Writing from Memory and Life

Memory and experience are fertile places for writers.

I always think the stories and poems we react most strongly to are the ones that strike a chord of empathy or understanding, because we have experienced similar things or thoughts ourselves.

One of my favourite poems is Originally, by Carol Ann Duffy and One Art, by Elizabeth Bishop. Both these poems look at loss – of things, of places, of people – and at change, but from very different perspectives. Which is another thing I love about poems and stories – the ability to get a glimpse of other lives for a moment, to get a sense of what other people feel and experience, which gives us a bigger view of the world, and lets us know we aren’t the only ones who feel how we feel.

This is another poem that I wrote years ago, and has had both a recent rejuvenation, and recent publication, in the summer issue of the NZPS magazine, a fine line

 

Orphan

This place is so big it doesn’t diminish with age
– shrinks me to the smallness of six
think I can outstare the sun

Eyes bleed a kaleidoscope
my fingers sweat
rainbows

This place is so big it understands savannah
explains it in words of one syllable
hot – dry – wide –

I shed my family here once
– hidden in a tangle of blackberry
I tasted the syllables of orphan
until I heard my name
called by my mother’s mouth

Now I know refugee

My tongue learned to ache
with the weight of not talking
My ears untangled speech of a new flavour
– syllables thin and tart as unripe blackberry

This place is so big, I hope there’s space
for an adult orphan coming back
with a whisper of home
on her tongue
but no key in her pocket

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