Tuesday Poem: Grandmother by Kate Duignan

When I was five

you taught me how to separate an egg.

I watched you tap it on the rim

of the bowl,

press your thumbs to the spot

and crack it clean in two.

You let me take the speckled shell 

in my own hands

and rock the yolk back and forth,

quivering

as it slid from one half to the other,

a tiny yellow sun.

We put the splintered pieces

in the brown bin

for the compost

and the empty carton

in the red bin

for the incinerator.

In the garden,

the light went out of the golden elm.

We stood at the window.

The moon was a white cup.

The birds had gone to their nests, you said

and tomorrow would be a good day.

I spread my fingers on the dark glass.

Our cake, you said, would rise.

___________

I heard Kate read this poem up in Palmerston North last month. We were both tutoring an Honours course in writing fiction at Massey University, and spent the weekend there with the students who were learning extramurally and had come for a 'contact' weekend from all over NZ and overseas. The course 'captain' Thom Conroy (who writes award-winning fiction as Thomas Gough) had us all doing an 'Open Mic' on Saturday evening - with wine flowing and loads of food. 

It was a terrific event - very relaxed (as Thom likes it) -- and Thom, Kate and I all read, as well as the students. Kate's poem was the stand-out for me.

I think it is wonderful the way she builds the love and intimacy in the relationship through the simple task of baking a cake. There's a contemplative beauty in every line, and a lovely evocation of child vs. ageing grandmother shown through the grandmother's teaching, the things the grandmother says, the child spreading her fingers on the dark glass. Throughout there is a feeling of inevitability - of a cake rising, the day turning to night, life passing. 

Kate's grandmother has passed away now and although she thought she'd be okay reading the poem, it was still emotional for Kate. The rest of us felt it. It could be any of our grandmothers or our children's grandmothers. It gives me a lump in my throat reading it now. And the last line - fantastic. 

This poem is posted with Kate's permission, it first appeared in Sport. Kate has published an excellent novel called Breakwater which is set in Wellington, and is a teacher of short fiction at Victoria University and book reviewer. Until we went to Palmerston North together I didn't know she was a poet. 

A reading to make the windows crack

Dear James George

I had to leave your reading tonight before you had finished answering questions and before the wine was served. If I could have stayed I would have told you both my daughter and I were spellbound by your story. You began with a paragraph from a story by Katherine Mansfield and opened it up into a complex and heartbreaking story of a trucker and his stepson, and the way love and morality are tested and sometimes come up wanting.

The voice of the trucker was so true and delivered with such skill we were fully transported for the 25 minutes you read. And how marvellous it was to be read to for that long - to feel a story build layer upon layer until it became something solid in the room, and then started to push at the walls and belly the windows. At one stage, the door slammed shut on its own.

When you stopped there was silence as the roomful of people tried to adjust. It was a sudden ending, but we'd been abandoned, too, the story gone along with Sonny and Rico and Ceal and Claire. It will remain with me for a long time especially the image of the woman running after the orange and the way that poignant image recurred later in Sonny's guilty imagination; then there was the detail of Sonny's truckdriving, and most of all Sonny's relationship with Rico, and the darker more complex one he had with Ceal.

Thom Conroy who was the frank and cheerful chair for the Massey University event talked of the way all your novels have a strong theme of 'reaching out' - emotionally, physically - and how this gives them depth and humanity. (The story you read was the same.) You replied to Thom - and I'm paraphrasing here - that in reaching out people can experience redemption or damnation and what interests you as a writer is when the act of reaching out means people lose a little of themselves.

Thom was surprised by the story, he said it was very 'intense' and different from your three novels (Wooden Horses, Hummingbird, and Ocean Roads). I confess, ashamedly, that I haven't read any of them to be able to compare - but my 20-year-old son owns and loves Hummingbird so I'll borrow it off him tomorrow.

Meanwhile, what was the name of the story you read? And where can I find a copy of it to show him? [Stop Press: At the Edge of the Road by James George is in the new Vintage anthology Second Violin - New stories inspired by Katherine Mansfield to be released 3 October.]

As we drove away down Taranaki Street from Massey's Wellington campus my daughter, Issy (12), said 'I didn't think it was going to be all that good tonight, but it was really good. James George could be an actor the way he told that story, and Thom was cute.' And we talked about Rico, then, like he was a boy we knew.

Thanks,

Mary

James George is reading at Palmerston North's fabulous City Library at 7pm tomorrow night (September 26) with drinks starting at 6pm. The event is free. For more information on him go here. His fourth novel Theme from an Imaginary Western is due out later this year with Huia.

And congratulations to Harvey Molloy for his poetry collection Moonshot launched last night. I missed another good reading there I am told.