to the website and blog of Joanna Preston,
Tasmanaut poet, editor, and freelance creative writing tutor.
Poems
Ah, winter! Season of frost, hot chocolate, and plenty of evening to spend reading lots of poetry! Here are three poems from The Summer King for you to enjoy.
The Valley Farmers
This is the slow unfolding of night,
the road homewards in thickening shadow,
a spill of light glinting like copper wire
as the sun slips from the last smudge of cloud.
Farm-wives will be calling their ducks,
feeding the dogs, setting flame to kindling
before closing their doors on dusk.
There will be meat, and bread, and ease
for tired men with soil in their skin.
And then night: the last light doused,
pale bodies unclothed, and a low bed
where we too can unmake ourselves.
Edge
The gleam of light
from the edge of the cold
curved blade of Grandpa’s sickle
hung like a harvested moon
in the darkest corner of the barn.
It followed the tines
of the garden fork,
splayed like his fingers,
probing the vast earth
for constellations
of Kipfler potatoes.
When he died, I saw it leave him,
watched the glaze of shadow
spread, like a bruise
in the lee of his
sharp bones.
from Venery:
vi. A Superfluity of Nuns
What could Christ want
with so many wives?
Cloistered women
in their dark habits
of obedience, shut up
at night like hens in a run?
A sanctified harem of
shrouded flesh, pale
as loaves of new-risen
bread, the mute tongues
of their patellae worn flat.
Ranks and rows of women
the Armada of God,
wimples set like spinnakers
tacking bravely across the storm.
Commentaries
Other People’s Poems – Close Readings, Analyses and Poem Commentaries
To paraphrase Owen Marshall: if you want to know the time, look at the clock’s face. If you want to know how a clock works, you have to take the back off. And that’s what close reading is – taking the time to try and work out what a poem is doing, and how. Drinking it in. Learnings its secrets. Wandering around the poem’s rooms and rumaging through its drawers.
Workshops
Welcome to The Poetry Class
Since 2010 I’ve been running poetry workshops as a freelance creative writing tutor. Below is a basic outline of what to expect in each type of workshop – a sample of the things I regularly offer. Join the Poetry Class mailing list, and be first to hear when new classes open.
To see what classes are currently being offered, click here.
To enrol in a current class, click here.
To be added to the Poetry Class mailing list, click here.
To learn more about the sorts of poetry classes I offer in general, read on.
I am available to run poetry or general creative writing classes for writers’ groups, festivals, and private individuals, and can tailor a workshop to your specific needs.
Continue reading “Workshops”
Blog
Transcription of a fever-dream
– The Ockham New Zealand Book Awards, 11th May 2022 It’s a lovely night on Queen Street, downtown Auckland. But there are roadworks everywhere, and the Uber driver apologises. Do my best to get you there in time. I’ve lived here most of my life, but never been to the Q Theatre before. Is it …
And back up again
… because just as I hit post on the previous one, as if by magic, there was a knock at the door and this appeared: I’m not saying that the OUP team have implanted some sort of tracking device in my brain, to have their timing be this perfect, but …
Back down with a bump
Wow. I’m in the middle of writing a post about the whole Ockhams experience, and made the mistake of checking the Ockhams twitter feed to see if there were any photos that might jog my memory of a magical night. There’s a reason why I don’t like being photographed. https://twitter.com/theockhams/status/1524544725029916672/photo/1 For the record, I hadn’t …