The Sunday Poem, by Philip Armstrong
Flowers, maybe orchids. That's a coral
reef. Or someone's brain. A map of the back
country. Dead trees, lungs, a lump of coal.
A picture by Vesalius, a book
broken along the spine. I'd rather not
say. Patterns on my eyelids. How did
you get those? A blackbird shot at night.
Something in me more than me. A deed
without a name. Spilt milk. Piss stains. What
on earth is wrong with you? Two oil slicks meeting.
Faces I don't know except from sleep.
Shadows on an ultrasound. A worldwide
cloud of mushroom spores, an ice-cream melting,
forest fires. I guess our time is up.
Taken with kind permission from one of the year's very best poetry collections, Touch Screen by Philip Armstrong (Otago University Press, $30), available in bookstores nationwide.
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The Sunday Poem, by Philip Armstrong
Ink Blots Flowers, maybe orchids. That's a coral reef. Or someone's brain. A map of the back country. Dead trees, lungs, a lump of coal. A picture by Vesalius, a book broken along the spine. I'd rather not say. Patterns on my eyelids. How did you get those? A blackbird shot at night. Something in me more than me. A deed without a name. Spilt milk. Piss stains. What on earth is wrong with you? Two oil slicks meeting. Faces I don't know except from sleep. Shadows on an ultrasound. A worldwide cloud of mushroom spores, an ice-cream melting, forest fires. I guess our time is up. Taken with kind permission from one of the year's very best poetry collections, Touch Screen by Philip Armstrong (Otago University Press, $30), available in bookstores nationwide.
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14-05-2025
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Dunedin author wins top award for her poetry
Emma Neale. Photo: supplied A Dunedin author has been honoured at the country's biggest literary arts awards. Editor, novelist and poet Emma Neale won the Mary and Peter Biggs Award for Poetry for her collection Liar, Liar, Lick, Spit at the Ockham New Zealand Book Awards in Auckland last night. Poetry category convener of judges David Eggleton said the collection of poems displayed an exceptional ability to turn confessional anecdotes into "quicksilvery flashes of insight". "Emma Neale is a writer fantastically sensitive to figurative language and its possibilities," he said. Her book was about fibs, fables and telling true stories, which were perceived by others as tall stories and the knock-on or flow-on effects of distrust — the scales dropping from one's eyes. Mr Eggleton said it was about power and a sense of powerlessness, belief and the loss of belief, about trust and disillusion, disenchantment with fairytales and compassion. The book, published by the Otago University Press, was nominated for the award alongside Hopurangi — Songcatcher: Poems from the Maramataka, by Robert Sullivan; In the Half Light of a Dying Day, by C.K. Stead; and Slender Volumes, by Richard von Sturmer. Neale had told the Otago Daily Times being shortlisted felt like an award in itself, feeling that the judges had read her work and seen merit in it was "really, really gratifying". — APL
