Poetry lives. My small but exquisitely produced book of poems Where your left hand rests has been reissued by Godwit, Random House. I have had a steady stream of requests for a second edition from readers and booksellers since the first run was snapped up in 2010.
The book was designed by Pieta Brenton and features Victorian fabric images integrated into the text. The book won Pieta PANZ designer of the year, the judges describing it as an ‘exquisite object reflect[ing] perfect harmony between image, type, spaciousness and scale’.
Marilyn at Malibu
In that other country the one we call home
on the faded apricot wall of my study
hangs a great big silver framed portrait
of Marilyn Monroe at Malibu standing
on a terrace drinking champagne out of a slipper
glass, her head thrown back and her white teeth
sparkling in the sunlight that you simply know
was shining though George Barris captured her
in black and white. And you know she hasn’t
long to go and what she is thinking
is anyone’s guess, perhaps a rueful moment
of hidden glee over the night she stepped out
of JFK’s birthday cake or her skirt swirled
round her head when she made Some Like It Hot
or just some moment of madness the kind
you can feel when standing high on the colonnaded
balcony of the Mediterranean palace where
we live now, sipping rosé, eating the white
flesh of a peach and thinking how easily
we are tempted to walk into space towards the sea
(From Where your left hand rests, poem first published in New Zealand Books)