Here are some lines of poetry that have special significance for me:
Not I. some child born in a marvellous year,
Will learn the trick of standing upright here
– “The Skeleton of the Great Moa in the Canterbury Museum, Christchurch” by Alan Curnow
Talk about hope. New Zealand isn’t an easy place to live in; even the Great Moa wasn’t able to keep standing up against the harsh climate. But Curnow thinks we’ll figure out a way, and so do I. On my more optimistic days, I like to think could be that child, but even on my pessimistic ones, I’m working to build the society that will produce that child.
I was introduced to this poem in 2016 as a Year 13 student (final year of high school), when a university lecturer gave a guest talk to the Scholarship English class. He spoke with great passion, but I didn’t understand the poem at all. To be frank, I didn’t understand almost any poetry at the time. I don’t know what’s clicked inside of me in the intervening years, but when I returned to it, it all made sense.
I was reintroduced to this poem, bizarrely, when looking back at the New Zealand Treasury’s 2014 Briefing to the Incoming Minister “Holding on and Letting Go“. This summarised the Treasury’s views on the opportunities and challenges for New Zealand’s economic performance. Its impressively literary title is taken from a poem by Glen Colquhoun which responds to Curnow:
“The art of walking upright here
Is the art of using both feet.
One is for holding on.
One is for letting go.
“Come away, O human child!
To the waters and the wild
With a faery, hand in hand,
For the world’s more full of weeping than you can understand.“
– The Stolen Child by W B Yeats
I recently learned of a theory that tales of children being stolen by the fairies were a way of explaining autism. Also in support of this theory is the line “Away with us he’s going/the solemn-eyed”. I additionally suspect that W B Yeats was autistic.
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
– The Second Coming by W B Yeats
This whole poem is rather pessimistic and I often find myself returning to it when I’m not in the best spot. Hope is great and all, but sometimes you just need something that acknowledges how messy, scary, and near-apocalyptic the world is. I marvel that W B Yeats had these thoughts over 100 years ago – they feel so directed at the spiralling modern times. However, I don’t completely agree with this line. Many of the best do have the courage of their convictions, and apathy can be as great an evil as “passionate intensity”
“Hope” is the thing with feathers –
That perches in the soul –
And sings the tune without the words –
And never stops – at all –
– Poem 314 by Emily Dickinson
When your body lies to you and tells you everything can’t possibly be okay, you can but stubbornly cling to hope. This poem was a big part of a mindset shift around my mental health (though the other, bigger, part was finding some medication that worked!). I was introduced to this poem by John Green though his Vlogbrothers YouTube channel, which I’ve been watching since 2017.
Time will say nothing but I told you so,
Time only knows the price we have to pay;
If I could tell you I would let you know.
– If I could tell you by W H Auden
Villanelles are supposedly a favourite of the outsider. They’re delightfully repetitive, braiding the first and last lines of the opening stanza throughout the rest of the poem. This villanelle braids some of my favourite themes: long-termism, focusing on what matters, unknowability, and the inability to communicate; all dancing around the most joyous imagery of the beauty of life.
Finn Thompson 