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| All photographs © Bruce Foster |
Our poets have been travelling again! New Zealander Gregory O'Brien - also a painter, art writer, anthologist and curator - has been to Chile and he's taken his writing pad with him (and the photographer Bruce Foster), so this week we're sharing his poems from the Valparaiso Daybook - plus a nifty little discount for you at the end. Read on...
The staircase and then
the ladder, the ladder
and then the funicular, the alley
and then the steps—the staircase
up to the Pelican & Vulture
the staircase up to the colour blue
the staircase up to the songs of Violeta Parra
the staircase up to the number 86
the staircase up to the multitudinous skies
of Chile, the staircase up to the calcium deposits of
distant stars as seen through
telescope or winebottle, the staircase up
to the odes of Pablo Neruda
and the staircase back down.
~
High tension
wire-men
linesmen
ladder-men
keepers of
the vertical town.
~
Valpo
How a city is
strung—
uninterrupted
lines, staves
and the first note
to be played
one curtain,
knotted.
~
Index of good government
Rising tide
of green and pink spray-paint
slowly advancing on
the hilltop barracks.
~
Upwardly mobile citizens
of Valparaiso:
Mister Colorista on his
paint-spattered ladder, Mister
Primitivista in his
skyward hat-box, his
private funicular. And
Mister Tribalista’s
praiseworthy odes
to the flaming tree
the back half of a dog
the goddess of cats.
~
History lesson
A genealogy of machine gun emplacements
like shrubs, paced
decade by decade around
the barracks lawn. Early afternoon
the naval band collides with a fire hydrant
tagged SEXO DEVIL. Already
the battalion is trying to forget
last night
at the Amnesia Discotheque: ‘Doing
the Flower Pot.’
~
crumpled
streetmap
to the crumpled
stairs
at the end of each
crumpled lane
beneath
the crumpled stars
~
Wrecks of the City of Valparaiso
It might have been yesterday
a heaving or rolling movement
of land or sea. And then
there was History
to contend with—
reflected in a mirror
which also contained
Loro and Guadalupe, mid-conversation
their Last Supper
with Marilyn and Humphrey.
By knifepoint or
amorous design, dizzy
with something, untouched
by sleep, wrecked. Yesterday.
~
Liquidadora de Libros
Disorder of the street
outside
able-bodied, dog-weary
inexhaustible
this library in which I am
well read.
All text © Gregory O'Brien, 2014
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Wellington since 1989, where he is writer, painter and senior curator at City Gallery Wellington. As well as numerous pamphlets, he has published seven collections of poetry, among them Days Beside Water (Carcanet, 1994) and Afternoon of an Evening Train (Victoria University Press, 2005). With Jenny Bornholdt and Mark Williams, he co-edited An Anthology of New Zealand Poetry (In English), which appeared from Oxford University Press in 1997. A collection of his writings about New Zealand art and literature, After Bathing at Baxter's; Essays and Notebooks, was published in 2002. His books about New Zealand visual arts include Lands and Deeds; Profiles of New Zealand Painters (1996), Hotere out the Black Window (1997) and Welcome to the South Seas: Contemporary New Zealand Art for young people (AUP, 2004). His book-length meditation on France, New Zealand, Modernism and sub-aquaticism is titled News of the Swimmer Reaches Shore (Carcanet 2007).
The Carcanet Blog Sale
With every blogpost we offer 25% off a Carcanet title, or titles by a particular author or group of authors.
For the next two weeks, we're giving you 25% off News of the Swimmer Reaches Shore - and Valparaiso, the collection by Irish poet Mary O'Malley which was begun on board a marine research ship which departed from the Chilean port of that name.At once a travel book, autobiographical novel, memoir and historical survey, News of the Swimmer Reaches Shore begins with its narrator suspended in the salty, buoyant waters of the Mediterranean and develops into a discursive essay on family life, love and deep sea diving. Not only is the book a paean to the south of France, it is a history of things that explode under water, taking the reader by way of the trenches of World War One and the Rainbow Warrior bombing to the writer's experiences of diving off Menton. Adrift on an ocean of art history, literature and music, the book introduces a cast of underwater characters including Jacques Cousteau, Dominique Prieur, Henri Matisse and the naked river-swimming Mother Aubert, a 19th-century nun who presents something of a role-model for the narrator as he negotiates various streams of thought.
All books come with a 10% discount and free UK delivery at www.carcanet.co.uk, so to claim the extra 15%, go to the website (or use the links above) and use the offer code BLOG (case-sensitive). Happy reading!