New Zealand, (b. 1957)
Palaeolithic Excavations in the Lower Dordogne
- At the end of the talk
- the interpreter for the deaf
- took a long drink.
- When the last generation
- of pig hunters
- had passed away
- the wild pigs
- staged their comeback.
- It was hot in the auditorium.
- The professor of palaeontology
- had a black, bristly beard
- with a streak of white
- right down the centre.
- She thought of
- ‘The Bride of Frankenstein’
- but only after he had made
- his closing remarks
- and paused
- to ask for questions.
- That evening
- in the countryside
- she relaxed with a glass
- of red wine
- and failed to hear
- the wild pigs
- tear up her vegetable patch.
Tonga poems series
(excerpt)*
- And the dogs are barking
- in a forest
- in a forest of bells
- and I’m listening
- with a green ear
- an ear as large
- as a taro leaf.
- And a giant hand
- takes off its glove
- and strikes the land
- with the full force
- with the force
- of a hurricane.
- And tiny pigs fly past
- with bats
- between their teeth,
- bats as ripe as figs
- plopped into the mouth
- of a green hurricane.
Editor’s Note:
* This is an excerpt from his ‘Tonga’ series of poems in von Sturmer’s notebook inspired by and written during a one week trip to Tonga in 2013
About the Poet:
Richard von Sturmer, New Zealand, (b. 1957), is a poet, artist, poet, playwright, film-maker, and musician. He has also written plays, performance pieces, he has fronted New Zealand punk/art band The Plague, continued with The Humanimals, Avante Garde and wrote the lyrics for Blam Blam Blam. He is principally known for his poetry.
In 1992 he left New Zealand to undertake ten years of Zen training at the Rochester Zen Center, a Buddhist Community in upstate New York. In 2003 he returned to live and work in Auckland where he married to Amala Wrightson with whom he co-founded the Auckland Zen Centre.
Von Sturmer’s written work has been published in many anthologies, including An Anthology of New Zealand Poetry in English (1997) and he has often appeared in literary journals such as Sport, Landfall, brief, The New Zealand Listener and Zen Bow.
Six collections of von Sturmer’s writing have been published, including: We Xerox Your Zebras (1988) and A Network of Dissolving Threads (1991), Suchness: Zen Poetry and Prose (2005), The Book of Equanimity Verses (2011), as well as a 2016 memoir, 2016. This Explains Everything. [DES-04/18]