Showing posts with label poetry. Show all posts
Showing posts with label poetry. Show all posts

Sunday, April 23, 2023

Zero at the Bone


Zero
[all photographs: Bronwyn Lloyd]

i.m. Zero Tolerance Lloyd-Ross
(c. November 2007-21st April 2023)

We're devastated by the loss of our delightful companion Zero, who left this world - hopefully for a better one - on Friday.

I don't really have any words to express how much she's meant to us over the fifteen and a bit years we were privileged to have her with us. Instead, I thought I'd put up some photos of her over the course of her life, together with a few poems I wrote about her during this time.

Hail and farewell, beloved friend. We'll never stop missing you.









Zero at the bone


The dark looniness
of your leaping
worries me

no pause to reflect
furry paws
outspread

food comfort sleep
combine in
strange parentheses

(just like the town
they found you in
dodging

post-Xmas traffic)
beating up
poor Smudge

before you’d met us
even
now hounding

Otis
forgiving? maybe
needy

certainly
roving emblem
of desire

claws outspread


(12-15/3/08)
This is an early piece, written shortly after she first came to us. She was certainly a very spirited kitten! Later on she calmed down a little, but she never ceased to have strong views on a number of issues. It first appeared in the anthology below:


Our Own Kind: 100 New Zealand poems about animals. Ed. Siobhan Harvey (Auckland: Godwit, 2009): 67-68.








Zero is lying down today



but little specks of blood
on the bedspread
make me think

she may have run into
one of her twin nemeses
last night

Yellow
a big fat greedy
green-collared glutton

or Brindle
a raccoon-tailed
bully

each of whom
sneaks in the back door
several times a day

to eat her food
she jumps out
hisses at them

but is only a little cat
once or twice we’ve seen
them ganging up on her

unable to help her
unless it’s in plain sight
I suppose that’s it

our little cat
so wilful
cuddly

spirited
has become the thing
we most fear losing

yet cannot safeguard
threaten to crush
with the sheer weight

of our love

(18/1/16-22/10/17)
This poem makes Zero sound like a bit of a victim, and it's true that she was bullied from time to time by larger neighbouring cats. She never provoked these fights, but she always gave as good as she got. Later on most of these cats seem to have moved away, so the last few years of her life were almost entirely free of such squabbles. The poem first appeared in Poetry New Zealand Yearbook 2020, edited by Johanna Emeney, and subsequently in the book below:


The Oceanic Feeling. Drawings by Katharina Jaeger. Afterword by Bronwyn Lloyd (Auckland: Salt & Greyboy Press, 2021): 21.








All I want



is for every moment
of every day

to be constant bliss
for Zero

Astyanax cringing
from his daddy’s helmet

safe in his mother’s arms
Andromache

watching enslaved
as Achilles’ son

throws her baby off
the walls

if only I could wish away
fast cars on the road

trespassing neighbour cats
basements with tempting doors

shut after her
lead nailspoison baits

the loss of a furry friend
is the sack of Troy

by the Greeks



(2/9/22-8/4/23)
This poem, written late last year, sounds uncomfortably prophetic to me now. The reference to Andromache's baby Astyanax being frightened by his father Hector's plume is from Homer's Iliad [Bk 6, ll.466-502]. His death at the hands of Achilles' son Neoptolemus is reported in Euripides' Trojan Women [ll.719-25]. The last two lines are a paraphrase of the quote below:
Someone has said that the death of a mouse by cancer is the whole sack of Rome by the Goths
- Ford Madox Ford, The Good Soldier (1915)






Tuesday, February 22, 2022

Merry Tales of Skelton


For though my ryme be ragged,
Tattered and jagged,
Rudely rayne beaten,
Rusty and moughte eaten,
It hath in it some pyth.
I think I first encountered John Skelton via a side-reference in Siegfried Sassoon's Memoirs of an Infantry Officer (1930), his fictionalised account of life on the Western Front in the First World War. Sassoon describes his fellow-officer 'David Cromlech' [= Robert Graves] as follows:
He made short work of most books which I had hitherto venerated, for David was a person who consumed his enthusiasms quickly, and he once fairly took my breath away by pooh-poohing Paradise Lost as ‘that moribund academic concoction’. I hadn’t realized that it was possible to speak disrespectfully about Milton. Anyhow, John Milton was consigned to perdition, and John Skelton was put forward as ‘one of the few really good poets.’ But somehow I could never quite accept his supremacy over Milton as an established fact.
John Skelton? Who he? My passionate interest in any and everything to do with Robert Graves soon led me to the latter's early poem "John Skelton", included in the wartime collection Fairies and Fusiliers (1917) but not reprinted in any of the various editions of his Collected Poems:
... angrily, wittily,
Tenderly, prettily,
Laughingly, learnedly,
Sadly, madly,
Helter-skelter John
Rhymes serenely on,
As English poets should.
Old John, you do me good!
I was therefore immensely excited to find an old edition of the Shakespearean scholar Alexander Dyce's 19th century edition of Skelton in a second-hand shop sometime in the 1970s. Unfortunately, it was only the first of two volumes, but it contained all the text - though without any of Dyce's detailed explanatory notes.


Alexander Dyce, ed. The Poetical Works of John Skelton (1843)


But who was this man John Skelton, anyway?

Probably his principal claim to fame in the eyes of posterity is the fact that he acted as Henry VIII's tutor in the late 1490s, and wrote a book of advice (now lost) for the young prince in the genre generally classified as Speculum Principis [Mirror for Princes].

He was immensely proud of having been crowned as a "laureate" at Oxford university, and subsequently at Cambridge, then Leuven in Flanders. The term didn't mean then what it does now, though. It signified high attainment in rhetoric, rather than official appointment as a court poet.

Even so, Skelton wrote an outrageously exaggerated poem called The Garland of Laurel to celebrate this event, deliberately blurring its significance in order to milk the maximum mileage out of the distinction. He also signed himself 'Skelton, Laureat' ever afterwards.

After a brief period of imprisonment for unknown reasons in the early 1500s, Skelton retired from regular attendance at court, composing another long poem entitled The Bowge of Court to satirise the terrible corruption and greed he found there under the (so-called) Accountant King, Henry VII.

Instead, he took up the role of rector of Diss in Norfolk, where he is said to have caused a good deal of scandal with his unorthodox behaviour and views:
his parishioners ... thought him more fit for the stage than the pew or the pulpit. He was secretly married to a woman who lived in his house, and earned the hatred of the Dominican friars by his fierce satire. He consequently came under the formal censure of Richard Nix, the bishop of the diocese, and appears to have been temporarily suspended. After his death a collection of farcical tales, no doubt chiefly, if not entirely, apocryphal, gathered round his name — The Merie Tales of Skelton.
- Wikipedia: John Skelton

William Hazlitt, ed. Merie Tales of Skelton (1856)


One of the most valuable features of Dyce's edition of Skelton is the inclusion, in an appendix, of the entire text of this ridiculous book of fifteenth-century 'humour'. Most of the gags tend to hinge on someone being beaten within an inch of their lives, or otherwise bested by the arch-joker Skelton. The extract below will give you some idea of the kind of thing it is:



So what was it that Graves, and others, saw in this rather absurd sounding figure? Well, for a start, between the death of Geoffrey Chaucer in 1400 and the introduction of Italianate verse forms such as the sonnet into England in the 1530s and 40s by Sir Thomas Wyatt and the Earl of Surrey, there isn't really a lot to celebrate in English poetry.

Most of the serious action was taking place north of the border in Scotland, where poets such as Gavin Douglas, William Dunbar, and Robert Henryson were continuing - and extending - the tradition of Chaucerian narrative verse.



And what did England have to offer in response? Well, there's Skelton's poem 'Against the Scots,' his sensitive account of the tragic Battle of Flodden:
Lo, these fond sots
And trattling Scots,
How they are blind
In their own mind,
And will not know
Their overthrow
At Brankston Moor!
They are so stour,
So frantic mad,
They say they had
And won the field
With spear and shield:
That is as true
As black is blue
And green is grey.
Whatever they say,
Jemmy is dead
And closed in lead,
That was their own king:
Fie on that winning!
It puts one rather in mind of Tennyson's 'Charge of the Light Brigade', doesn't it?



That's probably the least attractive aspect of Skelton. He did have a gift for lyric verse, though, witness the portraits of court ladies included in his Garland of Laurel:
Merry Margaret,
As midsummer flower,
Gentle as a falcon
Or hawk of the tower:
With solace and gladness,
Much mirth and no madness,
All good and no badness;
So joyously,
So maidenly,
So womanly
Her demeaning
In every thing,
Far, far passing
That I can indite,
Or suffice to write
Of Merry Margaret
As midsummer flower,
Gentle as falcon
Or hawk of the tower.
As patient and still
And as full of good will
As fair Isaphill,
Coriander,
Sweet pomander,
Good Cassander,
Steadfast of thought,
Well made, well wrought,
Far may be sought
Ere that ye can find
So courteous, so kind
As Merry Margaret,
This midsummer flower,
Gentle as falcon
Or hawk of the tower.
You can certainly see his influence not just on Robert Graves, but also on other early twentieth-century poets such as Edith Sitwell and W. H. Auden.

Here's the former's 'Aubade', included in some versions of her 'instrumental entertainment' Façade (1923):

Roger Fry: Edith Sitwell in 1912 (1918)

Jane, Jane,
Tall as a crane,
The morning light creaks down again;
Comb your cockscomb-ragged hair,
Jane, Jane, come down the stair.

Each dull blunt wooden stalactite
Of rain creaks, hardened by the light,

Sounding like an overtone
From some lonely world unknown.

But the creaking empty light
Will never harden into sight,

Will never penetrate your brain
With overtones like the blunt rain.

The light would show (if it could harden)
Eternities of kitchen garden,

Cockscomb flowers that none will pluck,
And wooden flowers that 'gin to cluck.

In the kitchen you must light
Flames as staring, red and white,

As carrots or as turnips shining
Where the cold dawn light lies whining.

Cockscomb hair on the cold wind
Hangs limp, turns the milk's weak mind . . .
Jane, Jane,
Tall as a crane,
The morning light creaks down again!

W. H. Auden (1907-1973)


And here's the latter's 1930 poem 'This Lunar Beauty':
This lunar beauty
Has no history
Is complete and early,
If beauty later
Bear any feature
It had a lover
And is another.

This like a dream
Keeps other time
And daytime is
The loss of this,
For time is inches
And the heart's changes
Where ghost has haunted
Lost and wanted.

But this was never
A ghost's endeavor
Nor finished this,
Was ghost at ease,
And till it pass
Love shall not near
The sweetness here
Nor sorrow take
His endless look.


So how to sum up the longterm influence of John Skelton? The lack of a readily available modern edition of his poems - or the ones in English, at any rate - was addressed, first, by Philip Henderson's frequently reprinted Dent edition of 1931.

Some of the textual deficiencies in Henderson's version have now been corrected by Skelton-biographer John Scattergood's Complete English Poems (1983) in the Penguin English Poets series.

Is he worth reading? A lot of his work is, admittedly, probably only of interest to medievalists and literary scholars, but there's a good deal of vivid satire and storytelling there which does go some way towards justifying Robert Graves' favourable verdict.

For the rest, I should probably leave you with probably the most celebrated of those 'Merie Tales of Skelton' which at least did something to carry his name down to posterity:
Tale vii:
How Skelton, when he came from the bishop, made a sermon.


Skelton the next Sunday after went into the pulpit to preach, and said, "Vos estis, vos estis, that is to say, You be, you be. And what be you?" said Skelton: "I say, that you be a sort of knaves, yea, and a man might say worse than knaves; and why, I shall show you. You have complained of me to the bishop that I do keep a fair wench in my house: I do tell you, if you had any fair wives, it were some what to help me at need; I am a man as you be: you have foul wives, and I have a fair wench, of the which I have begotten a fair boy, as I do think, and as you all shall see. Thou wife," said Skelton, "that hast my child, be not afraid; bring me hither my child to me:" the which was done. And he, showing his child naked to all the parish, said, "How say you, neighbours all? is not this child as fair as is the best of all yours? It hath nose, eyes, hands, and feet, as well as any of your: it is not like a pig, nor a calf, nor like no fowl nor no monstrous beast. If I had," said Skelton, "brought forth this child without arms or legs, or that it were deformed, being a monstrous thing, I would never have blamed you to have complained to the bishop of me; but to complain without a cause, I say, as I said before in my antetheme, vos estis, you be, and have be, and will and shall be knaves, to complain of me without a cause reasonable. For you be presumptuous, and do exalt yourselves, and therefore you shall be made low: as I shall show you a familiar example of a parish priest, the which did make a sermon in Rome. And he did take that for his antetheme, the which of late days is named a theme, and said, Qui se exaltat humiliabitur, et qui see humiliat exaltabitur, that is to say, he that doth exalt himself or doth extol himself shall be made meek, and he that doth humble himself or is meek, shall be exalted, extolled, or elevated, or sublimated, or such like; and that I will show you by this my cap. This cap was first my hood, when that I was student in Jucalico, and then it was so proud that it would not be contented, but it would slip and fall from my shoulders. I perceiving this that he was proud, what then did I? shortly to conclude, I did make of him a pair of breeches to my hose, to bring him low. And when that I did see, know, or perceive that he was in that case, and allmost worn clean out, what did I then to extol him up again? you all may see that this my cap was made of it that was my breeches. Therefore, said Skelton, vos estis, therefore you be, as I did say before: if that you exalt yourself, and cannot be contented that I have my wench still, some of you shall wear horns; and therefore vos estis: and so farewell." It is merry in the hall, when beards wag all.
So there you go. It is indeed merry in the hall, when beards wag all.




John Skelton

John Skelton
(c.1460–1529)


  1. The Poetical Works of Skelton and Donne with a Memoir of Each. Ed. Alexander Dyce. 1843. 4 Vols in 2. Riverside Edition. 1855. Cambridge: The Riverside Press / Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1881.



  2. Skelton, John. The Complete Poems of John Skelton, Laureate: 1460-1529. Ed. Philip Henderson. 1931. Everyman’s Library. London: J. M. Dent & Sons Ltd. / New York: E. P. Dutton & Co. Inc., 1966.



  3. Skelton, John. The Complete English Poems. Ed. John Scattergood. Penguin English Poets. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1983.


  4. John Skelton: The Complete English Poems (1983)


  5. Pollet, Maurice. John Skelton: Poet of Tudor England. 1962. Trans. John Warrington. London: J. M. Dent & Sons, Ltd., 1970.

Maurice Pollet: John Skelton: Poet of Tudor England (1962 / 1971)





Thursday, May 20, 2021

The Oceanic Feeling on Paula Green's NZ Poetry Shelf



Local poet and longtime poetry supporter Paula Green has just posted a series of readings by me from my latest poetry book on her blog the NZ Poetry Shelf:






Jack Ross reads four poems from The Oceanic Feeling, Salt & Greyboy Press, 2021:



Jack Ross works as a senior lecturer in creative writing at Massey University. He is the author of five poetry collections and eight works of fiction, most recently Ghost Stories (Lasavia Publishing, 2019) and The Oceanic Feeling (Salt & Greyboy Press, 2021). He blogs here.

Notes to The Oceanic Feeling



Thanks Paula!

Wednesday, October 21, 2020

Jan Kemp's Tripstones



Jan Kemp: Tripstones (2020)


Expatriate Kiwi poet Jan Kemp's latest collection, Tripstones, is a beautiful piece of bookmaking as well as making an important statement about her poetic identity.



Titlepage. Tripstones (Puriri Press, 2020)
[photograph: Bronwyn Lloyd]


The central image here is the Stolperstein, the stumbling block, the stone that trips you up when you least expect it.



Here's Jan's own picture of the Stolperstein she discovered in her own (new) hometown, Kronberg im Taunus. As she herself explains in the note at the back of the book:
A Stolperstein is a small square burnished brass plaque about 12cm x 12 cm set flush with the walkway paving in many German towns, villages and cities - gold against grey - so that you might notice one shining underfoot. You 'stumble' upon it, and then perhaps look down and read the inscription engraved on it, the name of a murdered victim of the Holocaust who lived in a nearby building.
The poems, too, drawn from the last thirty years of her writing life, from The Other Hemisphere (1991) to Black Ice & the Love Planet (2020), seem to be those she wishes us to be stopped by, to stumble over, not to be able to move on from too rapidly.

They range widely in theme and content, mind you. From the evocative local imagery of "Swimming" (which you can hear the author reading here), dated from Waiake Beach, Torbay, 2004 - just a few miles down the road from where I live:



Jan Kemp: "Swimming." Tripstones (2020)
[photograph: Bronwyn Lloyd]

Nothing reduces you to your skin like the sea:
cold plunge into reality,
a tongue already salty
& all that power
self-propelling you through our other element,
body loving
every pummelling second,
as your mind slips on the (no wonder)
Madonna-blue beach wrap of the sky.


Jan Kemp: "Golden Week, Kyoto." Tripstones (2020)
[photograph: Bronwyn Lloyd]


To the Alice in Wonderland-like restrictions of 'Golden Week' in Kyoto:

Giants in yukatas,
a 4-tatami-mat room,
we bend far to unroll beds

open, half-open, close, re-open
the double sequence of glass
bamboo, paper square-framed doors,

duck, enter a garden.



To her new Heimat in Germany ('The Kiwi in me' - joint English / German reading available here):

I've swapped Tane Mahuta
for two mighty Eiben,
the woods for the sea -

tui, tuatara for
Rotkehlchen, Eidechse,
but the Kiwi stays me.


Jan Kemp: "The Kiwi in Me." Tripstones (2020)
[photograph: Bronwyn Lloyd]


Increasingly the new poems need glossaries, peppered as they are with German terms. Did you know a Rotkehlchen was a robin redbreast and an Eidechse a lizard? I knew that Eiben were yew trees, but the linguistic realm inhabited by her more recent work does seem to presuppose a reader equally familiar with the particularities of New Zealand and German discourse.

Clearly this isn't an accidental choice. When you go international, you can go bland and unitone: an idiom suited for the airport bookshop; or, alternatively, you can cherish the peculiarities of your own idiolect.

Characteristically, this is the choice that Jan has made, something which fits with her life-long fascination with the spoken word, the sound of a particular poet reading a particular poem at one precise time - the reason she worked so hard for so many years on the Waiata (1974) and Aotearoa New Zealand (2002-2004) Poetry Sound Archives, as well as on our three published anthologies of work from those collections (2006-2008).

After all, as the first of the poems I quote from above concludes:
The straightest line imaginable
just over the breakers
visibly separating the two
doesn't exist.
You do.

Yet, can you hold
a handful of salt water
to prove it
for just one moment
before you go?
The straight line, the centrist discourse, doesn't exist - except in the abstractions we're invited so vociferously to inhabit and believe in - but, unprovably yet demonstrably, 'you do'.

This is a lovely and thought-provoking collection from a poet who's been making a contribution to our literature for almost half a century. Judging from the poems here, she's still going strong!



Poetry NZ 48 (2014)




The book has been published by John Denny of Puriri Press in a limited edition of 50 copies. Most of these have already been sold or distributed to friends, but there are still a very few copies for sale. John Denny adds that:
People wanting a copy should contact me first to make sure there are some still available (puriripress@gmail.com), in which case I'll confirm and send them an invoice. The price is $NZ50 plus $5.90 pack & post.
As you can see from the sample pages included in this post, it's a lovely piece of printing: on sumptuous paper, with a handprinted cover, and all the things we collectors cherish so much in a small-press book.
[NB: As of Sunday, 25th October, this edition is officially
SOLD OUT
so from now on you'll have to consult it in a public collection near you!]


Jan Kemp: "Stolpersteine / Tripstones." Tripstones (2020)
[photograph: Bronwyn Lloyd]


Sunday, March 15, 2020

Christchurch Mosque Attack - First Anniversary



Christchurch, 15th March 2019

Du mußt dein Leben ändern
– Rainer Maria Rilke

Do we have to feel that pixilated head
burning behind our eyes?the media
keep broadcasting a manacled muscular
torso signalling triumph over the dead

his fingers cocked to a smirkthe score
perhapsJacinda Ardern’s face
caught in a rictus of grief
can’t quite displace
the bluntness of his semaphore

on this darkest of days it feels like our worst fears
were always justifiedour impotence
out in the open for all to seeour pain

trumped by the old familiar reptile brain
but scrolling down those flowers those faces those tears
I can’t see them as nothingaren’t they us?


[19/3/19]



Louvre: Louvre: Male Torso (4th-5th century BCE)


I thought that now might be the time to post this poem I wrote shortly after the terrible mosque shootings in Christchurch, exactly one year ago today. In form it's a very loose adaptation of Rainer Maria Rilke's great sonnet about Apollo. Something about that picture of the suspect in the dock reminded me of the statue Rilke was referring to - but in a very different way ...

Archaïscher Torso Apollos
Archaic Torso of Apollo

Wir kannten nicht sein unerhörtes Haupt,
We never knew his unheard-of head
darin die Augenäpfel reiften. Aber
where the eyeballs ripened. But
sein Torso glüht noch wie ein Kandelaber,
his torso still glows like a candelabra
in dem sein Schauen, nur zurückgeschraubt,
in which his gaze, only half-illuminated

sich hält und glänzt. Sonst könnte nicht der Bug
holds and dazzles. Otherwise the bow
der Brust dich blenden, und im leisen Drehen
of the breast wouldn’t join in, and the light twist
der Lenden könnte nicht ein Lächeln gehen
of the loins couldn’t lend a smile
zu jener Mitte, die die Zeugung trug.
to that centre, which holds fertility.

Sonst stünde dieser Stein enstellt und kurz
Otherwise this stone would be shut and cut short
unter der Shultern durchsichtigem Sturz
under the shoulders’ transparent fall
und flimmerte nicht so wie Raubtierfelle;
and would not flicker like a predator’s skin;

und brächte nicht aus allen seinen Rändern
and would not burst out on all sides
aus wie ein Stern: denn da ist keine Stelle,
like a star: since there’s no part
die dich nicht sieht. Du mußt dein Leben ändern.
which doesn’t see you. You must change your life.

For more translations of Rilke's poem, you can check out the multiple versions collected here.



Rainer Maria Rilke (1875-1926)


Thursday, September 05, 2019

Tara McLeod: 8 Poems by New Zealand Poets (2019)




8 Poems by New Zealand Poets 2019
Designed by Tara McLeod (Auckland: The Pear Tree Press, 2019)

Yesterday I received my two author's copies of Tara McLeod's beautiful new chapbook 8 Poems by New Zealand Poets. It's the fourth in the series, earlier editions having appeared in 2014, 2017 and 2018:







Each book is billed as containing "8 new poems from contemporary NZ poets." It's quite a stellar list. To date the following poets have appeared in the series:

    2014:
  1. Riemke Ensing
  2. Brian Gregory
  3. David Gregory
  4. Judith Haswell
  5. David Howard
  6. Peter Olds
  7. Paul Thompson
  8. Denys Trussell

  9. 2017:
  10. Riemke Ensing
  11. Brian Gregory
  12. Judith Haswell
  13. John Mitchell
  14. Michael O’Leary
  15. Rachel Scott
  16. Paul Thompson
  17. Denys Trussell

  18. 2018:
  19. Glenn Colquhoun
  20. Riemke Ensing
  21. Brian Gregory
  22. Rachel McAlpine
  23. Daryl McLaren
  24. Karl Stead
  25. Paul Thompson
  26. Richard von Sturmer


Here's my own poem, 'The Oceanic Feeling,' from the latest volume:




And here's a list, in order, of all the poets included:

  1. Michele Leggott
  2. Elizabeth Brooke-Carr
  3. Alan Loney
  4. Michael Harlow
  5. Linda Gill
  6. Jack Ross
  7. Gregory O'Brien
  8. Paula Green
  9. Riemke Ensing


Pretty good company to keep, I'm sure you'll agree!




I guess what's most striking about the books is the inventiveness with which Tara has come up with a different design for every poem: with bold colours and variegated font choices to complement the mood of each of them.

I couldn't be happier with the Pasifika look of the title and layout of my own poem, and I'm sure all the other poets feel the same. When Tara showed me a proof of what he had in mind in his studio in Orewa, I was quite blown away. For someone as addicted as I am to handprinting and poetry posters and all those fascinating surrounds to the classic slim volume of verse, it was manna in the wilderness.

I won't disguise the fact: the books are expensive. If you live near a library with a good rare books or special collections section - and which of us doesn't? - you should be able to get your hands on a copy, though (albeit, probably, with white gloves on).

It's always a thrill to collaborate with a real artist, and it's nice to know that Tara is beginning to get the credit he deserves, with a major new book - Tara McLeod: A Typographer's Journey - on his work as a designer, printer and sculptor due out from Lesley Smith's Katsura Press later this year.



Oh, and why are there nine poets rather than eight in this particular volume? Through an act of kindness on the artist's part, actually. Elizabeth Brooke-Carr was going to be included in the 2020 volume, but the state of her health made it seem increasingly likely that she'd never live to see it.

Accordingly, Riemke Ensing offered to bow out to give space for Elizabeth in this book instead. Touched by this gesture, Tara decided to include Riemke's poem anyway - there's a note explaining the circumstances beside it.

Elizabeth Brooke-Carr died in her Dunedin home on the 3rd of September, 2019. I don't know if she was able to see her poem in print before she died, but at least the rest of us can.

Entitled 'All that remains is pressed flat,' it's a very moving account of a funeral. Was it Harold Bloom who remarked that elegy was the mode in which poets almost always succeed?