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Matakana poet Ashley Chan has been shortlisted for the 2017 Montreal International Poetry Prize.
His poem Windchime Meadows – Spring has been selected as one of the 50 best poems from over 2200 entries, from 70 countries around the world. The poem describes llama and alpaca shearing on the family lifestyle block at Matakana.
“It’s a real honour to represent New Zealand and showcase the Matakana and Mahurangi lifestyle in literature on the world stage,” Ashley says.
Ashley, who is currently based in Perth in West Australia, only recently started composing poems.
“I was working for an energy company down in Wellington and ended up sharing a house with the
American poet Alan Felsenthal, who was the visiting poetry lecturer at Victoria University. This inspired me to pick up the pen and give writing poetry a shot in my spare time.”
The winner, who will be awarded C$20,000, was due to be announced when Mahurangi Matters went to print.
All the shortlisted poems will be published in the 2017 Global Poetry Anthology by Véhicule Press.
Windchime Meadows – Spring
By Ashley Chan
The first dry weekend in December
Our shearer calls by
Saluting the spring air
Clippers at the ready
Blades oiled and sharpened
Shearing table trestled
Llamas and alpacas marshalled
The shed commandeered
A division of labourers – family and friends
Corrals the woolly herd
The first alpaca
Frothing green spittle at the mouth
A trail of reluctance dragged into the dirt
Is tightly trussed
A rising moan of imagined woe
Drowning the electric buzz
At each shear stroke
Young Tarin gently strokes her neck
Cupping his hand to ruffle her head
Mum, to planned avail
Grasps in turn each hoof
To clip, grout, file and mend
The doctor, Andrew, plays vet
Injecting this year’s medicinal
The needle pricks
A camelid wails
The shorn and kempt
Now leaking at all three ends
The chirocatharophiles – those lovers of clean hands
Keep an intended safe distance
Ignoring the commotion
Muck in to sort and grade
Discarding the prickly guard hair
Weeding out soiled fibre
Bagging premium fleece with care
Resisting the childlike urge
To gheegle the unshorn stud
Waiting his turn in the pen
By mid-afternoon, the last of twenty-odd done
A glass of wine deservedly in hand, to drink in the spring sun
