{"id":8261,"date":"2011-09-20T06:30:08","date_gmt":"2011-09-19T18:30:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/?p=8261"},"modified":"2011-09-19T13:52:44","modified_gmt":"2011-09-19T01:52:44","slug":"tuesday-poem-indigo-by-barbara-strang","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/2011\/09\/20\/tuesday-poem-indigo-by-barbara-strang\/","title":{"rendered":"Tuesday Poem: “Indigo” by Barbara Strang"},"content":{"rendered":"

Indigo<\/strong><\/h3>\n

To achieve the
\ndesired blue<\/p>\n

the cloth had to
\nbe lifted in
\nand out of the vats<\/p>\n

in the heat
\nof India, Nigeria
\nor Thailand.<\/p>\n

Indigo \u2013 you used
\nto wear that deep-dyed hue,
\nit suited you.<\/p>\n

The name for the
\nspectral blue-violet.<\/p>\n

Indigo
\na blue as
\ndeep as your eyes,<\/p>\n

the lashes a flight of geese
\non the last stripe of blue as the
\nsky plunges towards night.<\/p>\n

.<\/span><\/p>\n

(c) Barbara Strang<\/p>\n

from <\/em>The Corrosion Zone<\/strong><\/span>, HeadworX, 2011<\/p>\n

Indigo<\/em> is reproduced here with the permission of Barbara Strang.<\/p>\n

—<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>About <\/strong>The Corrosion Zone<\/strong><\/span>:<\/strong><\/p>\n

Opening up The Corrosion Zone<\/strong><\/span> for the first time was one of those moments of mixed hesitation and anticipation—because although the collection, Barbara’s second, is new, I knew that I had already encountered several of the poems as works-in-progress when we were both part of the Friday Group (aka “the Boiler House.”) I had also heard others read as part of the Canterbury Poets’ Collective’s regular autumn season. So the hesitation was because I feared over-familiarity, the anticipation because I know just how good a poet Barbara is.<\/p>\n

Well, that hesitation was gone as soon as I immersed myself in the poems. Yes, several are familiar, but Barbara (not surprisingly!) has revised and polished them since I first encountered them, lifting the poems to the higher level I expect in a HeadworX<\/strong><\/a> publication. And there is a great deal in The Corrosion Zone<\/strong><\/span> that was completely new to me, including a fine sequence of poems around Barbara’s brother, Andrew, who committed suicide several years ago. Other poems centre around the break up of Barbara’s marriage and the major transition that involved, both physically, with the loss of one home and move to another, and also emotionally. Yet despite these profound emotional shifts the collection is not indulgent, but spare, wry, and poignant in its understated reserve.<\/p>\n

The Corrosion Zone<\/strong><\/span> also includes some very fine poetic turns of phrase, such as the culminating stanza of Indigo<\/strong><\/em>:<\/p>\n

” … <\/em><\/p>\n

the lashes a flight of geese
\non the last stripe of blue as the
\nsky plunges towards night.”<\/em><\/p>\n

.<\/span><\/p>\n

Oh, yes<\/em>: thank you, Barbara.<\/p>\n

—<\/p>\n

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

Barbara Strang’s first poetry collection Duck Weather<\/strong><\/em> (Poets Group) was published in 2005, when John O’Connor described Barbara as “a significant new voice in New Zealand poetry.”<\/em><\/p>\n

Barbara won the Aoraki Festival Contest in 1998, the NZ Poetry Society’s International Haiku Competition in both 2003 and 1997, and the Takahe Cultural Studies Competition 2002 for her essay on James K Baxter. She is currently editor for Sudden Valley Press and was guest editor for the NZ Poetry Society’s 2009 and 2010 anthologies. Barbara has an MA in Creative Writing from the Institute of Modern Letters, Victoria University of Wellington (1998) and lives at McCormack’s Bay in Christchurch, New Zealand.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Indigo To achieve the desired blue the cloth had to be lifted in and out of the vats in the heat of India, Nigeria or Thailand. Indigo \u2013 you used to wear that deep-dyed hue, it suited you. The name for the spectral blue-violet. Indigo a blue as deep as your eyes, the lashes a […]<\/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-8261","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\/8261","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=8261"}],"version-history":[{"count":22,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8261\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8284,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8261\/revisions\/8284"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8261"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8261"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8261"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}