BERNADETTE HALL

 

living out here on the plains

 
through thick and thin 
            through storm and shine 
 
  
my hand on your heart, yours on mine, 
          we’ll try to keep our weather fine 
 
  
just see, the city folk will say, 
             how coolly they have abandoned 


their language 
            in the face of progress 
  
 

her gift, the little boat

 
that you should be able to do something like this for me 
 
  
pulling a blue leaf from a glass tree 
                           a white fish from the shallows 
 
  
that you should know exactly what I need 
                                             this beautiful maquette 
 
  
 

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Bernadette Hall’s 9th collection of poems, The Lustre Jug (VUP) was a finalist in the 2010 the NZ Post Book Awards. She has recently edited selected poems by the Christchurch poet, Lorna Staveley Anker. This collection, The Judas Tree, will be published by the University of Canterbury Press in 2011. She collaborated with the Dunedin jeweller, Paul McDowell,  in A New Line,  publication and performance by 8 writers and 8 jewellers, in Dunedin, October 2010. In 2011 she will take up a Teaching Fellowship in poetry  at the IIML, Wellington.  She is currently working on a collection of short fiction.

 

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