The Friday Poem: ‘Every day my name is out there’ by Diane Brown
Political verse by Dunedin writer Diane Brown.
Every day my name is out there
Some say it’s pointless, we have no say
but every day they land in my inbox
or on Facebook, petitions asking
for my name: on state housing,
refugees, the TPPA, the writers
imprisoned for telling the truth,
the stoning of adulteress women,
the rising of the seas,
the whales choking on plastic,
the starving in Ethiopia
(always the starving in Ethiopia).
Today there will be calls asking
to support the banning of pitbulls
after yet another mauling.
No question, I do the right thing
the liberal left, right thing,
enter my email address,
press send, there’s a satisfying woosh
like a kererū winging overhead.
It’s out there, my name
in the ether, and I get back to doing
what I do, as if I’ve been to confession,
cleansed myself of the world’s woes
and sins. A brief moment
of engagement, painless.
The point is, I’ve let the angels
know I’m on their side.
From the new anthology Manifesto Aotearoa: 101 political poems edited by Philip Temple and Emma Neale (Otago University Press, $45), available at Unity Books.
Diane Brown
Diane Brown was born in 1951 in Auckland, but ran away to Dunedin in 2000 to live with Philip Temple. She runs an online and face to face school, Creative Writing Dunedin. Her latest book, Taking My Mother To The Opera, Otago University Press (2015) is a poetic family memoir.
