Higgs 8

Go home. With a chisel ruin the frame, climb through the window.
A duplicate, a duplicate,

Trowel for cultivating window boxes
Reference Number: 114/111/02-G

Higgs 7

Find the opening, stride through tall resistance, arms covering the face;
slide into the stream.
The keys unseen. Nor palpable among the boggy roots.

View of Mt Dumas, Campbell Island
Reference Number: PA12-1423-012

Higgs 6

Until a tabby cat
appears, stares, disappears.

Ann Finnimore surrounded by vases of flowers
Reference Number: 1/2-147836-F

Higgs 5

Hurry back down the bank steeper from above,
retrace the slippery track under the lupins,
brush off lupin flowers in a clearing edged with serried russet stalks,
no passage visible.

Plan showing the structure of an observatory tent
Reference Number: B-091-008

Higgs 4

Feel for keys, braille-fingered over pen, lipstick, purse, phone, cards, diary, paper-clip. Not a jingle.

Flowers in fields near Sfax, Tunisia
Reference Number: DA-03012-F

Higgs 3

One wet shoe, damp pages stick together, gold high heels dancing,
a dress the colour of wild lupins, mascara, holidays, bin it.

Poul Gnatt and Julie Barker on sand dunes at Bethells Beach, January 1954
Reference Number: KW-0001-G

Higgs 2

Jump the stream, land in tough bracken.
A narrow track through lupins up the bank to the road, not a short cut.

Buller [1846?]
Reference Number: WC-325

Welcome to 'Serial'

Kia ora from Cilla McQueen.

Welcome to Serial, an ongoing publication with images from the collections of the National Library of New Zealand Te Puna Mātauranga o Aotearoa.

Keep an eye on this blog for installments every Monday, Wednesday and Friday. The first chapter is titled 'Higgs'.

Higgs 1

Through waist-high grass cut through the empty section.
Bend to retrieve the glossy supplement falling out of the newspaper.
Slip ankle-deep in muddy water

Tussock grass plant aciphylla colensoi, 1961
Reference Number: 1/4-044636-F

it's cilla

It's official – the NZ Poet Laureate for 2009-2011 is Southland's own Cilla McQueen, from Bluff. We in the north remember the warmth with which Cilla welcomed a gang of 22 poets to her home ground for the BLUFF 06 symposium. We remember the fabulous hospitality of Te Rau Aroha Marae where we stayed and where Cilla launched her CD, A Wind Harp, with that inimitable smoky voice and backing from the Blue Neutrinos. Then there was the trip to Rakiura (Stewart Island) for the second leg of the symposium, a big reading in the community hall at Oban. Cilla, we will never forget the south, and from all points north we salute you and extend our love and good wishes as you begin your laureateship. Arohanui!

Rob Allan, Tusiata Avia, Jeanne Bernhardt, Hilary Chung, Kay McKenzie Cooke, John Dolan, Jacob Edmond, Martin Edmond, Murray Edmond, David Eggleton, Cliff Fell, Brian Flaherty, Paula Green, Michael Harlow, Bernadette Hall, Jeffrey Paparoa Holman, David Howard, Alison Hunt, Michele Leggott, Bronwyn Lloyd, Therese Lloyd, Selina Tusitala Marsh, Emma Neale, Richard Reeve, Jack Ross, Helen Sword and Lisa Williams.

Here is Cilla's poem from OBAN 06, the online anthology that was compiled and launched during the symposium:

FOVEAUX EXPRESS

Diesel sounds aromatic
magenta, oxblood,
mineral smooth
any how as boronia

swivel that levers
a shoepolish lid,
key curls oily metal.
Poetry takes you apart,

puts you back different
as this day's passage
on shapeshifting water,
one to another island

swift as the stroke
of a pen the toothed strait
on the whale's path
chewed through, islets

scattered between,
text in motion
gimballed on muscling
swells, word-ware, cargo.

Bluff, April 2006

Images from top:
1. Cilla McQueen and Richard Reeve check the marine forecast en route for Rakiura on the Foveaux Express, 23 April 2005
2. Early morning at Te Rau Aroha Marae, the wharenui carved by Cliff Whiting
3. View from the harbour at Oban

Photo credits: Brian Flaherty and Alison Hunt

Molly again

In September last year Michele wrote about Mollie the Ohakune elephant. To mark the end of Michele's laureateship, writer, blogger and crafter Bronwyn Lloyd made the Molly you can see here.

You can read more about this Molly on Bronwyn's blog.