Tuesday, June 22, 2010

Tuesday Poem: A Good Story by Airini Beautrais

My friend likes to find things in skip bins.  I don't have  time
to  list all  the  things  he has found. Put  it  this  way - when
you drive past one, you have to stop.
       The story, as I have  heard  it, is  that he  once found a
 girlfriend in a skip bin. She was  scrabbling  around  looking
for  things,  and  when  he  climbed  in,  they met.  This was
before  she met the  banjo player and the drummer.  But this
is  just  the  story  as  the  drummer  tells  it, and he may not
necessarily be  trusted. He has this way of  smiling when he
talks that suggests he could easily be lying. And he has been
known  to  eat  daffodils. The  truth  doesn't move  people to
do  things  like this.

_____
I was one of the first readers of this poem ever, and for most, if not all, of the poems in the Montana award-winning book Secret Heart from which A Good Story comes. The collection was published in 2006, the year after Airini and I each completed an MA in Creative Writing at Victoria University of Wellington. Secret Heart was Airini's thesis and I was lucky enough to be in her tutor group.


Airini listened interestedly to all our feedback but made very few changes - except to play around a little with form and deciding on the prose poem. Later, her marker commented favourably on 'the casual tossed-offness' of the poems, and that is certainly it. They have a cool, wry, downbeat kind of feel to them, as if someone's just at that moment tossing words over a (leather-jacketed) shoulder or, as in one poem, spitting them like toothpaste out of the car window.

There is enchantment in these poems too - whether it be a guy finding a girlfriend in a skip bin or sisters walking through Cuba Mall with a full-length mirror or trees 'turning folktale' as dusk falls. This is Wellington 'off-centre' (and the South Island, too, in a road trip sequence) and it's a nice place to be. The truth is, as Airini read out her poems in class, we all sat there smiling and then scrabbled round for useful things to say. They are what they are. And we loved them.

[Google books insert with more of Airini's poems removed ]

A science teacher, Airini is currently on maternity leave caring for her new baby and working on her second book of poems.  She's given me permission to run this poem on my blog. 
Do try more Tuesday Poems. Bryan Walpert is the editor this week. 

14 comments:

Helen Lowe said...

I read Airini's "Secret Heart" collection the year it won the NZ Society of Authors Jessie Mackay Award for the Best First Book of Poetry (2006?) and remember being "not quite sure" about it. Prose poetry--but actually, it read more like prose to me. And does, still. I also found the narrative voice, when extended to collection length, curiously flat. Having said that, Airini definitely has a fine eye for the avant-garde and gothic, juxtaposed with everyday NZ, that does provoke that "ah, yes" moment of recognition.

Helen Rickerby said...

I really like this poem, and I enjoyed Airini's book. It's a fun but authentic voice. And she writes about a world I know, makes Te Aro a place worthy of literature. I heard her read some of these when your class did your reading - I guess that must have been 2005 - and I was particularly struck by her poetry, and Vana Manasiadis's (of course!). What an excellent class you must have had.

Kathleen Jones said...

I enjoyed this - but I would class it as 'Flash Fiction' rather than prose-poetry. It's not rhythmic enough and the language just not allusive enough for PP. But very interesting FF!

Mary McCallum said...

Interesting responses - thank you Helen, Helen and Kathleen. I guess what I respond to in Airini's poetry is the fresh 'skewed' view first and foremost - I love the thought of someone finding a girlfriend in a skip bin where one normally finds rubbish. It's deliciously youthful stuff and, as you say HelenR, redolent with the place she lived - inner city Te Aro. And, Helen L, the 'ah yes' moments happen a lot with Airini's work - you can see it when she reads aloud.

As far as what prose poetry actually is - I don't know to be honest. I haven't read enough of it. But this feels like a form of prose poetry in that it blends both elements - the concentrated moment and the use of surprising words and phrases with the cadence and shape of prose and a kind of narrative... Flash fiction sounds fun - must look into it, Kathleen.

S.L. Corsua said...

Ditto to Kathleen's comment. But I do like the "girlfriend in a skip bin" and the "eat daffodils" lines. I read the other nine pieces in the Google Books preview, and, pondering, I do think that the following count as prose poems (I'm not so sure with the others): "Black Socks," "Economics," and "Bookshop." The last is my favorite, with its second paragraph all about pins, pins, pins; and at the end of it, a signal tower that one could "slip [in one's] pocket without anyone noticing."

Anonymous said...
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
Mary McCallum said...

S.L - thank you for taking the time to read more of Airini's poems. I appreciate your feedback. Our class never questioned the poems' essential poemness... do you think the prose poem form immediately makes the reader wonder which it really is? I'll go back now and re-read the three poems you mention...

Mary McCallum said...

S.L. how did you read those three poems as they aren't in the google preview? Will have to go back to the 'Pback' or 'physical book' (heard that phrase today!) But I just skimmed over Holes and Bpys in the google book - I love those two ...

Mary McCallum said...

*boys

S.L. Corsua said...

Hi, Mary. In the Google Books preview embedded on this post, pages 9-21 of the book are available for viewing, then it says the rest, pages 22-79, are "not shown in this preview." (So I don't get to read "Holes" and "Boys.") That's on my end. But, fret not. In the past (when I did research of international law via Google Books), I've encountered changes in the pages shown in the preview (as when I access the same preview page at work and then at home). I'm guessing Google remembers the IP address of the user and/or the day the preview is accessed.

S.L. Corsua said...

Re: do you think the prose poem form immediately makes the reader wonder which it really is?

A very interesting query. Hmm. What I do think is that when a reader encounters a paragraph, he/she automatically identifies it as prose. So when the reader encounters a piece tagged as a prose poem, there's a bit of eyebrow-raising involved and an unspoken 'convince me that it's a (prose) poem.' The prose poem tends to get poked and prodded and checked for poetic devices, more than the traditional poem does.

Then again, there are poets who strongly opine that the prose poem is not a poem. I still remember reading long-time blogger and prolific poet Tom Montag, who blogged (in 2006) about the 99 Propositions on Writing Poetry Successfully, saying that prose poems are not poems (here is the link). Well, that's one personal opinion. There are votes either way; as Wikipedia says in effect, the debate is ongoing.

Mary McCallum said...

Thanks for this last comment S.L - as well as your insight into the workings of google books. I will definitely check out the Montag link, thank you.

The Drummer said...

I've often wondered about the veracity of these daffodils. The skip-bin story is true, but I don't remember any flowers being hurt. That's not to say it didn't happen. In fact I'm sure it did.

Mary McCallum said...

A-hah! (pauses) Now - what to believe...?