Sturmer, Richard von

New Zealand, (b. 1957)

Palaeolithic Excavations in the Lower Dordogne

  1. At the end of the talk
  2. the interpreter for the deaf
  3. took a long drink.
  4.  
  5. When the last generation
  6. of pig hunters
  7. had passed away
  8. the wild pigs
  9. staged their comeback.
  10.  
  11. It was hot in the auditorium.
  12. The professor of palaeontology
  13. had a black, bristly beard
  14. with a streak of white
  15. right down the centre.
  16.  
  17. She thought of
  18. ‘The Bride of Frankenstein’
  19. but only after he had made
  20. his closing remarks
  21. and paused
  22. to ask for questions.
  23.  
  24. That evening
  25. in the countryside
  26. she relaxed with a glass
  27. of red wine
  28. and failed to hear
  29. the wild pigs
  30. tear up her vegetable patch.

 Richard von Sturmer. Poetry New Zealand Yearbook. Volume 1 [Issue #49] (2014).

Tonga poems series
(excerpt)*

  1. And the dogs are barking
  2. in a forest
  3. in a forest of bells
  4. and I’m listening
  5. with a green ear
  6. an ear as large
  7. as a taro leaf.
  8.  
  9. And a giant hand
  10. takes off its glove
  11. and strikes the land
  12. with the full force
  13. with the force
  14. of a hurricane.
  15.  
  16. And tiny pigs fly past
  17. with bats
  18. between their teeth,
  19. bats as ripe as figs
  20. plopped into the mouth
  21. of a green hurricane.

 Richard von Sturmer. Poetry New Zealand Yearbook. article: “Comment: Jumping in the drink – Notes on the Tongan poems of Murray Edmond & Richard von Sturmer” by Scott Hamilton. Volume 1 [Issue #49] (2014).

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]