Today is National Poetry Day in Aotearoa! New Zealand is celebrating poets and poetry. Here is a poem I wrote in 2011 at a hui in Wellington on Pacific literature. It speaks to roots and renewal, themes that were very important to me at that moment and it pays homage to some of the most influential New Zealand and Pasifika writers. Poets, I love you!
Cuttings from a Pacific Garden
For Albert Wendt
I cried for Alistair Campbell last night
I cried for Alistair Te Ariki Campbell
and his house perched
on that windy mountain
overlooking Kapiti Island
and Te Rauparaha.
How solitary.
No, I wouldn’t have lived there either
but he had Meg
almost to the end.
You introduced me to him, actually.
More than twenty years ago now –
can it really be that long?
I loved him from the first page.
When I…
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