peking, a very English
\ngirl, with fine auburn hair and eyes like Audrey
\nHepburn\u2019s, she even has the same long swan neck.
\n( That was his memory, she was still unaware of herself.)
\nOn the rocking train, in the vast landscape,
\nshe is attempting to roll up the hair of her Chinese
\ngirlfriend, it is a thick black mystery and hairpins
\nspring from it like coiled dragons.
\nIt was an exotic world then, travelling through
\nthe orient and the old silk road, eating apricots
\nin Persia. Life in the Foreign Office in the 1960\u2019s.<\/p>\n

They don\u2019t meet yet, they are still travelling
\ntowards their futures.<\/p>\n

(c) Victoria Broome<\/p>\n

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

—<\/p>\n

About Victoria Broome<\/h4>\n

Victoria Broome works as a social worker in Older Persons Health in Christchurch, she has been writing since childhood but more seriously in recent years and was awarded the Louis Johnson Bursary from Creative New Zealand in 2005. She has been published in anthologies and a variety of New Zealand literary magazines and most recently in Flap \u2013 The Chook Book 2<\/em>, which is the second anthology from a group of women writers called the Poetry Chooks. Victoria was an inaugural student at the Hagley Writers Institute and completed a two year course, 2008-09, with Tutors Fiona Farrell and Bernadette Hall and supervisor Frankie MacMillan. The manuscript completed over these two years, Big Red Engine<\/strong><\/em>, has just been shortlisted for the Kathleen Grattan Award.<\/p>\n

Note:<\/strong> The other poets featured in Flap<\/strong><\/em> are Catherine Fitchett, Barbara McCartney and Christina Stachurski. I hope to being you a Tuesday poem from each of them over the next few weeks.<\/p>\n

The poem I shall let speak for itself, which it does eloquently, I feel.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Foreign Office for Judy and Roscoe He had two great passions and one dream, Mozart, The Great Wall and romance. In soft morning light he rode out on a rented bicycle to see the Great Wall. Smoke and steam rising, the sound of air rushing through wheels on the broken road. He felt the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2290","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-poetry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2290","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=2290"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2290\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2304,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2290\/revisions\/2304"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2290"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2290"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2290"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}