{"id":2358,"date":"2010-11-16T09:44:58","date_gmt":"2010-11-15T20:44:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/?p=2358"},"modified":"2010-11-16T09:44:37","modified_gmt":"2010-11-15T20:44:37","slug":"tuesday-poem-glass-cases-i-by-christina-stachurski","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/2010\/11\/16\/tuesday-poem-glass-cases-i-by-christina-stachurski\/","title":{"rendered":"Tuesday Poem: “Glass Cases (i)” by Christina Stachurski"},"content":{"rendered":"

Glass Cases<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

i<\/p>\n

China was at the bottom of the hole,
\na place beyond the water
\nthat came when you dug quite deep.
\nSometimes broken off pieces came through,
\nblue and white and special ones with gold
\nedges when you washed them under the tap.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe charm of archaeology
\nis something that we may happen
\nto run across but cannot expect to find,\u201d
\nsays a label in the Beijing Capital Museum.<\/p>\n

When the scholar Liu E examined his sick
\nfriend\u2019s medicine in 1899, he noticed markings
\non the bones \u2013 to be ground into powder \u2013
\nsimilar to ancient bronze inscriptions.<\/p>\n

Lui\u2019s further discovery \u2013 that such oracle
\nbones were anointed with blood, inscribed
\nwith a question, heated until cracked
\nand read by royal diviners \u2013 proved the existence
\nof the Shang dynasty some 1,500 years BC.<\/p>\n

As we leave, I am surprised with a present
\nfrom the Museum\u2019s store, a smooth white
\nporcelain bone painted with blue leaves and lotus
\nbefore firing;\u00a0 one end smashed off to reveal
\nthe hollow interior, the roughness of unglazed clay.<\/p>\n

Yang Jiechang calls this piece Underground Flowers<\/em>.<\/p>\n

(c) Christina Stachurski<\/p>\n

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

—<\/p>\n

About the Poem:<\/strong><\/h4>\n

This is another Tuesday Poem selection from the recently released Flap: The Chook Book 2<\/em><\/strong> by Christchurch poets Victoria Broome, Catherine Fitchett, Barbara McCartney and Christina Stachurski. (I hope to being you a Tuesday poem from each of them over the next few weeks.) Glass Cases 1<\/em> is from Christina’s section of the anthology: the charm of archaeology.<\/em> I chose to feature it because it picks up the theme of Victoria’s poem last week, around travel in China, and because of it’s different but complementary slant on the sense of continuity and story through poetry.<\/p>\n

About Christina: <\/strong><\/h4>\n

My ancestors arrived in Aotearoa New Zealand from England (1841\u20131911), Scotland (1842), Ireland via the Australian goldfields (1864 and 1871), and Poland (then Prussia) in the 1870s, and included Catholics, Anglicans, and Methodists. They settled variously on the West Coast and in Nelson, Taranaki, and Auckland, working as farmers, millers, mothers, storekeepers, domestic servants, masons, flax-cutters, publicans or miners.\u00a0 In the last few years, I\u2019ve got into family history and travelling. Luckily, I get paid for thinking about identity and literature while teaching Modern Drama and Creative Writing at the University of Canterbury.<\/p>\n

—<\/p>\n

To read the featured poem on the Tuesday Poem Blog<\/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":"

Glass Cases i China was at the bottom of the hole, a place beyond the water that came when you dug quite deep. Sometimes broken off pieces came through, blue and white and special ones with gold edges when you washed them under the tap. \u201cThe charm of archaeology is something that we may happen […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14,6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2358","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\/2358","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=2358"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2358\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2385,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2358\/revisions\/2385"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2358"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2358"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2358"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}