\nBecause their husbands were fishermen and so always at sea.<\/em><\/p>\n
Or it can mean houses packed close together. The village
\nlike one house with many wives, calling out to each other<\/p>\n
from their windows. Or, further back, after the deity, Camuli.
\nA sound too much like Ca’mogli to let the happy joke go past.<\/p>\n
But \u2013 <\/em>I replied. If they were fishermen then many would That is not the Italian way. We infer, we imply, we don’t say. 2.<\/p>\n Paddling on the pebble beach \u2013 ouch ouch \u2013 I come upon Back in Australia my pegs had gone missing mysteriously The males adore blue, filch drinking straws and bottle tops They used to make do with berries and flowers, which faded, brandishing the fetish, strutting and tossing, laying it down pat. \u00a9 Jennifer Compton<\/p>\n from This City<\/strong><\/em>, Otago University Press, 2011<\/p>\n Featured on “…Anything, Really”<\/strong><\/em>\u00a0<\/a> with permission<\/p>\n —<\/p>\n So much so that I am delighted to feature Jennifer’s poems today, both here and as guest editor on the Tuesday Poem Hub<\/a>. I feel both poems amply illustrate my July observation about This City<\/em><\/strong>. Having read the book, I completely see why it won the Kathleen Grattan Award<\/a> in 2010.<\/p>\n I shall reserve my commentary for the Hub feature, but only say that I was particularly struck by both Jennifer’s poetic insight in The House Of Wives<\/em> and the way the poem captures the intersection between worlds: past and present, the old world and the new, and the nexus of the cultural and natural worlds in the second stanza.<\/p>\n I hope you will also check out Jennifer’s poem on the Hub:<\/p>\n —<\/p>\n To find out more about Jennifer and her work, you can visit her on her blog:<\/p>\n —<\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The House Of Wives 1. Ah \u2013 he said. Camogli. Casa delle mogli. The house of wives. Because their husbands were fishermen and so always at sea. Or it can mean houses packed close together. The village like one house with many wives, calling out to each other from their windows. Or, further back, after […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14,6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-29967","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\/29967","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=29967"}],"version-history":[{"count":12,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29967\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":30550,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29967\/revisions\/30550"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=29967"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=29967"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=29967"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nhave been drowned dead. The house of widows instead. <\/em>\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n
\nBut now, of course, it is for the tourists, they sell ice cream.
\n.<\/span>
\n<\/em><\/p>\n
\na blue clothes peg, her function intact, at the high tide line.<\/p>\n
\nthen the day we found a satin bowerbird’s courtship avenue.<\/p>\n
\nand pegs. What had been vanishing was always and only blue.<\/p>\n
\nbut amcoplast solvent drives them on to a fresh excess of art,<\/p>\n
\nThis very peg flies home, a gift from Camogli to our bowerbirds.
\n.<\/span><\/p>\n![\"This](\"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/06\/This-City_Jennifer-Compton-205x300.jpg\")
<\/a>I recently purchased a copy of This City<\/em><\/strong> , a book of poems by my fellow Tuesday Poet, Jennifer Compton<\/a>, an expatriate New Zealander who resides in Melbourne. As I said while reading it in July, “it is wonderful, dear readers. I am blown away by the emotional depth, beauty, and integrity of the poems.”<\/em><\/p>\nThe Topography Of Wellington<\/a><\/h3>\n
![\"Jennifer_Compton\"](\"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/08\/Jennifer_Compton-200x300.jpg\")
<\/a>Jennifer Compton <\/strong>was born in New Zealand in 1949 and now lives in Melbourne. As mentioned above, her book of poems, This City<\/em>, won the Kathleen Grattan Poetry Award in 2010.\u00a0 Her poem, ‘Now You Shall Know’<\/em>, won the Newcastle Poetry Prize in 2013, and the collection of the same name was published last year in Australia (Five Islands Press), while her verse novella Mr Clean & The Junkie<\/em><\/strong> was published this year in New Zealand as part of the Hoopla series 2015 (M\u0101karo Press).<\/p>\nStillcraic<\/a><\/h3>\n
![\"TuesPoem\"](\"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/08\/TuesPoem.jpg\")
<\/a>Don\u2019t forget to read the featured poem on the Tuesday Poem Hub<\/strong> and other great poems from fellow Tuesday poets from around the world\u2014just click here<\/strong><\/a>.<\/p>\n