{"id":33602,"date":"2016-11-08T06:30:59","date_gmt":"2016-11-07T17:30:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/?p=33602"},"modified":"2016-11-13T19:03:54","modified_gmt":"2016-11-13T06:03:54","slug":"tuesday-poetry-the-woman-who-swims-with-the-jellyfish-by-janis-freegard","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/2016\/11\/08\/tuesday-poetry-the-woman-who-swims-with-the-jellyfish-by-janis-freegard\/","title":{"rendered":"Tuesday Poetry: “The Woman Who Swims with the Jellyfish” by Janis Freegard"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/a>The Woman Who Swims with the Jellyfish<\/strong>
\n(Jellyfish Lake by Dorothy Cross, from \u2018A Duck for Mr Darwin\u2019 exhibition)<\/em><\/p>\n

you can see right through them
\n99 parts sea to 1 part alien<\/p>\n

…………………….<\/span>her hair wafts out
\n…………………….<\/span>moving in time with the water<\/p>\n

there are thousands of them \u2013
\nall gut and tentacles
\npulsing through the sun-shot shallows<\/p>\n

…………………….<\/span>she breathes, keeps her chin up<\/p>\n

they are upright, sideways
\nupside down
\nthey palpitate
\ntowards and past her<\/p>\n

…………………….<\/span>her tresses move like they do
\n…………………….<\/span>valoop valoop<\/em><\/p>\n

curious\/ incurious
\nthey brush her breasts<\/p>\n

…………………….<\/span>she floats amongst them
\n…………………….<\/span>almost one of the flock<\/p>\n

you can\u2019t reason with them:
\nthey have no head<\/p>\n

…………………….<\/span>she contemplates radial symmetry<\/p>\n

\u00a9 Janis Freegard<\/p>\n

First published in Kingdom Animalia: The Escapades of Linnaeus<\/em><\/strong> (Auckland University Press, 2011)<\/p>\n

Reproduced here with permission<\/p>\n

—<\/p>\n

Recently I shared how much I had enjoyed Janis Freegard’s debut novel, The year of falling<\/em><\/strong><\/a>. Today I am delighted to bring you her poem The Woman Who Swims With Jellyfish, <\/em>continuing my focus on poems that are broadly themed around the sea.<\/p>\n

—<\/p>\n

\"janis-freegard\"<\/a>Janis Freegard lives in Wellington, with an historian and a cat, and works in the public service. Her first full-length poetry collection, Kingdom Animalia: The Escapades of Linnaeus<\/em><\/strong>, was published by Auckland University Press in 2011. She is also the author of a chapbook, The Continuing Adventures of Alice Spider<\/em><\/strong> (Anomalous Press, 2013), and co-author of AUP New Poets 3<\/em><\/strong> (AUP, 2008).<\/p>\n

Her poetry has appeared in a wide range of journals and anthologies in New Zealand and overseas, including Essential New Zealand Poems: Facing the Empty Page<\/em><\/strong> (Random House, 2014), Best NZ Poems 2012<\/em><\/strong>, and Landfall<\/em><\/strong>. Janis also writes fiction, is a past winner of the BNZ Katherine Mansfield Award.<\/p>\n

\"the-glass-rooster-by-janis-freegard\"<\/a>She has recently published a second book of poetry, The Glass Rooster<\/strong>, <\/em>with Auckland University Press and a novel, The year of falling<\/em><\/strong>, with M\u0101karo Press, both in 2015.<\/p>\n

To find out more about Janis and her work, visit Janis Freegard<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u2014<\/p>\n

Prior \u2018Sea\u2019 Poems include:<\/h4>\n

\u201cThe Sea\u201d by Tim Jones<\/a><\/p>\n

\u201cDover Beach\u201d (Excerpt) by Matthew Arnold<\/a><\/p>\n

\u201cBreathing You In\u201d by David Gregory<\/a><\/p>\n

\u201cWe are more than half water\u201d by Helen Rickerby<\/a><\/p>\n

The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, Part 1 by Samuel Taylor Coleridge<\/a><\/p>\n

\u201cThe Seafarer\u201d Excerpt from the Anglo Saxon poem (Anonymous)<\/a><\/p>\n

Two Short Poems by Bernadette Hall<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Woman Who Swims with the Jellyfish (Jellyfish Lake by Dorothy Cross, from \u2018A Duck for Mr Darwin\u2019 exhibition) you can see right through them 99 parts sea to 1 part alien …………………….her hair wafts out …………………….moving in time with the water there are thousands of them \u2013 all gut and tentacles pulsing through the […]<\/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-33602","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\/33602","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=33602"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33602\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":33633,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33602\/revisions\/33633"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=33602"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=33602"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=33602"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}