Extract: ‘The Tiriti Translator’ and ‘Aloneness’ winners of the 2023 Caselberg Trust International Poetry Prize
By Kete Books | Posted:
‘The Tiriti Translator’ by Jilly O’Brien and ‘Aloneness’ by Tim Saunders were announced the dual winners of The 2023 Caselberg Trust International Poetry Prize late last year. First published in Landfall 246 and extracted together with kind permission from each poet here on Kete.
Extract: ‘The Tiriti Translator’ and ‘Aloneness’ winners of the 2023 Caselberg Trust International Poetry Prize — Kete Books
The Tiriti Translator by Jilly O’Brien
The swings were all chained
and the sea salt was finer
so I knew it was Sunday
I knew it was Sunday
for kirk-going carts
wore Sunday shirt with collar and tie
I watched their fury flash by
but the sea was our kirk
and a bou-backit sea requires work
even on a Sunday.
You weren’t to know we brought Sunday to you
when we came, hand-habble, to shoot kereru
travel upriver, harvest the moon
and the stars, buy land at the market
buttery-lippit, for a penny an acre
singing by afternoon
the tune of the righteous, the pious
the greedy, the liars, firm
in the truth of the written word.
Still, harken Tūī the parson bird
making the sound chains make
when they shake to the ground
Chain sounds part of his repertoire
the heart of resistance
Ko te Rātapu tēnei rā
The river puts her fingers in her ears
rolls the stones over and over
and over and over
even on a Sunday
Aloneness by Tim Saunders
Sometimes I would stay
with my grandfather
and listen
to thunder’s distant rumble
resound like a lonely kākāpō
down valleys
and eroded gullies,
moist and windborne
through the green velvet crush
of undergrowth.
Under a half-pie moon
he described the meaning of lekking
and talked of
nocturnal behaviours,
the uselessness of wings,
the scattered moss
that crept across headstones
and the south side of rātā.
On the shelf
above the fire
were my grandmother’s ashes.
Some nights
my grandfather scooped a bowl in the dust
and boomed for her.