Connor, William

New Zealand, (contemporary)

PIG

  1. he stands by the roadside
  2. in a muddy lot
  3. grubbing at nuts
  4. hogging
  5.  
  6. gives me a squeezed, meaty glance
  7. then turns, gurgling the dregs
  8. of a glorious milkshake
  9. up the wet porky tunnels
  10. of his snout
  11.  
  12. nothing latinate in his vocabulary
  13. he noses the gutturals at the edge of the field
  14. with his mud-buttered nostrils
  15. the belch of his squeal.
  16.  
  17. I can travel the whole world
  18. I can peruse the markets in Marrakech
  19. for a bowl or trinket
  20. to fill the bowl or trinket-shaped hole
  21.  
  22. but here you are, pig. The whole hog. So
  23. together, homely
  24. a little bishop satisfied in your diocese of bog
  25.  
  26. pleased, at ease, with your lot.

© William Connor. Supplied to Porkopolis.org by personal correspondence with the author, November, 2018.

Editor’s Note:

Here is an audio recording (1.074KB) of William Connor reciting ‘Pig.’   pig-wm-connor.mp3

About the Poet:

William Connor, New Zealand, (contemporary) is a poet, a secondary school English, Drama and German teacher, a writer and puppeteer.

Connor recently completed a collection of poems for his Masters at the International Institute of Modern Letters of Victoria University in Wellington.
He was the recipient of the Story Inc. Poetry Prize in 2015 and has had poems published in takahe and the 2016 New Zealand Poetry Society anthology Penguin Days and Turbine | Kapohau.

Currently, Connor is in Germany writing producing and “staring in” a Lifeswap is a series of short animations that illustrate the adventures and misadventures of two young men, Jörg, 27, from Münster, Germany and Duncan, 27, from Wellington, New Zealand. With these shorts, he hopes to find a peaceful and witty ways to earth the many weird and wonderful clashes, harmonies, misunderstandings and hilarities that he has seen occur when Germans and New Zealanders come together. It is the celebration of a cultural exchange that could be refered to as “the dance between the jandal and the Birkenstock.” [DES-12/18]

Additional information:

  • William Connor on Turbine | Kapohau
  • William Connor on Facebook
  • Lifeswap videos – watch for free
    “Lifeswap” is a series of short animations that illustrate the adventures and misadventures of two young men, Jörg, 27, from Münster, Germany and Duncan, 27, from Wellington, New Zealand. Sensing the onslaught of their respective quarter life crises, they have found each other’s profiles online, spontaneously bought plane tickets and are now signed up to live each other’s lives for one year. Witness their delights, frustrations and misunderstandings as they discover the idiosyncrasies of life in the other’s culture through the lens of their own.
  • Lifeswap on Facebook