{"id":33124,"date":"2016-09-13T06:30:49","date_gmt":"2016-09-12T18:30:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/?p=33124"},"modified":"2016-09-11T23:16:10","modified_gmt":"2016-09-11T11:16:10","slug":"between-birdsong-and-nothing-by-nod-ghosh-a-tuesday-feature","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/2016\/09\/13\/between-birdsong-and-nothing-by-nod-ghosh-a-tuesday-feature\/","title":{"rendered":"“Between Birdsong and Nothing” by Nod Ghosh — A Tuesday Feature"},"content":{"rendered":"

Between Birdsong and Nothing<\/span><\/h3>\n

The lizard-skinned woman from the candy cane house hugged wine in her<\/span>
\n hands and cried,<\/span><\/p>\n

\u2212 there are no birds
\n\u2212 the birds have gone<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

In fading light, through earth-roar tremors, we smoked like bad weather and<\/span>
\n drank like drowned pigs. Bill boiled malevolent water on a wood stove, flashed<\/span>
\n his bottom for fun, while we assembled jigsaws of sound. And waited.<\/span><\/p>\n

No whio, no fantail, no warbler, no tern. No chaffinch or sparrow.<\/span>
\n Instead, the urgency of the radio, and a distant thud-crunch of masonry<\/span>
\n as it tumbled. Our hearts plunged in unison.<\/span><\/p>\n

The infinite gap between swooping cries and airborne chatter was palpable<\/span>
\n with dust-tinged fingers. An avian multitude drawn to submission, detached<\/span>
\n from trembling ground, like stalks in a spring-child’s grasp.<\/span><\/p>\n

When they returned, cranes had claimed the sky. The incongruous song of<\/span>
\n birds dripped through the atmosphere like sticky juice.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a9 Nod Ghosh<\/span><\/p>\n

.<\/span>
\nPublished in Leaving The Red Zone: Poem from the Canterbury Earthquakes<\/em><\/strong>,<\/span>
\n ed. James Norcliffe and Joanna Preston, Clerestory Press, 2016<\/span><\/p>\n

Reproduced on “…Anything, Really”<\/em> with permission.<\/span><\/p>\n

—<\/p>\n

\"Leaving<\/a>Earlier in the year I featured the release of Leaving the Red Zone<\/em><\/strong>, an anthology of poetry to commemorate the Canterbury earthquakes of 2010 – 2011 and their aftermath.<\/p>\n

The sixth anniversary of the first earthquake on September 4, 2010, recently slipped by without fanfare here on “…Anything, Really”<\/em>. This is not because either the earthquakes or all that followed, and is still ongoing, have ceased to matter, but simply because sometimes even a writer may run out of words when a topic runs so deep.<\/p>\n

That does not mean, however, that words do not exist — and so when Nod Ghosh sent me a number of potential poems for today’s feature and I reread Between Birdsong and Nothing<\/em>, I was struck again by how well it “spoke” to the events of September 4 and the series of major earthquakes that followed, from September 4, 2010, to 23 December, 2011.<\/p>\n

The poem captures the mix of shock and dislocation, and the juxtaposition of the real and surreal that characterised that “18 months of awful.”<\/p>\n

I also like that Between Birdsong and Nothing<\/em> offers no platitudes, yet the sense of change is profound: “When they returned, cranes had claimed the sky.”\u00a0 <\/em>A change in which the song of birds has become “incongruous.”<\/em> In this simple concluding stanza, Nod Ghosh may have captured an integral aspect of the geography of loss that has characterised Christchurch during the past six years.<\/p>\n

~ Helen Lowe<\/em><\/p>\n

—<\/p>\n

About the Poet:<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"nod-ghosh_2016\"<\/a>

Nod Ghosh<\/p><\/div>\n

Nod Ghosh lives in Christchurch, New Zealand, and completed a creative writing course at the Hagley Writers’ Institute in 2014. Nod \u00a0is currently an associate editor for Flash Frontier.<\/em><\/a> Her short stories and poems appear in various New Zealand and international publications. <\/i>To find out more about Nod and her work, visit her website: http:\/\/www.nodghosh.com\/<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Between Birdsong and Nothing The lizard-skinned woman from the candy cane house hugged wine in her hands and cried, \u2212 there are no birds \u2212 the birds have gone In fading light, through earth-roar tremors, we smoked like bad weather and drank like drowned pigs. Bill boiled malevolent water on a wood stove, flashed his […]<\/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-33124","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\/33124","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=33124"}],"version-history":[{"count":18,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33124\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":33143,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33124\/revisions\/33143"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=33124"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=33124"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=33124"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}