{"id":6975,"date":"2011-07-22T06:30:43","date_gmt":"2011-07-21T18:30:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/?p=6975"},"modified":"2011-07-21T21:30:08","modified_gmt":"2011-07-21T09:30:08","slug":"national-poetry-day-the-curve-of-the-world","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/2011\/07\/22\/national-poetry-day-the-curve-of-the-world\/","title":{"rendered":"National Poetry Day—& “The Curve of the World”"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>Today, Friday 22 is National Poetry Day here in NZ and events poetic are happening right now—and will be happening all day—all over the country.<\/p>\n

To look for an event near you, you can check out the National Poetry Day website, here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

On the Tuesday Poem Blog Hub<\/a>, guest editor Renee Liang<\/a> has featured poems from the three finalists for this year’s 2011 NZ Post National Book Award for Poetry<\/strong>, which will be announced at an awards ceremony to be held in Wellington on 27 July 2011. Renee’s guest editorial includes a brief introduction to each of the shortlisted collections, but you can also see each of the featured books here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Last year, I posted “Ti”<\/a> for National Poetry Day, and this year I have chosen another poem that I feel has a distinctively New Zealand flavour in terms of landscape\/seascape—I hope you enjoy.<\/p>\n

The Curve of the World<\/h3>\n

Summer breathes
\nthrough marram grass, salt-tough
\nwhere the southerly whips in
\noff the Pacific, light &
\nshadow all the way out
\nto the distant smudge
\nof albatross feeding\u2014at night
\nyou see lights dance,
\nsquid boats fishing
\nthe same spot.
\nThe larger ships, too,
\nfollow the albatross road,
\ntall towers disappearing
\nbeneath the curve
\nof the world \u2026<\/p>\n

The wind sweeps in, recounts
\ntales of ships, albatross,
\nmen with eyes bleached
\nto seams \u2026 tells
\nit all to the salt grass
\nand driftwood piled
\ninto a beach fire\u2014<\/p>\n

smoke wavers upward
\nin a thin stream, dissipates
\ninto the gulf
\nof sky.
\n.<\/p>\n

(c) Helen Lowe<\/p>\n

.<\/p>\n

Published in JAAM 27: Wanderings<\/em><\/span>, ed. Ingrid Horrocks,\u00a0 2009<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Today, Friday 22 is National Poetry Day here in NZ and events poetic are happening right now—and will be happening all day—all over the country. To look for an event near you, you can check out the National Poetry Day website, here. On the Tuesday Poem Blog Hub, guest editor Renee Liang has featured poems […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6975","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-poetry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6975","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=6975"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6975\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10713,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6975\/revisions\/10713"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6975"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6975"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6975"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}