Intercolonial by Stephen Oliver
Puriri Press, 2013
Intercolonial, a new book-length poem by Stephen Oliver, focuses its attention on New Zealand, Australia, and the sea that lies between them. With sweeping long lines, Stephen Oliver zooms in on the details of place and geology: the poem is full of cinematic pans over landscape, seascape and human history, fulfilling what is often a purview of the long poem in naming the world and its inhabitants. His tight focus is evident from the very first lines of the poem:
Tusked cauliflowers and herded carrots, onions in piles,
tumbled pumpkins, potato scree, boxed and stall in between
scales that swung and creaked from the cream cabin roof
of the Indian greengrocer’s Bedford truck …
This close-up leads us to follow the truck into the streets of Wellington, and then to follow the unfolding map of the city as its roads, buildings and natural landmarks come into focus. We see the ‘council-red, No. 8 Brooklyn-west bus’, and pass under ‘Radio ZLW, the telegraph station on/ top of Tinakori Hill’, before looking out over the water. Reaching Wellington Harbour, our sense of timescale expands as we recognise the slower pace of oceanic and geological time unfolding beneath human history.
