David Eggleton lives in Dunedin, New Zealand. He is
a writer and a performance poet, and has performed his work in many
venues to all kinds of audiences, both in New Zealand and overseas.
His first collection of poems, South Pacific Sunrise
(Penguin Books), was co-winner of the PEN Best First Book of Poetry
Award 1987. He was the 1990 Burns Fellow at Otago University.
Eggleton was a judge in the 1997 Montana-New
Zealand Book Awards, and poetry category advisor in the 1998
Montana-New Zealand Book Awards. He won the inaugural Book Reviewer
of the Year Award in 1991 and the Book Reviewer of the Year Award
in 1997, and has been short-listed in 1995, 1996, 1998, and 2000.
He was judge of the 1999 Whitireia Poetry Award and judge of the
2000 Takahe National Poetry Competition. He has had several
collections of poetry published and is included in anthologies of
New Zealand poetry.
He is acknowledged in the Oxford Companion to
New Zealand Literature for promoting poetry as popular
entertainment and embodying the conflicts and combustions within a
vibrant young culture.
Two Poems by David Eggleton
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Fringed by salt-water lace, the abandoned
ship
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British Empire drifts through Isles of
Amnesia,
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awaiting colonial mutual evaluation.
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A shell roars inside the sea, calling to
islands,
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and islands surface like turtles in the
rain:
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rain white as mosquito net, white as grated
coconut,
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white as the helmets of
ex-Governor-Generals.
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Rain white like the walls of Suva city jail
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walls which hold bloody hibiscus, bruised
mango,
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and crims who blow smoke at a dead
volcano.
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Orchids nod to sermons of the wet
season;
-
jungle is green ink bleeding into
sludge.
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Rain erases the movie of 'the great
outdoors':
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that soaked brouhaha of palm-trees
threshing
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in a mare's nest of tradewind tales and
trails,
-
as coconuts arc like basketballs for the
hoop,
-
with earth ovens tropical plunder
steaming.
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Today the only colour bar is scar joining
scar,
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while anthill streets relay a taboo beat
to
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the black swish of Ratu Sir Lala Sukuna's
sulu.
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Suva's sweatshop sews all into one
sharkskin
-
when the call of Shark-god pounding grog
begins.
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Muddy kava slurped from a coconut bowl
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drives us further into earth at each small
go.
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It is land-divers free-falling to
Pentecost;
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it is skull-binders bound for Vanuatu;
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it is rafts of pumice fragments floating to
Fiji;
-
it is a World War Two submarine still
undersea,
-
its encrusted fire coral and brain coral
battery
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lighting up the Pacific with republican
dreams.
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The red eye of the Cobra coil burns to
nothing.
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Degei spits a gob of gold into the sky over
Nadi,
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and knocks heads of gods together, sucks out
sap.
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He shoulders a coconut sack, walks to
market,
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as if hauling an island along the
horizon.
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Around reefs black and white sea-snakes
spiral.
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The bula boys' shirts are prayer flags in
neon;
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their thatch roof a top hat; Krishnaís bus
their chariot,
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carrying them on firewheels whose spokes are
knives,
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along dirt roads where cane fields escalate into
fire.
