The Friday Poem: There Is a Man Dancing on the Rudder of an Enormous Cargo Ship by Erik Kennedy
Stern and rudder of cargoship. Photo: Getty Images
A new poem by Christchurch poet Erik Kennedy.
There Is a Man Dancing on the Rudder of an Enormous Cargo Ship
having arrived as part of a protest flotilla
of kayaks and inflatables and paddleboards,
a semi-cohesive squadron of possibility and guerrilla
tactics that are half surprise party, half interview with the parole board,
and his dancing is pretty good, not only for who he is
(barefoot, bearded, handy with a hammer, white)
but for what it means (it’s sand thrown in the gears
of an unethical industry—I mean, they’re being pretty polite
for water-borne protestors, but they’re angry),
and, yeah, the police are hailing him from the quay,
but this doesn’t seem to be leading him towards any sudden doubts,
he just doesn’t seem to care,
and isn’t that what dancing is—seeming not to care
about the things you care about?
Erik Kennedy
Erik Kennedy is the author of the poetry collections Sick Power Trip (2025), Another Beautiful Day Indoors (2022), and There's No Place Like the Internet in Springtime (2018), all with Te Herenga Waka University Press. He lives in Ōtautahi Christchurch.
