TO celebrate National Poetry Day, we asked three local poets to share one of their favourite Wellington poems.

Airini Beautrais finished a Master of Arts in creative writing at VUW in 2005, and published her first book Secret Heart just a year later. In 2007, it was named best first book of poetry in the Montana New Zealand Book Awards. She chose Home thoughts by Denis Glover.
Home thoughts
I do not dream of Sussex downs
Or quaint old England’s quaint old towns
I think of what may yet be seen
In Johnsonville and Geraldine.
Airini says:
I like it because it’s funny. It expresses a sentiment that many New Zealanders felt at the time it was first written (1936). It is about championing the plain places that people love to make fun of. It is about looking to the future, possibly in unexpected places. Also about thumbing one’s nose to the colonial mentality. I think of this poem when I drive past J’ville in the mornings sometimes.
A good poem has poise and rhythm. The words are chosen carefully. Every word belongs there.
A good poet is someone who is prepared to read a lot of other people’s work, and viciously edit their own work. A bad poet thinks everything they write is genius.
We need poetry because a lot of the wiring in our brains is around language and poetry helps with this. It has a multitude of purposes from amusement to provocation, profoundness to profanity.

Jenny Bornholdt is a poet and anthologist, who received the 2002 Katherine Mansfield memorial fellowship in 2002 and the Arts Foundation of New Zealand Laureate Award in 2003. She selected this poem, from Louise Wallace’s first collection Since June, released by Victoria University Press in 2009.
Carnivale
The most important things I can tell you
are that we sleep under the trucks at night,
and it is always hot, so the men
are nearly always drunk.
We do not recruit in the towns.
Real freaks are hard to find, and it usually takes
a good twenty mile drive.
We don’t pry the nickel from anyone’s pocket.
We don’t have to.
There is a certain period of time
in which we cannot return to the same place.
When we do eventually roll back in
you won’t recognise the name.
Everything else is how you might expect –
Lobster Gal; the Mentalist.
Jenny says:
I love the way this poem suggests a whole way of life, but leaves so much unsaid. It’s ‘about’ life in the circus, on the edge of what might be considered normal. The last two lines are what jump out at me. They’re what the whole poem is heading towards - the full-stop. They’re so concrete and the rest of the poem is so vaguely menacing. Finally there’s detail, and what detail – who or what on earth are these people? I love the matter-of-fact weirdness of the names at the end. For me this poem is a reminder that odd is good.
A good poem gets up off the page.
A good poet is always pushing language around.
We need poetry because it can shift the way we look at and think about the world. It can also make us think about language and how powerful and affecting it can be.

Dinah Hawken trained as a physiotherapist, psychotherapist and social worker before publishing her first collection of poetry in 1987. She chose this poem from Vincent O’Sullivan’s collection Further Convictions Pending.
Line of approach
One apprehends so much, between the kitchen
and the back veranda, from which the globe
rounds out; the yachts on the half-huffed harbour
poised as the little fingers of elderly

aunts, white and tiny, triangling
distance. And before the veranda even
the cool lino palming one’s summery sole,
how much does it tell, should you let it?

The easeful nakedness of living with mere
things as they are: the pressure of earth
agreeing to be stood on: the easterly’s mild
puff at five opened windows,

pregnant with five gauze curtains
waiting to be asked. And the breeze drops,
the sails hold still as nails on a drying
hand, what sort of a day, and the cloud

stalled at the side of a hill, is this a painting
or what? Picture it how you will,
colours dye as fast whatever you call
them: between the kitchen and the back

veranda, the world in a sequence of itself
should you call it that, is the world, take it
or leave it, calling the shots if you don’t.
The frisson of moving targets, steady as you like.
Dinah says:
I love this poem’s vigour and joy. The joy is about seeing a view of the harbour from the hills on a live, still day. It is about appreciating things as they are on the way from the kitchen to the back verandah, and the wonderful line ‘The easeful nakedness of living with mere/things as they are’ is Vincent’s way of sneaking wisdom into the conversation.
A good poem makes you start, and works on a number of levels.
A good poet loves language and the movement of language.
We need poetry because respecting, trusting and playing with language keeps it alive and well.
National Poetry Day, with readings from Airini Beautrais, Jenny Bornholdt and Dinah Hawken, 6-7pm, Unity Books, July 22.