The Friday Poem: ‘Jacinda and Clarke and the Baby and Us’ by the NZ poet laureate
Jacinda Ardern and her newborn daughter Neve (supplied)
New Zealand poet laureate Selina Tusitala Marsh marks the very fine and wonderful occasion of the birth of a daughter to Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern and her partner Clarke Gayford.
Jacinda and Clarke and the Baby and Us: A Rondeau
The baby’s here, the baby’s here!
Aotearoa, New Zealand, what a year!
Jacinda, our partnered and pregnant world first
Has, this 125 Suffrage year, given birth
To a wee girl so dear
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Women are extending the frontier
In Census 2018 let’s be clear
And count the ways women in the stats have reversed
The baby’s here, the baby’s here!
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Patsy, our Governor General is near
Sian’s our Chief Justice, Lianne’s Christchurch Mayor
Jenny and Carmel for Labour (but Winnie came first)
Marama co-leading Greens, another burst
But the real labour has happened, let’s be clear:
The baby’s here, the baby’s here!
By Selina Tusitala Marsh, June 21, 2018
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Selina Tusitala Marsh
Dr Selina Tusitala Marsh is New Zealand's poet laureate. She is an Auckland-based writer of Samoan, Tuvaluan, English, Scottish and French descent. Her collection of verse Tightrope was published by Auckland University Press in 2017. Selina was born in Auckland in 1971.
