{"id":2853,"date":"2010-12-23T06:30:47","date_gmt":"2010-12-22T17:30:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/?p=2853"},"modified":"2012-09-09T21:03:22","modified_gmt":"2012-09-09T09:03:22","slug":"tis-a-norwest-season","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/2010\/12\/23\/tis-a-norwest-season\/","title":{"rendered":"Tis A Nor’west Season"},"content":{"rendered":"

You may recall that yesterday I said it was “hot hot hot.”\u00a0 OK, I just said “hot”, but the plural is more fun! And since it has gotten hot enough to set off the fire alarm in my writing study not once but twice now, I think the repetition is justifiable …<\/p>\n

More than that though, it’s high summer, solstice in fact, here in Canterbury and that means ’tis a nor’west season—the dry, hot, blusteringly strong wind that sweeps in from the nor’west and generally creates havoc. Just to give you an idea, a friend emailed this morning to say that one of the trees on their lifestyle block had fallen, taking out a considerable portion of the vegetable garden and the shed that her husband had been inside just a few moments before. And being a hot, dry, strong wind in the height of an already hot dry summer, this round of norwesters has fanned a rash of fires—as well as\u00a0 blowing down trees!—in and around Christchurch. Nothing on the scale of Australian bushfires, but enough to keep the fire services feeling stretched over these past few days.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Heralded by the distinctive cloud formation known as the nor’west arch, the nor’wester is similar to the chinook, the Santa Ana, and the sirocco (in other parts of the world) in being a foehn and\/or katabatic wind, i.e. amongst other things, it gives you an exciting ride when coming into land at Christchurch airport. The nor’wester also has the same reputation as its fellow foehn winds for affecting emotional as well as physical equilibrium when it blows for days on end—all qualities that I have tried to capture in my poem A Nor’west Season<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

—<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n


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

A Nor’west Season<\/strong><\/p>\n

Waiting . . .<\/p>\n

the nor’west arch a pale slash<\/p>\n

along cloud-filled sky,\u00a0 promises heat\u2014<\/p>\n

big bluster coming<\/p>\n

beating in across the plains\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0lifting<\/p>\n

roofs \u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 tossing down<\/p>\n

trees\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 a dog howls<\/p>\n

into the sun’s glazed eye<\/p>\n

falls back into shadow<\/p>\n

beneath a car body<\/p>\n

propped on a rusted jack\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0waits<\/p>\n

for the lull . . .<\/p>\n

—<\/p>\n

\u00a9 Helen Lowe<\/p>\n

Published, Crest to Crest: Impressions of Canterbury Prose & Poetry<\/strong>, Ed. Karen Zelas, Wily Publications, 2009<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

You may recall that yesterday I said it was “hot hot hot.”\u00a0 OK, I just said “hot”, but the plural is more fun! And since it has gotten hot enough to set off the fire alarm in my writing study not once but twice now, I think the repetition is justifiable … More than that […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10,6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2853","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general","category-poetry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2853","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=2853"}],"version-history":[{"count":19,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2853\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15862,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2853\/revisions\/15862"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2853"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2853"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2853"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}