BECN (2024)

Roseanne Bartley: Love Letters and Other Correspondences (2024)

(November 14, 2024) [with Bronwyn Lloyd] “U.” Love Letters and Other Correspondences: An Artist Curated Book by Roseanne Bartley. ISBN 978-0-646-89402-7. Melbourne: Press Print, 2024: 61.

U


Until recently, I was unaware that my husband Jack had been sampling from our conversations over a period of 101 days. These samplings were part of a low-stakes exercise designed to unblock his creative writing practice through the simple task of committing to writing one poem a day.

Jack presented me with the drafts of the 25 poems from the group that featured things I'd said or done, and reading them, I was struck by the "un"ness of some of my exchanges with him.

The unromantic way I threatened (in jest) to 'put him out to grass' if he continued to forget things, The unkindness of a remark (in jest) that I'd had enough of his shit and was leaving him. But the "un" that surprised me most related to several poems where I made comments about his softness, his unmanliness, culminating in the poem BECN about a gift I bought Jack last year:

BECN

Bronwyn gave me a necklace 
made by Renee Bevan 
for my birthday

or perhaps a necklet
If you think it’s unmanly 
you can wear it under your shirt

I thought it’d be bigger somehow
like dog-tags
a small lozenge made of silver

on the front it says
BE
on the back

CN
be seen?
beacon?

it seems to be saying
something about 
not hiding your light

under a bushel
quite fitting from the creator of
wearing the world like a pearl

I wear it with pride

(9/12/22-5/7/23)

•

You see, Jack's "unmanliness" is the thing I love about him the mmost, from the moment I first saw him cross the floor of the wharenui at Te Rau Aroha Marae wearing his striped winceyette pyjamas, buttoned to the throat.

May his unmanliness continue to shine like beacon our whole lives through.

•

•

Renee Bevan: The World is a Giant Pearl
[Photograph: Caryline Boreham]

•

Roseanne Bartley: Radiant Pavilion (2024)

Scurvy Grass (2022)

Scurvy Grass (2022)

(November 6, 2022) Scurvy Grass. Design by Bronwyn Lloyd (Auckland, 2022)

Scurvy Grass

(for Bronwyn)

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
– Captain James Cook (27/10/69)


It’s quite a ways from Napier
over the worst of roads 

but a trip to Tolaga Bay
must have seemed something 

for kids who’d never been there
on arrival at the campground 

Dad went out
there may not be much

but there is a pub
hours later he came back

with two velvet paintings 
he’d blued all their money on

we stopped there a year or so ago 
on a road trip around East Cape

the immense beach choked with driftwood 
the epic wooden pier

there were organised walks 
we didn’t join in

a lack of seabird habitats 
is blamed for the decline 

in this native plant
the rich environments they need 

no longer plentiful enough


(6/2-22/7/21)

•

•

Lepidium oleraceum
[Scurvy Grass]

•