My daughter is doing her speech for NCEA English.
She’s been watching spoken word poetry. She shows me Youtube sonnets. I like her enthusiasm.
On Ginny and Georgia, Ginny’s dad takes her to a spoken word poetry evening.
I love Dominic Joey. He is a Gen X poetry legend and I’m eager to read his new book.
I take my daughter along to the magnificent Goblin on Ponsonby Rd, Wednesday night.
I bought a small platter of beard and dips. She had a lemonade.
There is a joy sitting in a room of people listening to poetry.
It binds us to these eclectic crafted figurative moments of the poet. Seeing through their eyes, their heart, their pain.
Jenny, Mat, Ollie, Dom and Liam.
Their insight and humour and anger and fury and pain.
Their poverty as a badge of honour for the price of being a poet in country afraid of words and emotion.
Tiny moments of human connection in an ocean of loneliness, fear and existential rage.
Their words were magical bruises.
Alienation. Rejection. Acceptance. Home.
I introduced my daughter to Dom afterwards. She grinned wildly at the roaring flames they had ignited.
We had ice cream afterwards and left Ponsonby Road to the shadows and hurts.
Her eyes blazed all the way home in the uber.
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