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Poems, Imitations & Translations

Sunday

Notes to Tesseract (2026)


Cover design: Scarlett Robinson-Kean

Tesseract

Poems
by Jack Ross

Illustrations & book design
by Scarlett Robinson-Kean

ISBN 978-0-473-78266-5



Robert A. Heinlein: “– And he Built a Crooked House –.”

“What's a tesseract?”
“Didn't you go to school? A tesseract is a hypercube, a square figure with four dimensions to it, like a cube has three, and a square has two. Here, I'll show you …”

– Robert Heinlein, “– And he Built a Crooked House –.”
Astounding Science Fiction (1941)

Robert A. Heinlein: “– And he Built a Crooked House –.”

Online Notes

Contents:

  1. No time but the present (24/5-7/10/22)

  2. Mutual Forgiveness (12/11/22-27/5/23)
  3. Soft (22/9/22-5/7/23)
  4. The key (3/12/22-27/5/23)
  5. My partner (10/9/22-14/3/24)
  6. Pick-ups (19/10/22-23/2/24)
  7. The cat’s ritual (5/11/22-9/5/23)
  8. The Ballad of the Great Storm (23/11/22-5/7/23)
  9. Heavy Rescue 401 (5/12/22-8/3/24)
  10. Our backyard (13/9/22-3/2/24)
  11. Big pink (26/10/22-11/7/2023)
  12. Rain (30/10/22-27/2/24)
  13. The Great Impostor (26/9/22-13/2/24)
  14. Under the knife (10/11/22-3/3/24)
  15. An evening’s viewing (28/11/22-6/3/24)
  16. Power cut (27/11/22-27/5/23)
  17. It was so and not so (19/6/24)
  18. Spartacus (19/9/22-2/5/23)

  19. Chocolate Weetbix (6-7/4/22)

  20. Nice (20/9/22-7/2/24)
  21. So does this mean World War III? (18/11/22-11/7/2023)
  22. Insignificance (30/9/22-15/2/24)
  23. When people are anxious (14/11/22-11/7/2023)
  24. Gallowglass (6/9/22-28/1/24)
  25. India twenty years ago (29/9/22-14/2/24)
  26. The Sixties (23/10/22-24/2/24)
  27. Get out of the way! (29/10/22-26/2/24)
  28. Wolf (21/9/22-5/7/23)
  29. Strangers on a train (12/10/22-20/2/24)
  30. From Russia with Love (18/10/22-22/2/24)
  31. The Basketballathon (20/2/22-15/10/23)
  32. Towards the end (24/10/22-25/2/24)
  33. I miss it sometimes (15/11/22-11/7/2023)
  34. The inverse ninja law (17/11/22-11/7/2023)
  35. Bronwyn (8/12/22-5/7/23)
  36. My mother’s rose bushes (18/9/22-2/4/23)

  37. Time in Poetry (27-28/4/22)

  38. Zealandia (11/9/22-2/2/24)
  39. Scurvy Grass (6/2-22/7/21)
  40. Coming in from the cold (25/10/22-11/7/2023)
  41. All that you love will be carried away (17/9/22-7/2/24)
  42. Rear Window (8/10/22-17/2/24)
  43. Kimono (1/10/22-15/2/24)
  44. Is time travel possible? (25/9/22-12/2/24)
  45. Pizzagate (14/10/22-20/2/24)
  46. Coming Forth by Day (15/10/22-21/2/24)
  47. Déjà vu all over again (3/11/22-28/2/24)
  48. In my dream last night (21/10/22-5/7/23)
  49. The House on the Strand (3/10/22-16/2/24)
  50. Weather (17/10/22-22/2/24)
  51. Living history (4/12/22-8/3/24)
  52. Prisoners of K. Rd. (14/9/22-3/2/24)
  53. Last days (20/11/22-4/3/24)
  54. Catullus 101 (12/9/22-28/5/23)

  55. No wars but in words (24-25/5/22)

  56. Why do you write? (2/11/22-28/2/24)
  57. Gaslighting (29/11/22-5/7/23)
  58. Crash (26/11/22-5/3/24)
  59. You need to get a job (28/10/22-26/2/24)
  60. The Bard (22/10/22-24/2/24)
  61. The usual suspects (5/10/22-16/2/24)
  62. I used to quote (16/11/22-11/7/2023)
  63. Not everything is an anecdote (20/10/22-23/2/24)
  64. Mnemonics (31/10/22-8/5/23)
  65. Houseboat Days (22/11/22-12/7/2023)
  66. Emotionally labile (13/10/22-4/1/23)
  67. The Killing Floor (7/12/22-5/7/23)
  68. Experimental (9/12/22-8/2/24)
  69. Frack away (4/11/22-29/2/24)
  70. Bronwyn asked me (25/11/22-5/7/23)
  71. Catfish or cats? (6/12/22-27/5/23)
  72. Just Like the Others (27-28/10/20)



Acknowledgments:

Thanks, above all, to Bronwyn Lloyd for your invaluable advice throughout the process – and also for giving me permission to take your name in vain in so many of the poems.

Thanks, too, to my brilliant illustrator and book designer Scarlett Robinson-Kean. This book would be a very different thing without your vivid sense of colour and form.

Many of the pieces included here have been previously published, some in different forms. Thanks to the editors and publishers of all those anthologies, journals, and websites for permission to reproduce them here. For further details, please check below:

Prior Publications:

  1. ‘All that you love will be carried away,’ in Poetry Aotearoa Yearbook 2025: Breath [Issue #59]. Ed. Tracey Slaughter. Auckland: Massey University Press, 2025: 132-33.
  2. ‘Catfish or Cats,’ on Paula Green: NZ Poetry Shelf: Monday Poem (23/6/25): https://nzpoetryshelf.com/2025/06/23/poetry-shelf-monday-poem-catfish-or-cats-by-jack-ross/
  3. ‘India twenty years ago,’ on A Gentle Madness [https://madbookcollection.blogspot.com/2009/06/acquisitions-120-p-g-wodehouse.html
  4. ‘Heavy Rescue 401,’ on Titirangi Poets Ezine No.29 (October 2024)
  5. ‘Nice,’ on Live Encounters Poetry & Writing: Aotearoa Poets and Writers. Guest Ed. Lincoln Jaques (November-December 2024)
  6. ‘Kimono,’ on Live Encounters Poetry & Writing: Aotearoa Poets and Writers. Guest Ed. Lincoln Jaques (November-December 2024)
  7. ‘Soft,’ on Live Encounters Poetry & Writing: Aotearoa Poets and Writers. Guest Ed. Lincoln Jaques (November-December 2024)
  8. ‘It was so and not so (after Richard von Sturmer),’ on John Geraets: broaches (8/9/24)
  9. ‘Scurvy Grass,’ in Mike Johnson: A Festschrift. Ed. Trevor Landers. Auckland, 2024.
  10. ‘Experimental’ by Jack Ross,’ on Paula Green: NZ Poetry Shelf: Monday Poem (22/4/23)
  11. ‘My mother’s rose bushes,’ in Poetry Aotearoa Yearbook 2024: Revelations [Issue #58]. Ed. Tracey Slaughter. Auckland: Massey University Press, 2024: 119-20.
  12. ‘Rear Window,’ on The Imaginary Museum (17/2/24)
  13. ‘So does this mean World War III?,’ in Heaven’s Fringe II: Titirangi Poets. Ed. Piers Davies, Ron Riddell, & Gretchen Carroll. Auckland: Printable Reality, 2024. 175.
  14. ‘Houseboat Days,’ on The Imaginary Museum (12/9/23)
  15. ‘Catullus 101,’ on Papyri (2/5/23)
  16. ‘Emotionally labile’, on Live Encounters Poetry & Writing: Aotearoa New Zealand Poets & Writers Special Edition. Guest Ed. Lincoln Jaques (April 2023)
  17. ‘No time but the present,’ on Paula Green: NZ Poetry Shelf: Occasional Poems (7/10/22)
  18. ‘No wars but in words,’ on Paula Green: NZ Poetry Shelf: ‘No ideas but in …’ (3/6/22)
  19. ‘Time in Poetry,’ on Paula Green: NZ Poetry Shelf: Paragraph Room 2 (6/5/22)
  20. ‘Chocolate Weetbix,’ on Paula Green: NZ Poetry Shelf: 25 Poets on Poetry (14/4/22)


    •

    William Blake: For the Sexes: The Gates of Paradise (1793)


  1. Mutual Forgiveness (12/11/22-27/5/23)

    2. Notes:
    Mutual Forgiveness of each Vice
    Such are the Gates of Paradise
    "She Shed: Contemporary Wool Craft is a capsule exhibition assembled by Blumhardt curator Dr Bronwyn Lloyd - writer, crafter, and textile collector. She Shed is Lloyd’s dream space of wool craft, featuring the work of seven contemporary makers she most admires: Vita Cochran, Lizzy Leckie, Caroline McQuarrie, Rona Ngahuia Osborne, Steven Park, Daegan Wells, and Georgina May Young, at the Petone Settlers Museum.
    This exhibition is presented in conjunction with Threads: Textiles Festival, Te Whanganui-a-Tara Wellington from 16-20 March 2022."


    Bronwyn Lloyd: She Shed: Contemporary Wool Craft (2022)


    •

    Michael Moore, dir.: Bowling for Columbine (2002)


  2. The key (3/12/22-27/5/23)

    3. Notes:
    The reference is to a sequence near the end of Michael Moore's 2002 documentary Bowling for Columbine where he claims Canada is so safe that nobody bothers to lock their doors.

    Michael Moore (1954- )


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    Heavy Rescue: 401 (2016-2023)


  3. Heavy Rescue 401 (5/12/22-8/3/24)

    4. Published:
    Titirangi Poets Ezine No.29 (16 October 2024).
    Notes:
    Heavy Rescue: 401 is a Canadian reality television show that follows the operations of multiple heavy vehicle rescue and recovery towing companies, as well as the Ontario Provincial Police (OPP), Ministry of Transportation of Ontario, and York Regional Police, based in the Greater Toronto Area (GTA) and the Southern Ontario region. The show focuses on the hardships of vehicle recovery along Ontario's Highway 401 and other 400-series highways, frequently in the Greater Toronto Area.

    Terry Bridge: Heavy Rescue: 401 (2020)



  4. Under the knife (10/11/22-3/3/24)

    5. Notes:
    The reference is to H. G. Wells' 1896 story "Under the Knife":
    On the forefinger glittered a ring; and the universe from which I had come was but a spot of light upon the ring's curvature. And the thing that the hand gripped had the likeness of a black rod. Through a long eternity I watched this Hand, with the ring and the rod, marvelling and fearing and waiting helplessly on what might follow. It seemed as though nothing could follow: that I should watch for ever, seeing only the Hand and the thing it held, and understanding nothing of its import. Was the whole universe but a refracting speck upon some greater Being? Were our worlds but the atoms of another universe, and those again of another, and so on through an endless progression? And what was I? Was I indeed immaterial? A vague persuasion of a body gathering about me came into my suspense. The abysmal darkness about the Hand filled with impalpable suggestions, with uncertain, fluctuating shapes ...
    - The Short Stories of H. G. Wells. 1927 (London: Ernest Benn Limited, 1952)

    George Charles Beresford: H. G. Wells (1866-1946)


    •

    James Tovell, dir.: Secrets of the Saqqara Tomb (2020)


  5. An evening’s viewing (28/11/22-6/3/24)

    6. Notes:
    The references are, respectively, to the 2020 Netflix documentary Secrets of the Saqqara Tomb, pictured above; and to series 1 of the ongoing Addams Family spin-off TV series Wednesday (2022- ), pictured below.

    imdb: Wednesday (2022)



  6. It was so and not so (19/6/24)

    7. Published:
    "It was so and not so.” John Geraets. broaches (8/9/24)
    Notes:
    The pro-Palestine protest march in question was not the much larger one pictured above, which we also took part in, but another one in June 2024, in the same week as the Wellington march pictured below.

    World Socialist Web Site: Thousands protest in NZ against Gaza genocide (27/6/24)


    •

    Stanley Kubrick: 'I am Spartacus' (1960)


  7. Spartacus (19/9/22-2/5/23)

    8. Notes:
    The reference is to Dalton Trumbo's screenplay for Stanley Kubrick's film Spartacus, starring Kirk Douglas as the famous gladiator.

    Stanley Kubrick, dir.: Spartacus (1960)



  8. So does this mean World War III? (18/11/22-11/7/2023)

    9. Published:
    Titirangi Poets Ezine No.24 (11 December 2023).
    Heaven’s Fringe II: Titirangi Poets. Ed. Piers Davies, Ron Riddell, & Gretchen Carroll. Auckland: Printable Reality, 2024. 175.
    Notes:
    The reference is to Matt Groening's long-running animated TV show The Simpsons, which debuted in 1989, and is still on screen after a record-breaking 37 series.

    Matt Groening (1954- )


    •

    Ironlily: Gallowglass (2025)


  9. Gallowglass (6/9/22-28/1/24)

    10. Notes:
    The quote "friend good ..." comes from James Whale's Bride of Frankenstein rather than Mary Shelley's original novel.

    James Whale, dir.: Bride of Frankenstein (1935)


    •

    Oliver Parker, dir.: An Ideal Husband (1999)


  10. India twenty years ago (29/9/22-14/2/24)

    11. Published:
    A Gentle Madness [https://madbookcollection.blogspot.com/2009/06/acquisitions-120-p-g-wodehouse.html
    Notes:
    Oscar Wilde's successful play was first published in 1899, shortly after his release from prison, in an edition of 1000 copies:
    Wilde's name was not printed: the work was published as "By the author of Lady Windermere's Fan" ... The published version differs slightly from the performed play, as Wilde added many passages and cut others.
    Perhaps there was some justification in adding this and other passages to Lord Goring's part, then. He certainly emerges, in the 1999 film, as by far the most interesting character.

    Oscar Wilde (1854-1900)



  11. Scurvy Grass (6/2-22/7/21)

    12. Published:
    Poetry Specials: 2008-2018. Papyri (28/12/2017)
    Scurvy Grass. Poem by Jack Ross. Design by Bronwyn Lloyd. Auckland, 2022.
    Mike Johnson: A Festschrift. Ed. Trevor Landers. Auckland: www.matatuhitaranaki.ac.nz, 2024)
    Notes:
    While visiting Tolaga Bay in New Zealand on his first voyage, Cook noted in his journal on 27 October 1769: "the other place I landed at was the north point of the Bay where I got as much Sellery and Scurvy grass as loaded the Boat." - P. J. Lange & D.A. Norton (1996). "To what New Zealand plant does the vernacular 'scurvy grass' refer?". New Zealand Journal of Botany. 34 (3): 417–420.


    •

    Thad Lee, dir.: All That You Love Will Be Carried Away (2020)


  12. All that you love will be carried away (17/9/22-7/2/24)

    13. Published:
    Poetry Aotearoa Yearbook 2025: Breath [Issue #59]. Ed. Tracey Slaughter. ISBN 978-1-99-101697-3. Auckland: Massey University Press, 2025: 132-33.
    Notes:
    "All That You Love Will Be Carried Away" is the title of a short story by Stephen King, originally published in the January 29, 2001 issue of The New Yorker. It was also included in King's collection Everything's Eventual: 14 Dark Tales.

    Stephen King: Everything's Eventual (2002)


    •

    Paul Klee: Angelus Nova (1920)


  13. Rear Window (8/10/22-17/2/24)

    14. Published:
    "Troy Town." The Imaginary Museum (17/2/24).
    Notes:
    'A Klee painting named Angelus Novus shows an angel looking as though he is about to move away from something he is fixedly contemplating. His eyes are staring, his mouth is open, his wings are spread. This is how one pictures the angel of history. His face is turned toward the past. Where we perceive a chain of events, he sees one single catastrophe which keeps piling wreckage upon wreckage and hurls it in front of his feet. The angel would like to stay, awaken the dead, and make whole what has been smashed. But a storm is blowing from Paradise; it has got caught in his wings with such violence that the angel can no longer close them. The storm irresistibly propels him into the future to which his back is turned, while the pile of debris before him grows skyward. This storm is what we call progress.'
    - Walter Benjamin, Theses on the Philosophy of History (1940)

    Alfred Hitchcock, dir.: Rear Window (1954)


    •

    Nemo's Dreamscapes: Reaching for the Green Light


  14. Is time travel possible? (25/9/22-12/2/24)

    15. Notes:
    The quote in italics comes from the much-debated last lines of F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby (1925):
    Most of the big shore places were closed now and there were hardly any lights except the shadowy, moving glow of a ferryboat across the Sound. And as the moon rose higher the inessential houses began to melt away until gradually I became aware of the old island here that flowered once for Dutch sailors’ eyes — a fresh, green breast of the new world. Its vanished trees, the trees that had made way for Gatsby’s house, had once pandered in whispers to the last and greatest of all human dreams; for a transitory enchanted moment man must have held his breath in the presence of this continent, compelled into an aesthetic contemplation he neither understood nor desired, face to face for the last time in history with something commensurate to his capacity for wonder.
    And as I sat there brooding on the old, unknown world, I thought of Gatsby’s wonder when he first picked out the green light at the end of Daisy’s dock. He had come a long way to this blue lawn, and his dream must have seemed so close that he could hardly fail to grasp it. He did not know that it was already behind him, somewhere back in that vast obscurity beyond the city, where the dark fields of the republic rolled on under the night.
    Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgastic future that year by year recedes before us. It eluded us then, but that’s no matter — tomorrow we will run faster, stretch out our arms further … And one fine morning —
    So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.

    F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896-1940)


    •

    Christian Jensen: Poetry Live Poster (2024)


  15. Prisoners of K. Rd. (14/9/22-3/2/24)

    16. Notes:
    10 Oct 2022:
    Dear Maddy,

    I should probably be honest and admit that I have the fear where Poetry Live is concerned. The last time I read there I was accosted by a strange man with a faux Scottish accent who demanded to know why I thought I was 'so famous' and who pursued me down the street after the reading. The previous time was a bit challenging also. I agreed to the reading this time because I'd told myself I was over all that, but it seems I'm not. So, while there are some family events coming up, the truth of the matter is that my new resolution is to evade known sources of tension rather than the more orthodox 'facing your fears'. I hope that makes sense. So, no, it's probably best to take me off the list of potential readers. I do apologise for wasting your time in this manner, but I was sincere in thinking I could do it this time. I'm sure some more robust reader can easily be found, however.
    best, jack


    •

    Kevin Macdonald: Sky Ladder: The Art of Cai Guo-Qiang (2016)


  16. Last days (20/11/22-4/3/24)

    17. Notes:
    The principal reference is to Sky Ladder: The Art of Cai Guo-Qiang, a 2016 documentary film directed by Kevin Macdonald about the life and work of Cai Guo-Qiang, known for his artwork with the help of gunpowder. There are also incidental references to the repetition of Grover Cleveland's feat of earning the American presidency twice, for non-consecutive terms, by the present imcumbent (whose name escapes me for the moment).

    Warren County Fair: The Greased Pig Contest (2025)


    •

    Aubrey Beardsley: Ave atque vale (1896)


  17. Catullus 101 (12/9/22-28/5/23)

    18. Published:
    "The Zero Suite." Papyri (2/5/23)
    Notes:
    C. Valerius Catullus, Carmina 101:
    Multas per gentes et multa per aequora vectus
    advenio has miseras, frater, ad inferias,
    ut te postremo donarem munere mortis
    et mutam nequiquam adloquerer cinerem,
    quandoquidem fortuna mihi tete abstulit ipsum,
    heu miser indigne frater adempte mihi.
    nunc tamen interea haec, prisco quae more parentum
    tradita sunt tristi munere ad inferias,
    accipe fraterno multum manantia fletu
    atque in perpetuum, frater, ave atque vale.

    [Through many nations and through many seas borne, I come, brother, for these sad funeral rites, that I may give the last gifts to the dead, and may vainly speak to your silent ashes, since fortune has taken yourself away from me. Ah, poor brother, undeservedly snatched from me. But now receive these gifts, which have been handed down in the ancient manner of ancestors, the sad gifts to the grave, drenched with a brother's tears, and for ever, brother, hail and farewell.]
    - Leonard C. Smithers, trans. The Carmina of Gaius Valerius Catullus (London: Smithers, 1894): 285.


    •

    Anton Chekhov (1902)


  18. I used to quote (16/11/22-11/7/2023)


    19. A-Z Quotes: Chekhov's gun

    Notes:
    "If in the first act you have hung a pistol on the wall, then in the following one it should be fired. Otherwise don't put it there."
    - Anton Chekhov [quoted in Ilia Gurliand. "Reminiscences of A.P. Chekhov". Театр и искусство [Teatr i iskusstvo - Theater and art] (28) (11 July 1904): 521.]

    Anton Chekhov: Ivanov (1887)


    •

    John Hughes: Planes, Trains and Automobiles (1987)


  19. Not everything is an anecdote (20/10/22-23/2/24)

    20. Notes:
    The quotation is from the John Hughes film Planes, Trains and Automobiles, where the endearing but garrulous character Del Griffith, played by John Candy, gets on the nerves of uptight advertising executive Neal Page, played by Steve Martin.

    Rotten Tomatoes: "Those aren't pillows!


    •

    John Ashbery: Houseboat Days (1977)


  20. Houseboat Days (22/11/22-12/7/2023)

    21. Published:
    "PhD Days." The Imaginary Museum (12/9/23).
    Published:
    The reference to Emily is to the 2022 bio-pic written and directed by Frances O'Connor.

    Frances O'Connor: Emily (2022)


    •

    Jackie van Beek: Just Like the Others (2020)


  21. Just Like the Others (27-28/10/20)

    22. Published:
    Singlets, Briefs & Shorts: An Anthology of Poems from the Show Me Shorts! New Zealand Short Film Festival 2020. Ed. Trevor M. Landers. PMT Press in association with 99% Press. Auckland: Lasavia Publishing Ltd., 2021. 88-89.
    Notes:
    Show Me Shorts Film Festival:
    A touching short film made by New Zealand filmmaker Jackie van Beek while she was living in England. Calvin lives with his mum, grandma and two little brothers in a housing estate in central London. He wants to fit in with the other kids on the estate, but he can’t afford an iPod. With the help of his family, he has to find a way to make his own music.
    Amazon.com.uk Book Review:
    Among others, the collection presents us with ... the micro fiction of Anton Blank, the clipped, cryptic Stanzas of Jack Ross, the meta-poetry of Jordon Hammel and the lively sensuality of the book's editor, Trevor Landers.

    Trevor M Landers, ed.: Singlets, Briefs & Shorts (2021)



•

Jack Ross: Tesseract (2026)

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