Alice Te Punga Somerville, Always Italicise: How to Write While Colonised - Kupu rere kē

[ID: A poem titled: Kupu rere kē. [in italics] My friend was advised to italicise all the foreign words in her poems. This advice came from a well-meaning woman with NZ poetry on her business card and an English accent in her mouth. I have been thinking about this advice. The convention of italicising words from other languages clarifies that some words are imported: it ensures readers can tell the difference between a foreign language and the language of home. I have been thinking about this advice. Marking the foreign words is also a kindness: every potential reader is reassured that although you're expected to understand the rest of the text, it's fine to consult a dictionary or native speaker for help with the italics. I have been thinking about this advice. Because I am a contrary person, at first I was outraged — but after a while I could see she had a point: when the foreign words are camouflaged in plain type you can forget how they came to be there, out of place, in the first place. I have been thinking about this advice and I have decided to follow it. Now all of my readers will be able to remember which words truly belong in -[end italics]- Aotearoa -[italics]- and which do not.

Next image is the futurama meme: to shreds you say...]

(Image ID by @bisexualshakespeare)

Poetry on Palestine

Kate Winslet & Melanie Lynskey

Heavenly Creatures (1994) dir. Peter Jackson

Source: The Exploding Frangipani ; Lesbian Writing From Australia and New Zealand -edited by Cathie Dunsford and Susan Hawthorne

In Bloom

You were the spring

a n d

I was the flower in bloom

Joel Lester // Hymns, Proverbs, Poems, and Prophecy.

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No Ordinary Sun - Hone Tūwhare - Aotearoa (New Zealand)

Tree let your arms fall: raise them not sharply in supplication to the bright enhaloed cloud. Let your arms lack toughness and resilience for this is no mere axe to blunt nor fire to smother. Your sap shall not rise again to the moon’s pull. No more incline a deferential head to the wind’s talk, or stir to the tickle of coursing rain. Your former shagginess shall not be wreathed with the delightful flight of birds nor shield nor cool the ardour of unheeding lovers from the monstrous sun. Tree let your naked arms fall nor extend vain entreaties to the radiant ball. This is no gallant monsoon’s flash, no dashing trade wind’s blast. The fading green of your magic emanations shall not make pure again these polluted skies . . . for this is no ordinary sun. O tree in the shadowless mountains the white plains and the drab sea floor your end at last is written.

Rakiura - Stewart Island

This island is my anchor

Where trees echo the stories of the land

And rangers laugh and dance and sing

Unleashing the wild child within.

This island is my anchor

Where I will sing with friends until 

the fires burn out

And the sky grows dark

Then the eyes of the universe

Will illuminate the path

Guiding the way for tired girls

Safely back to their cabins

And to their beds where

They will rest their tired bones

Prepared for another day.

Karanga mai,

e te moana o aku tīpuna

Ka huri au, ka rongo ki a Tangaroa

Ka hurihia, ka pūawhehia au e Tāwhiri-mātea

Whakatakina ai aku tātai

———

Call me forth

The ocean of my ancestors

I turn to, I listen to/sense Tangaroa [God of the Ocean]

I am turned and blown about Tāwhiri-mātea [God of the Wind]

In search of my heritage / Reciting my lineage

Deceit

Lies

A story web spun in the eyes of the People

A story of pain and degradation

A story about a phoenix

Rising from the ashes

A feel good story for the masses

But how about down in Massachusetts

Where day by day they suffer and sway with the crime rates hitting a new record high in the big cities as people die

How about in Florida

Where the “Florida Man” phenomenon deserves its own show

Men going crazy on flaka or rage, drugs and pain

And the rest of the US makes it a meme

How about in Washington State

Where the protests went so hard they took an entire city block from the police and made it a commune for a time

This world is going to shit

So quick

That we are struggling to stop it

And the politicians?

They don’t care

They’re probably paid to make it happen

Kupu rere kē My friend was advised to italicise all the foreign words in her poems. This advice came from a well-meaning woman with NZ poetry on her business card and an English accent in her mouth. I have been thinking about this advice. The convention of italicising words from other languages clarifies that some words are imported: it ensures readers can tell the difference between a foreign language and the language of home. I have been thinking about this advice. Marking the foreign words is also a kindness: every potential reader is reassured that although you’re expected to understand the rest of the text, it’s fine to consult a dictionary or native speaker for help with the italics. I have been thinking about this advice. Because I am a contrary person, at first I was outraged — but after a while I could see she had a point: when the foreign words are camouflaged in plain type you can forget how they came to be there, out of place, in the first place. I have been thinking about this advice and I have decided to follow it. Now all of my readers will be able to remember which words truly belong in Aotearoa and which do not.

Alice Te Punga Somerville, Always Italicise: How to Write While Colonised - Kupu rere kē

"Let us put awhile away All the cares of work-a-day, For a golden time forget, Task and worry, toil and fret, Let us take a day to dream In the meadow by the stream. We may lie in grasses cool Fringing a pellucid pool, We may learn the gay brook-runes Sung on amber afternoons, And the keen wind-rhyme that fills Mossy hollows of the hills. Where the wild-wood whisper stirs We may talk with lisping firs, We may gather honeyed blooms In the dappled forest glooms, We may eat of berries red O'er the emerald upland spread. We may linger as we will In the sunset valleys still, Till the gypsy shadows creep From the starlit land of sleep, And the mist of evening gray Girdles round our pilgrim way. We may bring to work again Courage from the tasselled glen, Bring a strength unfailing won From the paths of cloud and sun, And the wholesome zest that springs From all happy, growing things."

--A Day Off, Lucy Maud Montgomery.

Any day spent with my girl feels like a day off, even when I must leave her for a few hours to work. But travelling with her around North Island these past few days, proper days off, has been sheer bliss!

Kate Winslet & Melanie Lynskey | Heavenly Creatures

sometimes i wish i had

the courage to leave my comfort zone

so that when it rains unexpectedly

the office doesn’t see my tits through my wet white blouse