A poem a day: Layers
Author:
Alice Te Punga Somerville
Publisher:
Auckland University Press
ISBN:
9781869409760
Date Published:
08 September 2022
Pages:
88
Format:
Paperback
RRP:
$24.99
Aotearoa celebrates Phantom Billstickers National Poetry Day on Friday when poetry will pop up in churches, bookshops, libraries and out on the streets through music, poets sharing an open mic, book launches, poetry walks and more. Here at Kete, we’re starting early with a poem each day this week. We start with Layers from Always Italicise: how to write while colonised by Alice Te Punga Somerville. In May, the collection won the Mary and Peter Biggs Award for Poetry at the Ockham New Zealand Book Awards.
Layers
(for Vula)
Our language is in triplicate:
Like those old accounting notebooks
with different coloured pages
nestled one on top of the other
over and over again;
a concertina, geological time on a rockface, a lei.
The writing looks different each time:
Dark pen on top layer
Clear copy next
And finally, underneath, a scratched barely legible pattern
Readable only if you know what you’re looking for,
More faith and hope than ink.
Frustrated with the chore of reading
I argue first and second layers are adequate:
Two languages are more than enough to teach our child;
You gently urge me to persevere
Not directly, but by your own focused study of letters barely there,
Knowing – so I realise – that in faint outlines and mere impressions
You’ll find the heart of me.
From Always Italicise: how to write while colonised by Alice Te Punga Somerville (Auckland University Press, $24.99)
Read more about Phantom Billstickers National Poetry Day
Read Kete’s review of Always Italicise: how to write while colonised
