The victims of Cyclone Gabrielle were remembered at a book launch and poetry reading event held at a popular bookstore in downtown Wellington on February 19.

Unity Books on Willis St hosted two very different poetry styles as Kathleen Gallagher (Kotuku Shining Flight) and Pete Goodwin (Pete’s 100 poems for you) read from their poetry collections before a small but appreciative audience, seated in a tranquil corner of the busy bookstore as customers went about browsing the stacked shelves.

Goodwin, a mouth cancer survivor, who had his poems read by someone else, specialised in comic verse with a serious edge. “I like to make people think and laugh at the same time,” he told the assembled poetry lovers.

At the outset, Goodwin invoked the cyclone victims before Gallagher delivered a plaintive karakia (Maori prayer).

Goodwin opened by saying it was only right his “humble collection” should be the “curtain raiser to the famous Kathleen Gallagher’s” collection of poems.

Turning to Gallagher, he said: “I’ll be gallant and salute your prestigious talent.”

He then recounted in humourous rhyme his experience with cancer, before yielding the floor to his stand-in, Katlyn Lynch, who did a marvellous job of reading Goodwin’s poems.

 The poem “Biscuit vs Cake” had the audience in stitches:

                  “The biscuit is strong and masculine,

                   A cake is soft and feminine.

                   Yet a biscuit can show its feminine side

                   When it’s delicately dunked in tea.”

In a more sombre vein, “Happy families” explores the value of family life. An extract:

                   “A family is a precious commodity

                     That should be guarded zealously.

                     Once the family is gone,

                     You can feel something is wrong….

                     Embrace the family

                     Because they’ll be gone

                     Before too long.”

“It’s Over” addresses the traumatic and devastating few weeks experienced by communities caught in the devastation unleashed by Cyclone Gabrielle. Extract:

                    “One day this planet will come to an end.

                     It might be a Supernova.

                    And all the last person on Earth needs to say is:

                     It’s over.”

Up next, Kathleen Gallagher read from her anthology titled Kotuku Shining Flight, which brings together four bodies of work spanning over 40 years, from 1979 to 2022.

Gallagher’s work has been described as “robust and tactile, aptly simple and deeply evocative.”

Her poems go back centuries, yet just as deftly returns us to the present.

Listening to her is like being present at an incantation – to nature, her Maori ancestors and the sweep of history.

“Earthquakes” captures the apocalyptic force of nature in  a few deft lines:

                       “they say the energy released by the 7.2

                         is the equivalent

                         of 1000 Hiroshima bombs hitting the city

                         the men are somehow calmer

                         on the face of it

                         than the women”

The poem ends with a simple yet profound realisation:

                         “post-earthquake things we have taken

                          for granted

                          become precious piercingly precious”

“Our Aunties” salutes the bulwark role of the extended whanau:

                         “the aunties turn up

                          unexpectedly when you most need them”

Gallagher urges the audience to “pray for the aunties all over the cyclone area at the moment. They’ll be doing their mahi [work].”

Elsewhere, in “Song of the Ngai Tahu woman (1843),” the poet explores the loss of identity and belonging:

                          “if you take my words

                           you take my understanding

                            if you take my words

                            and use other words

                             to describe my home

                             you take this place from me”

“Tree Cutting” traces the origin of Gallagher’s self-confessed activism:

                             “when they cut a tree

                             ‘tis as if they are cutting me”

The book launch was accompanied by exhibits of pencil drawings by the poet’s cousin Jeana Giblin who drew wetland birds during Covid.

“Each day she would walk down to the wetland and draw wetland birds,” Gallagher recalled.

“It’s just very special because, I think, we can remember the people that are hit by the cyclone.”