Clung

Sonja Yelich

• Publisher: Auckland University Press
• Year: 2013
• Print ISBN: 9781869403232
• eBook ISBN: 9781775580430
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Poetry
• Index: Literature

Vivid sketches full of unexpected detail communicate bizarre, humorous, and magical cultural clashes in this first collection from a rising poet who draws from her personal experiences as the child of an immigrant. A woman stranded at home with small children listens to the radio for company in wry, colorful poems about domestic life. Summers in seaside cottages, the dramas of suburban life, and the memories of childhood are among the scenarios explored with a freshness and lack of pretension from this gifted poet.

1

The story of drowning
for flounder came to my radio every hour

Clung

It was a balloon day.

& at sea clung the girl

to the looseness of water.

*

From the rescue helicopter

the ocean was a drop.

*

The story of drowning

for flounder came to my radio

every hour.

1YA

you get the radio on

& hear the bird of the day

which sounds like any other

whistle being fed into the 9

o’clock beeps with news

*

you know wellington is there somewhere

forming some sort of front.

*

there is a red light on the transistor

you got from the dick smith store

*

you are connected

by a tuner

*

from the volume you will come to know

all those people going about

their steps up up

into their warm lives

to stay put from the wind

which is for sure a hurtler.

*

you will come to believe

that wellington lies inside a radio

& bleak is on a m

*

there will be much talk about

who the weather is heading for

& how wellington is forgot

of the sun.

*

& you will remember vic’s uncle pat

of petone

& the smell of his hands

in the wet flatette

& how his loose phlegm cough

broke free of itself

on the carpet by your feet

*

you can turn wellington

off with your thumb.

*

how to fix a radio

your radio is your talking

world & your baby is your

world crawling into walls.

holding your radio

your baby heads for

the surface hardest to

fall

the pasifika wall

wh...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half-title
• Title Page
• Dedication
• Acknowledgements
• Table of Contents
• 1
• 2
• 3
• Copyright