Category: Poetry

The Place of Stones, and Wendell Berry’s Poetry – Part Three: “The Contrariness of the Mad Farmer” and “How to Be a Poet”

In the the first Post in this series, I showed the following photos of  eight stones and eight places and asked, What place does each stone come from? Can you put them together? In Part One, I revealed the places of origin of the first four stones. In Part Two, I identified the places to which  Stones #5 and #6 belonged. This Post locates Stones  #7 and #8. 

These Posts also dip into the views and poetry of Wendell Berry from Kentucky, whose critical insights into the social and environmental problems of modern large-scale agriculture played a role in my doctoral thesis. Commentators appreciate Berry’s wisdom but also his “contrariness”. This trait is displayed in the poem I used to open Chapter Six of my thesis, “Manifesto: The Mad Farmer Liberation Front” (discussed in Part Two of this Series). There, Berry states, for example, Love the Lord. Love the world (when love of God and love of the world are often seen to be mutually exclusive opposites), and Ask the questions that have no answers. He even wrote a poem called “The Contrariness of the Mad Farmer”:

I am done with apologies. If contrariness is my
inheritance and destiny, so be it. If it is my mission
to go in at exits and come out at entrances, so be it.
I have planted by the stars in defiance of the experts,
and tilled somewhat by incantation and by singing,
and reaped, as I knew, by luck and Heaven’s favor,
in spite of the best advice. If I have been caught
so often laughing at funerals, that was because
I knew the dead were already slipping away,
preparing a comeback, and can I help it?
And if at weddings I have gritted and gnashed
my teeth, it was because I knew where the bridegroom
had sunk his manhood, and knew it would not
be resurrected by a piece of cake. ‘Dance,’ they told me,
and I stood still, and while they stood
quiet in line at the gate of the Kingdom, I danced.
‘Pray,’ they said, and I laughed, covering myself
in the earth’s brightnesses, and then stole off gray
into the midst of a revel, and prayed like an orphan.
When they said, ‘I know my Redeemer liveth,’
I told them, ‘He’s dead.’ And when they told me
‘God is dead,’ I answered, ‘He goes fishing every day
in the Kentucky River. I see Him often.’
When they asked me would I like to contribute
I said no, and when they had collected
more than they needed, I gave them as much as I had.
When they asked me to join them I wouldn’t,
and then went off by myself and did more
than they would have asked. ‘Well, then,’ they said
‘go and organize the International Brotherhood
of Contraries,’ and I said, ‘Did you finish killing
everybody who was against peace?’ So be it.
Going against men, I have heard at times a deep harmony
thrumming in the mixture, and when they ask me what
I say I don’t know. It is not the only or the easiest
way to come to the truth. It is one way.

Stone #7, probably jasper, was collected from Place C, Gemstone Beach, Te Waewae Bay, Southland (see the TumbleStone Post “March 2019 Stone Collecting Trip to Southern New Zealand – Gemstone Beach, from the Car Park to the Waimeamea River Mouth“).

Taunoa Stream, Gemstone Beach, Orepuki.
Stones on Gemstone Beach.
Gemstone Beach, from near the Waimeamea River mouth

And in his three-part poem below, Berry is again typically contrary, just like the waves on Gemstone Beach, pushing the stones onto the shore but also pulling them back, sucking them out to sea and out of the reach of the stone collector. Berry writes this time as a poet considering his readers – Any readers who like your poems, doubt their judgment.

“How to Be a Poet” by Wendell Berry
(to remind myself)

i

Make a place to sit down.
Sit down. Be quiet.
You must depend upon
affection, reading, knowledge,
skill—more of each
than you have—inspiration,
work, growing older, patience,
for patience joins time
to eternity. Any readers
who like your poems,
doubt their judgment.

ii

Breathe with unconditional breath
the unconditioned air.
Shun electric wire.
Communicate slowly. Live
a three-dimensioned life;
stay away from screens.
Stay away from anything
that obscures the place it is in.
There are no unsacred places;
there are only sacred places
and desecrated places.

iii

Accept what comes from silence.
Make the best you can of it.
Of the little words that come
out of the silence, like prayers
prayed back to the one who prays,
make a poem that does not disturb
the silence from which it came.

In my thesis, as a contrary academic, I pointed out some limitations with Berry’s views on agriculture and his proposed solutions to agricultural crises (pages 42-43). His positive view of the family farm and the traditional roles associated with it overlooked a number of its failings. Not all family farms are stewardly. And traditional gender roles can often be stultifying and are, in fact, unnecessary. 

Stone #8, fossil coral, was collected from Place G, Beaumaris Beach, Isle of Angelsey, Wales (see gonorthwales.co.uk). See the end of this Post for more information on Beaumaris Beach.

Stones on Beaumaris Beach
Beaumaris Pier
Examining stones on Beaumaris Beach, on the Menais Strait

Despite my critical comments, Berry’s voice remains a largely prophetic one, eloquent and wise, much needed in today’s world, speaking deeply to people’s relationship to both their natural  and cultural environments.

Here is a rare television interview with Wendell Berry, 40 minutes long, during which he reads some of his poetry.

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NOTE ON BEAUMARIS BEACH (Place G)

Beaumaris Beach, Isle of Anglesey, northwest Wales, has appeared only very briefly in TumbleStone before so here is some more information on it. Here is its location on Google Maps. Here is the Wikipedia article on its current character and its history. Petra and I visited Beaumaris in June 2018 while we were based on Anglesey for a few weeks. We went to visit the castle and have a walk around the historical part of the town. We also discovered the tiny beach beside the pier on the edge of the Strait of Menai (which cuts Anglesey off from the Welsh mainland) where I found Stone #8.

Petra on the bridge over the castle moat, Beaumaris
Up on the Beaumaris castle wall
Boats used to dock here to supply the castle, but it is now cut off from Menai Strait
On the Beaumaris pier, people catch crabs
Catching crabs off Beaumaris pier by dangling a baited net

That beach is to the right of this virtual video walk down the pier: 

And this is a person’s personal yet informative video tour of Beaumaris Castle:

See here for a great little video of adventures in Beaumaris from a child’s point of view.

Green and Black: Green Stones and Mary Black’s “The Moon and Saint Christopher”

The poet Kay McKenzie Cooke has very kindly gifted me a copy of her hard-to-find first collection, “Feeding the Dogs”, now out of print. I am keeping it to read on the plane on my next trip to Southland’s beaches. Kay lived as a child in Orepuki. Her ancestry is a mix of Maori and Pakeha. Part of that mix is Irish Catholic, on her father’s side. She speaks of this on pages 13-14 of “Born to a Red-Headed Woman”:  

My father’s parents had a wooden home,
steeped in the sweet and sour
perfume of old coal-fires
mixed with new. It housed holy pictures
of saints and one of Jesus

with an airbrushed face,
His hands and the heart
He wore on the outside,
an unbelievable pink.
Grandpa sipped his tea from the saucer

and handed us cake-paper
from the bottom of the fruit cake
to chew. “Go on,” Granny would coo
as if only half-believing
the everyday news my father brought.

In a low, horsehair chair
in front of the open fire
with its soot-furred hook
and kettle, she sat placid,
heavy-breasted with faith.

Green is the Irish colour, and the most common colour of stones on the south coast – and the variety of greens in stones I have collected is enormous. It is the presence of a mineral in a stone that makes it green, with the common ones being epidote,  iron, chromium and manganese (see thoughtco.com).

Mary Black is a fine Irish singer of traditional and modern folk, and the song below is a long-standing favourite of mine. It refers to one of the traditional Catholic saints, Saint Christopher, the patron saint of travelers. Tradition has it that Christopher sought to serve Christ by helping people to cross a dangerous river. A little child asked for his help, revealing after the successful crossing to be Jesus Christ Himself. Devotional medals with St. Christopher‘s name and image are commonly worn as pendants, especially by travelers, to show devotion and as a request for his blessing. He even has an island named after him, in the West Indies, Saint Christopher Island, known more commonly as Saint Kitts.

St Christopher carrying the child across the river. Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:BStrozziCristof1.jpg
Devotional St Christopher medal. Source: https://www.vaticangift.com/sterling-silver-medals/40-st-christopher-medal.html

“The Moon and Saint Christopher”
sung by Mary Black, written by Mary Chapin Carpenter

When I was young I spoke like a child, and I saw with a child’s eyes
And an open door was to a girl like the stars are to the sky
It’s funny how the world lives up to all your expectations
With adventures for the stout of heart, and the lure of the open spaces

There’s two lanes running down this road, and whichever side you’re on
Accounts for where you want to go, or what you’re running from
Back when darkness overtook me on a blind man’s curve
I relied upon the moon, I relied upon the moon,
I relied upon the moon and Saint Christopher

Now I’ve paid my dues cos I have owed them, but I’ve paid a price sometimes
For being such a stubborn woman in such stubborn times
I have run from the arms of lovers, I have run from the eyes of friends
I have run from the hands of kindness, I have run just because I can

But now I’ve grown and I speak like a woman and I see with a woman’s eyes
And an open door is to me now like the saddest of goodbyes
But it’s too late for turning back and I pray for the heart and the nerve
I rely upon the moon, I rely upon the moon,
I rely upon the moon and Saint Christopher
I rely upon the moon, I rely upon the moon,
I rely upon the moon and Saint Christopher
to be my guide.

The Place of Stones, and Wendell Berry’s Poetry – Part Two: “The Stones”, “The Peace of Wild Things” and “The Mad Farmer Liberation Front”

Wendell Berry. Source: https://owlcation.com/humanities/Wendell-Berrys-How-to-Be-a-Poet
Tanya and Wendell Berry. Source: https://ourworld.unu.edu/en/nature-as-an-ally-an-interview-with-wendell-berry
Wendell Berry and a statue of his great-grandfather. Source: https://www.reckonings.net/reckonings/2012/11/no-going-back-wendell-berry.html
Wendell Berry in 1966. Source: https://modernfarmer.com/2017/10/wendell-berry-not-prophet

Stones and the places they come from are closely related to each other and each provides meaning to the other. I like to know where a stone comes from. In the previous Post in this series, I showed the following photos of  eight stones and eight places and asked, What place does each stone come from? Can you put them together? In Part One, I revealed the places of the first four stones. In this Post, I will reveal the places of Stones #5 and #6.  

The other main theme of this series of Posts is the poetry of Wendell Berry. He once wrote a poem about stones, from a farmer’s point of view. They are obstacles, needing to be broken up and removed so that the land can be cultivated. But Berry also shows regard and respect for these stones, for what he calls their music, mute in them until he labours over them. I like that image, for the stones I polish reveal their own music – their colours and bands and grains – through the process of tumbling.

“The Stones” by Wendell Berry
from his book of poems “Farming: A Handbook” (1970)

I owned a slope full of stones.
Like buried pianos they lay in the ground,
shards of old sea-ledges, stumbling blocks
where the earth caught and kept them
dark, an old music mute in them
that my head keeps now I have dug them out.
I broke them where they slugged in the dark
cells, and lifted them up in pieces.
As I piled them in the light
I began their music. I heard their old lime
rouse in breath of song that had not left me.
I gave pain and weariness to their bearing out.
What bond have I made with the earth,
having worn myself against it? It is a fatal singing
I have carried with me out of that day.
The stones have given me music
that figures for me their holes in the earth
and their long lying in them dark.
They have taught me the weariness that loves the ground,
and I must prepare a fitting silence.

But Berry knows that stones are not only to be removed and piled to the side of fields. They are always underfoot, providing a place to stand. Stones also provide rich imagery, in plays with words. I have used stones as “milestones” to encourage and reward and acknowledge research students that I have supervised – see “Hard Won and Well Deserved! The Final Thesis Milestone” and “Nine Milestones at Journey’s End“. Berry has used the images of  the “stepping stone” and the “sounding stone” in this extract about walking down a stream he names Camp Branch:

From “The Book of Camp Branch” by Wendell Berry
from his book of poems “Leavings” (2010)

How much delight I’ve known
in navigating down the flow
by stepping stones, by sounding
stones, by words that are
stepping and sounding stones.

Going down stone by stone,
the song of the water changes,
changing the way I walk
which changes my thought
as I go. Stone to stone
the stream flows. Stone to stone
the walker goes. The words
stand stone still until
the flow moves them, changing
the sound – a new word –
a new place to step or stand.

Stone #5, a sandstone with fossil sea shells (4 to 5 million years old), was collected from Place F, Bluecliffs Beach, Te Waewae Bay in Southland, just on the other side of the Waiau River mouth from Gemstone Beach (see southlandnz.com/western-southland). See the end of this Post for more information on Bluecliffs Beach.

Stones on Bluecliffs Beach – mainly granite and fossiliferous sandstone
Ray on Bluecliffs Beach
The wild seas at Bluecliffs Beach

Stones belong to a natural reality, currently partly shaped by what people might do – quarrying, building roads, tumble polishing. But stones have a much longer history than people have, and will remain long after us. They belong to a wild world, as much as we domesticate them through our use of them. In another poem, Berry refers to the peace he finds when amidst wild things, something shared by the rockhound. Berry prefers “still water” while the gatherer of beach stones prefers “ever-moving water”. 

“The Peace of Wild Things” by Wendell Berry
from his book of poems “Openings” (1968)

When despair for the world grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting with their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.

(You can hear this poem read here by Michael Moerman)

I consider Berry’s thinking to be wise and insightful, even though I might not always agree with him. For this reason, when I was looking for an appropriate and significant piece of literature to open the concluding chapter of my doctoral thesis, I chose one of Berry’s poems:

“Manifesto: The Mad Farmer Liberation Front” by Wendell Berry
from his book of poems “The Country of Marriage” (1973)

…Every day do something
that won’t compute. Love the Lord.
Love the world. Work for nothing.
Take all that you have and be poor.
Love someone who does not deserve it…
Ask the questions that have no answers.
Invest in the millennium. Plant sequoias.
Say that your main crop is the forest
that you did not plant,
that you will not live to harvest.
Say that the leaves are harvested
when they have rotted into the mold.
Call that profit. Prophesy such returns…
Expect the end of the world. Laugh.
Laughter is immeasurable. Be joyful
though you have considered all the facts.
So long as women do not go cheap
for power, please women more than men.
Ask yourself: Will this satisfy
a woman satisfied to bear a child?
Will this disturb the sleep
of a woman near to giving birth?
…As soon as the generals and the politicos
can predict the motions of your mind,
lose it… Be like the fox
who makes more tracks than necessary,
some in the wrong direction.
Practice resurrection.

In my thesis, I called Berry’s perspective on life an “anti-modernist” one. He is highly critical of the main tendencies of modern agriculture and their impacts upon the environment and upon the values and way of life of the traditional farming community he admires. He intensely dislikes the idea of applying industrial principles to agriculture. And he is highly valued by many Americans for his views and how he communicates them (as is apparent in this Humanities article).

Stone #6, probably some form of chalcedony, was collected from Place H, Slapton Sands, Devon, England (see the TumbleStone Posts “Slapton Sands, Part One: A Visit, Mid-2016” and “Slapton Sands, Part Five: Beach Stones in the Rough“).

Petra on Slapton Sands
Stones on Slapton Sands
Slapton Sands beach, with the village of Torcross below and Slapton Ley to the left

The main interest of my thesis was how Christian-based farming groups might offer insights into sustainable and regenerative forms of agriculture. I explored the meaning of stewardship and noted how it could be defined as “earthkeeping”. I sided with Berry when he wrote that “Stewardship…involves long-term courage, perseverance, devotion, and skill… It has to do with everyday proprieties in the practical use and care of created things – with ‘right livelihood'” (“The Gift of Good Land”, page 275). For Berry, a vital farming culture entailed what any healthy culture entailed: “…a communal order of memory, insight, value, work, conviviality, reverence, aspiration. It reveals the human necessities and the human limits. It clarifies our inescapable bonds to the earth and to each other. It assumes that the necessary restraints are observed, that the necessary work is done, and that it is done well” (“The Unsettling of America”, page 43).

The next Post in this series, “The Place of Stones, and Wendell Berry’s Poetry – Part Three: ‘The Contrariness of the Mad Farmer’ and ‘How to Be a Poet'”, looks at the theme of contrariness in Berry’s writings.

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NOTE ON BLUECLIFFS BEACH (Place F)

Bluecliffs Beach, Te Waewae Bay, has not appeared in TumbleStone before so here is some more information on it. Most of the stones on the beach are larger than those further eastwards, towards Gemstone Beach. The waves are rougher and more powerful.

See here for its location on Google Maps in relation to Orepuki. This blog post by a Primary School science teacher identifies the shells in my stone as most likely clams. Bluecliffs Beach features in the excellent book, “The Kiwi Fossil Hunter’s Handbook” (2010) by James Crampton and Maianna Terezow, available for $35 from the GNS Online Shop.

“The Kiwi Fossil Hunter’s Handbook”
Locations featured in “The Kiwi Fossil Hunter’s Handbook”
Page 186 of “The Kiwi Fossil Hunter’s Handbook”
Page 187 of “The Kiwi Fossil Hunter’s Handbook”
Page 188 of “The Kiwi Fossil Hunter’s Handbook”
Page 189 of “The Kiwi Fossil Hunter’s Handbook”

The Place of Stones, and Wendell Berry’s Poetry – Part One: “The Sycamore” and “The Farmer and the Sea”

I always have to know where a stone comes from. I don’t feel I understand it until I know where was its last place of resting. (And of course there is also the question, where was it before that?) Here are eight stones and eight places. What place does each stone come from? Can you put them together? In the course of the three Posts in this series, I will reveal where each stone belongs.

My concern with “place” goes back a long way in my thinking and is partly why I became an academic geographer. My doctoral thesis, “Geography and religion, agriculture and stewardship: The practice of agricultural stewardship in the Christian Farmers Federations of Canada“, advocated a form of agricultural stewardship that respected the uniqueness and peculiarities of people and places, of culture and geography. It was partly inspired by writers like Wendell Berry, a writer and farmer from Kentucky who has developed critical insights into the social and environmental problems of modern large-scale agriculture.

Stone #1, an iron stained quartzite, was collected from Place D, Budleigh Salterton, Devon, England (see the comments on this stone and place in a previous Post “Twelve Stones, Part Three“).

Budleigh Salterton beach huts
Budleigh Salterton beach stones
Budleigh Salterton beach, looking eastwards towards the mouth of the River Otter

Wendell Berry’s 1977 book “The Unsettling of America: Culture and Agriculture” became one of the key texts of the US environmental movement. His 1981 book “The Gift of Good Land: Further Essays Cultural and Agricultural” examined important examples of farming which respected the land and the people who farm it, including small farms in the US, the Old Order Amish and the traditional potato cultivators of the Andes in Peru.

Wendell Berry. Source: https://relevantmagazine.com/life5/12-wendell-berry-quotes-will-make-you-rethink-your-life-update
Source: http://hazelhillfarm.com/journal/2013/4/19/book-report-the-unsettling-of-america
Source: https://cdn1.fishpond.co.nz/0006/219/884/977286/original.jpeg
Source: https://www.amazon.ca/Collected-Poems-Wendell-Berry-Trb/dp/0865471975
Source: http://www.andrewmaxfield.org/celebrating-wendell-berry-in-music

Once when asked about the virtues of viewing the fragile Earth from space, Berry said that he preferred a different kind of view. “I’d want to get closer, walk around on it, even get down on my hands and knees. That’s how I prefer to see Earth.” That’s the only way to find good stones too!

Stone #2, a jasper, was collected from Place A, Waikaka, in the Shepherd’s Creek near the primary school (see “Jasper Stones and Petrified Wood, Shepherd’s Creek, Waikaka“).

Waikaka Primary School hides behind these two trees
Gravel bank along Shepherd’s Creek, Waikaka
Shepherd’s Creek, Waikaka

Wendell Berry is also a poet, and I used one of his poems, “Manifesto: The Mad Farmer Liberation Front”, as the opening to the concluding chapter of my thesis (see the next Post in this series). But it is another of his poems, “The Sycamore”, that is my favourite, that expresses perfectly the significance of place and growing things to Berry: 

“The Sycamore” by Wendell Berry
from his book of poems “Openings” (1968)

In the place that is my own place, whose earth I am
shaped in and must bear, there is an old tree growing,
a great sycamore that is a wondrous healer of itself.
Fences have been tied to it, nails driven into it,

hacks and whittles cut in it, the lightning has burned it.
There is no year it has flourished in that has not harmed it.
There is a hollow in it that is its death, though its living
brims whitely at the lip of the darkness and flows outward.

Over all its scars has come the seamless white of the bark.
It bears the gnarls of its history healed over.
It has risen to a strange perfection
in the warp and bending of its long growth.

It has gathered all accidents into its purpose.
It has become the intention and radiance of its dark fate.
It is a fact, sublime, mystical and unassailable.
In all the country there is no other like it.

I recognize in it a principle, an indwelling
the same as itself, and greater, that I would be ruled by.
I see that it stands in its place, and feeds upon it,
and is fed upon, and is native, and maker.

Stone #3, quartzite, was collected from Place E, Birdlings Flat, Canterbury (see, for example, “My Visit to Birdlings Flat, Day 1 of 2“).

Birdlings Flat, with Banks Peninsula in the background
The waves are roughest the closer you get to the Peninsula, and the stones are thrown up in banks
A late afternoon in winter on Birdlings Flat

The life history of a tree is different from that of a stone – a stone cannot recover from its wounds, and maybe the land feeds from a stone and its erosion rather than feeding from it. Berry is also aware of this:

“The Farmer and the Sea” by Wendell Berry
from his book of poems “Farming: A Handbook” (1970)

The sea always arriving,
hissing in pebbles, is breaking
its edge where the landsman
squats on his rock. The dark
of the earth is familiar to him,
close mystery of his source
and end, always flowering
in the light and always
fading. But the dark of the sea
is perfect and strange,
the absence of any place,
immensity on the loose.
Still, he sees it is another
keeper of the land, caretaker,
shaking the earth, breaking it,
clicking the pieces, but somewhere
holding deep fields yet to rise,
shedding its richness on them
silently as snow, keeper and maker
of places wholly dark. And in him
something dark applauds.

(You can hear this poem read here by Michael Moerman)

For more on Wendell Berry, see Wikipedia and poetryfoundation.org. 

Stone #4, a breccia, was collected from Place B, Riverton, Southland (see, for example, “The Seven Stages in Tumble Polishing Stones: Stage One, Stone Collection, Riverton, 2-6 November 2017“).

Riverton’s Back Beach
Riverton’s Back Beach
Stones being tossed by an incoming wave on Riverton’s Back Beach

In the next Post in this series, “The Place of Stones, and Wendell Berry’s Poetry – Part Two: ‘The Stones’, ‘The Peace of Wild Things’ and ‘The Mad Farmer Liberation Front’”, I will identify the places of Stones #5 and #6.

16 Gems – Stones for Poetry

In People and Places, Poems and Stones: Kay McKenzie Cooke and Orepuki, I introduced the poet, Kay McKenzie Cooke, and discussed her links to her childhood home, Orepuki. I noted how stones from Gemstone Beach have figured in her life and poems. I thoroughly enjoyed reading her latest book of poems, Born To A Red-Headed Woman, so much so that I offered Kay some polished Gemstone Beach stones to acknowledge my enjoyment. And because I knew she would really appreciate and value them. 

16 polished stones from Gemstone Beach
Kay reading poetry at the Orepuki Beach Cafe, 2015. Source: http://whistlestoptours.blogspot.com/2015/06/early-march-2015-saw-j-and-k-rolling.html

I wanted to include a fossil worm cast stone and a hydrogrossular garnet and a banded rhyolite. I picked out a few more recently polished ones for consideration as well. In preparation for sending the stones in the mail to Kay, I photographed them and started to number them so I could include a description of them, outlining what kind of stone each one is (if I know).  I then thought about a more creative way of identifying each stone – why not link them to the lines of the poems in her book? This process resulted in 16 stones being chosen and named. As I said to Kay in an email at the time, “The stones I had polished and the poems you had written proved a very fertile ground for linkages. I really enjoyed working through the ideas, it was not at all a hard thing to do. It was interesting how much colours are used in your poems. And the colours often carry the emotional dimensions which are deep.”

The following is what I sent to Kay – lines from her poems in Born To A Red-Headed Woman are in green, with page numbers. Her poems are autobiographical and chronological, starting with her birth, going through her childhood, high school, and on into adulthood, motherhood, and being a grandmother. The sequence of stones follow the sequence of this life journey. Each poem is named after a song or lyric associated with that time or relevant to its theme.

Sometimes, below, the meaning of just a couple of lines from a poem may not be clear – you’ll have to buy the book! 

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TumbleStone Reflections on “Born to a Red-Headed Woman: Poems by Kay McKenzie Cooke” (Otago University Press, 2014)

Sixteen Polished Stones from Gemstone Beach

Stone 1, “Moonlight”: Whiteish-yellowish-orangeish quartz stone the size of a small walnut, brought down the Waiau River and cast upon the beach on the coast

don’t let the moon break your heart

I was born in winter
to a red-headed woman
who shivered on a hard bed
under one thin blanket
in a hospital by the Waiau River
making heavy work

of its final punch through
to the coast,
the thrum of its waters
underscoring our breathing,
the beating of my heart
the size of a walnut.
(page 12)

Stone 2, “Misty”: Translucent hydrogrossular garnet, like the mist made by fingertips

The teacher draws close,
her own fingers cool,

narrow, streamlined
dragonflies that touch down
briefly where my fingertips
have begun to make mist,
What lovely moons you have, she says.
(page 15)

Stone 3, “Near Light”: Dark and light banded mudstone, the night and the light

On the night of our send-off
oblivious to what I was leaving behind:
the near light of Te Waewae Bay
(page 18)

Stone 4, “White Dresses”: Dark red stone (jasper?) with a pattern of white speckles (quartz?)

At the Riversdale Girl Guides
we practised
Scottish Country Dancing…

…we rehearsed
reels in white dresses
with tartan sashes…
(page 22)

Stone 5, “Sago Pudding”: White quartz

…Dad singing, Pass the biscuits, Miranda
as all nine of us ate mashed spuds
and Mum’s mince stew with carrots,
followed by sago pudding
(page 23)

Stone 6, “Green Sea”: Green mudstone with dark green bands

…I dip below the ridge
to follow the crack of an old creek-bed
and all around nothing but green, green.
Green. A sea of green.
(page 24)

Stone 7, “Loneliness”: Grey marble-like stone, with dark staining on one side

Released the year and month my father died,
‘Wichita Lineman’ can still bring me the valley
where we lived,
still bring me grief, the sound

of wind through wire, the loneliness
of country verges
(page 32)

Stone 8, “Wild Green”: Green quartzite stone

We’d cut through the Gardens,
where the caged kea was kept…
its keening call sounding
as if it expressed the same ache
we felt
of sudden transplantation
from wild green.
(pages 36-37)

Stone 9, “Flat”: A flat stone, igneous porphyry with light-coloured crystals

Inside a stone flat in Dunedin…
is where I gave up butter
and coal-range heat…
(page 40)

Stone 10, “Sorrow’s Green Depths”: Blue-green stone with small pink spots

The sound of a snip.
And it is done.

and sometimes there will be sorrow

Sunday in Hedgehope
in a wooden house
with a front verandah,
in the depths
of Southland’s green.
(page 43)

Stone 11, “Ancestors”: Green argillaceous mudstone containing fossil worm casts

We saw Loch Ness and travelled in sunshine
up the Great Glen. That day we were riding
the land our ancestors walked.
(page 49)

Stone 12, “Worlds”: Small grainy white and black schist stone

We wore out what was left
before middle-age, being there
for both the fragile and the strong.
Every night remnants
from the sandpit, tiny grains of sand,
whole worlds,
carried home between our toes.
(page 51)

Stone 13, “Budgie”: Whitish greenish stone with clear patches, hints of yellow and black specks

Sometimes all it is
is being on holiday stuck in a car together…
Sometimes, it’s the wind slamming a door
shut. Sometimes it’s the day the budgie dies
or the way the passage smells when it rains.
(page 54)
 
Stone 14, “Lara’s Theme”: Small delicate quartzite stone, with clear silica bands

Before giving her up for adoption,
I’d called my baby daughter Lara…
…We love telling people
the surprise ending.
(page 56)

Stone 15, “Black-Faced”: Predominantly black crescent-shaped stone, with faint light patterning

Tomorrow
our son will take us into country so deep
we can only stand on the brink

looking up at that black-faced bluff
where the helicopter he was in crashed
and thank God that he survived.
(page 61)

Stone 16, “Space”: Banded rhyolite

it feels new
(for my grandchildren)

I look hard into your eyes,
see earth around a seed,
sea around an island,
space around a star.
(page 70)

**********

Kay’s response can be found in a Post called “Gems” in her own blog “Cuttings”. I have also used Kay’s poetry in the Post Green and Black: Green Stones and Mary Black’s “The Moon and Saint Christopher”.

People and Places, Poems and Stones: Kay McKenzie Cooke and Orepuki

Kay reading poetry at the Orepuki Beach Cafe, 2015. Source: http://whistlestoptours.blogspot.com/2015/06/early-march-2015-saw-j-and-k-rolling.html
Kay’s photo of Taunoa Stream, Gemstone Beach. Source: https://kaymckenziecooke.com/2019/05/09/charmed-place

A few weeks ago, on an aeroplane, I read Kay McKenzie Cooke’s book of autobiographical poems, Born To A Red-Headed Woman (2014). I was flying south, on my way via Invercargill, Gore and Riverton to Orepuki, the place where she grew up. I read all the poems at one sitting, and was transported in space and time beyond that morning’s plane journey to my own past and to the places that we unknowingly shared many years ago – the beaches of the southern coast, parts of rural Southland, the town of Gore and its high school, the big city of Dunedin. Kay lived in Orepuki for only ten years, but I understand the deep feelings she has for that place and how it remains strongly influential in her life and poetry. I grew up on “The Mains”, a farm just outside of Waikaka, leaving there when I went to university. I still think of it as “home”, and many parts of that farm are clear images in my head and still have strong emotional meanings for me. I have come to know Orepuki as the town near to Gemstone Beach, a place where I collect magnificent little stones, but seeing it through Kay’s eyes adds significant depth and meaning. 

I used to write a column for “The Smallfarmer” magazine, about 17 or 18 years ago. One of my articles was titled “The Passions and Emotions of Smallfarming: Place, Experience and Meaning”. I started it with this comment: “Geographers have argued for some time that a place is not simply the sum of its physical and biological components. Rather, places are peopled, and have significance to people in a wide variety of ways. Places are centres of meaning constructed by experience… They have emotional value and meaning to us.” I argued that different parts of a smallfarm (or of any place, in fact) can have different emotional meanings at different times to people, and these intensify or even change as the years pass. Lived-in places have “emotional micro-regions”, small areas charged with emotions based on the experiences we have there. 

In that article, I explored different types of “emotional micro-regions”. There are areas associated with delight, with stimulation, or with joy, which are keenly felt positive emotions. Gemstone Beach, for example, is full of those experiences for me, where the discovery of a colourful or rare stone brings a surge of emotion. Such emotions have come to be associated with the preparations for any visit to that beach. Then there are regions of comfort, security, and relaxation, positive but more passive emotions. Sitting on the high bank of stones half-way through a stone collection expedition, eating a refreshing mandarin or bar of chocolate, or finally reaching the carpark and warmth of the car after nearly three hours on a cold and windy beach – these constitute such micro-regions. 

Gemstone Beach, a region of delight
The delight of a gorgeous Gemstone Beach stone, found by Sam, my great-nephew
The surprise and delight of finding a sought-after stone
A refreshing stop on the stone bank, safe from the waves
The view of Gemstone Beach while taking a refreshing break. This part of the beach becomes associated with this emotional experience.

Negative passive place emotions include boredom, dissatisfaction, and tedium. Gemstone Beach does not hold such areas for me. But I can imagine that someone accompanying me, who has no interest in stones and really wants to be somewhere else, would come to have that kind of emotional experience of that place. Finally, there are the places that may be associated with stress, anxiety, tension, and frustration, even sadness, fear and anger, the more keenly felt negative emotions. Crossing the swift-flowing Taunoa Stream, or walking eyes-down along the edge of the waves, have sometimes resulted in the discomfort of cold water in the gumboots. And the pounding of powerful waves on a stormy day, when I have a high bank of stones restricting my ability to elude a wave stronger than the previous one, can be an anxious experience. 

Drying out my gumboots on Gemstone Beach on a cold June day, 2019.
The discomfort of the wave washing in over your gumboots.
The anxiety of being so close to powerful waves breaking on Gemstone Beach.
The anxiety of being so close to a crumbling stone bank as the Waimeamea River seeps out through the stones

Emotional micro-regions are not fixed – they may last for only a short time, though the memory and subsequent association remains. And they often overlap – the same place can have both positive and negative associations related to a number of different events or visits that have occurred over the years. Gemstone Beach is an amalgam of emotional micro-regions built up from the experiences I have had there. 

Kay McKenzie Cooke was born in Tuatapere and grew up in Orepuki, a stone’s throw from Gemstone Beach. She was the oldest of the seven children in her family. Through her mother’s line, she is tangata whenua and of Scottish and English descent. Through her father’s line, she is of Scottish and Irish descent. She writes: “My maunga/mountain, the Takitimu range, my awa/river is the Waiau, Southland, my ancestor is Moitoitoi, the maraes I affiliate to are Waihopai, Aparima and Hokonui. My iwi is Kai Tahu, my hapu is Kati Mamoe.”

Kay McKenzie Cooke. Source: https://bellamysatfive.wordpress.com/the-poets/kay-mckenzie-cooke
The McKenzie farm at Orepuki, Princess Range in the background, Te Waewae Bay to the left. Source: https://bellamysatfive.wordpress.com/the-poets/kay-mckenzie-cooke
The view at Orepuki from where Kay used to live. Source: http://andbottlewasher.blogspot.com/2014/04/theres-life-in-old-girl-yet-orepuki.html
Otama Valley. Source: https://kaymckenziecooke.com/2018/08/05/waikaka-visit

When she was ten years old, Kay’s family moved to the Otama Valley, further north in Southland, 20 miles from Gore, where her father continued to work in farming. Five years later, Kay’s father died suddenly and unexpectedly of a heart attack. Her mother took Kay and her siblings to live in Gore. After four years as a pupil at the small, two-roomed, country school of Wendon, Kay attended Gore High School, probably just a year ahead of myself, although I did not know her. In the early 1970s, both of us went to Dunedin for further study,  Kay to attend Teacher’s College. She became an early childhood teacher, got married, and had children. In the early 1990s, she decided to take up writing seriously. Her poems have since been published in a number of journals and magazines. Her first book of poetry, Feeding the Dogs, was published by Otago University Press in 2002 and won the Jessie McKay Prize for Best First Book of Poetry. Her second book of poetry was Made For Weather (2007) and her third was Born To A Red-Headed Woman (2014).

A description of Feeding the Dogs from the publisher: “This bumper collection of 60 poems is autobiographical and in it Cooke writes about town, landscape, family and everyday life. ‘Feeding the Dogs’ is one of the poems in this book. There are other rural poems, such as ‘I love this farm so much I could pat it’, but Kay Cooke is equally at home writing a well-made poem about lawn bowlers in Queenstown, a family reunion, global warming or biotechnology. Cooke’s work is strong and confident. On top of that, she has a particular southern sensibility that is very appealing and recognizable. Cooke writes that her poems come from the ‘sense of isolation that I felt living on a farm in Otama Valley, with tussock-covered hills and no shops and bus trips to school’.”

One description of Made For Weather includes the following: “The poems contain an array of striking images, developed from Cooke’s exposure as a child and adolescent to the wind-whipped coastline of Orepuki, now a ghost town on the eastern fringe of Te WaewaeBay, near Fiordland. The passing of seasons features in the background of scenes which are dominated by ostensibly contemporary concerns such as a wild and woolly boyfriend, or collecting Toheroa. The poet has a gift for capturing people in day-to-day, incidental situations.”

The following comments by the publisher on Born To A Red-Headed Woman are an accurate description of that book: “Laconic, wry, subtly philosophical, Kay McKenzie Cooke’s new collection carries us from her rural Southland girlhood in the 1950s and 60s to the bitter pressures of adopting out her baby as a teenager in the 1970s, and to her present as grandmother, mother, wife and author. A plain-spoken honesty, a sensitivity to the natural world, a gentle humour, a deep sense of how the richness of our relationships lodges in ordinary rituals and routines: all combine in a quietly moving autobiography.” 

Kay’s first two books are out of print, but can sometimes be discovered in second-hand bookstores. You can buy Born To A Red-Headed Woman here.

Kay has two blogs, Cuttings and Time & Place. You can listen to Kay reading “Sacred Days”, a poem of images of her life as a high school student at Gore High School, a poem published in “Born to a Red-Headed Woman”: “I wrote the poem as a sixty-year old looking back into my own adolescence and its callow bewilderment. My very normal teenage confusion was compounded by the recent loss of my father who had died very suddenly of a heart attack when I was fifteen. His sudden disappearance from our lives had necessitated, for my mother, my six siblings and myself, an immediate removal from the freedom and familiarity of a rural home [at Orepuki] to the weird constrictions of life in a small town, living in a wooden villa with a mailbox on a street next to a lot of other wooden villas with mailboxes.” (Click here for more of Kay’s comments on the poem and here for the full text of the poem.)

Kay has lived in Dunedin for many years now, has retired from teaching,  and participates in and helps to organise Dunedin poetry readings. With Jenny Powell, she forms the poetry performance duo, “J&K Rolling”, taking poetry readings to out-of-the-way places and rural areas in New Zealand. Kay is available to visit schools as part of the Writers in Schools programme. She visited Waikaka School in 2018 as part of this. In February this year (2019), she read and discussed her poem, “some time”, at Knox College Chapel’s opening service – an excerpt from this poem is featured on a sculpture in the College quadrangle: “But this is home./ This place,/ where every season counts/ and under our feet,/ safe ground”. I note this because I was a student resident at Knox College in the early 1970s. In March 2018, Kay and Jenny Powell had a poetry stall at the Owaka Cavalcade Market and Family Entertainment Day.

Kay and Jenny outside Orepuki Cafe. Source: http://whistlestoptours.blogspot.com/2015/06/early-march-2015-saw-j-and-k-rolling.html
Kay McKenzie Cooke and Jenny Powell. Source: https://www.jennypowell.co.nz
Kay’s car parked alongside the school fence when she visited Waikaka school. Source: https://kaymckenziecooke.com/2018/08/05/waikaka-visit/
Excerpt from Kay’s poem, Knox College sculpture. Source: https://kaymckenziecooke.com/2019/03/11/one-fine-fine-day
Kay and Jenny’s Owaka Poetry Stall. Source: https://kaymckenziecooke.com/blog-2/

Stones are part of Kay’s childhood memories of Orepuki, and she often visits the beach when she returns there. “I remember as a kid keeping on our bedroom window sill, jam jars full of water to keep my stash of gemstones bright and colourful – until an algae-green sludge smothered their attraction and I had to throw them out again, allowing the rain and air to keep them instead” (from a  2011 blog post).  Her father was born in Orepuki and “over his many years there – long before Gemstone Beach was famous or even called by that name – he, like all Orepuki kids, collected the coloured pebbles”. All of his stone collection then went into the wet cement of the concrete paths and steps he built around their house. Many years later, Kay managed to retrieve the two steps and take them to Dunedin. She comments in the same 2011 blog post:  “I love this tangible reminder I have of of my childhood home. I always feel close to my father (dead 43 years this Thursday) whenever I take time to sit on them and rub my palms over the smooth, rounded stones. To me they are gems not so much semi-precious, as fully-precious. Each one tells a story and recently I’ve been paying attention.” Her poem “living stone” contains the story of the steps, and three other poems were inspired by her father’s Orepuki stones, including “quiet life“. Other poems have been stone-fed, such as “a heart-shaped one“.

Orepuki beach stones in concrete steps, done by Kay’s father, rescued from her old Orepuki home. Source: http://andbottlewasher.blogspot.com/2011/10/stories-written-in-stone.html
Collected from Gemstone Beach by Kay and her son, April 2019. Source: http://andbottlewasher.blogspot.com/2019/04/now-that-family-have-left-our-shores-to.html
The wind-bent trees of Orepuki, another significant landscape feature. Source: https://kaymckenziecooke.com/2018/05/20/fine-balance/

It was a moving experience for me to read Kay’s poems, their power lying in our shared southern roots as well as her personal openness and perceptive insights about everyday life. The links to Orepuki and Gemstone Beach led me to offer Kay the gift of a few of my polished stones from Gemstone Beach, which she was delighted to receive. These stones are the subject of my next Post, 16 Gems – Stones for Poetry.