Riemke Ensing, New Zealand Bio: Riemke Ensing is a Poet who has distinctively synthesized European and New Zealand influences. Born in Groningen, Netherlands, she arrived in New Zealand in 1951. In 1977 she edited the first New Zealand Anthology of women poets "Private Gardens" (1977). Her reputation as poet and scholar has grown, especially with three books published in 1995: "Dear Mr Sargeson", written in homage after visiting Frank Sargeson's Cottage; "Like I have seen the dark green ladder climbing", a response to paintings by Eion Stevens; and "Gloria-in-Excelsis", an edition of the poetry of Gloria Rawlinson. Ensing's latest book is "Talking Pictures: Selected Poems" (2000) which includes her best poetry from 1984 to 2000. Riemke has just been awarded the Buddle Findlay Sargeson Fellowship for part of 2002. She is currently in residence at the Sargeson Centre.

The migrant returned to New Zealand again for Sophia van Delden at 75 "without stirring abroad, you can see the whole world. Without looking out the window you can see the way to heaven." - Lao Tzu After all the journeys starting and departing and beginning again, you are here on another passage finally in your own harbour at home, the sea also a creature of arrivals always on the move living with stories and seasons ageless in memory where all time is now and shelter an open space Fisherman at Castlecliff 'Like jogging on the spot,' he reckons, pulling his skiff into the breakers. An arctic explorer on a sledge disappearing into that shook silver blueness. A longline barbed with hooks wedged in the bow. It runs towards Easter. Three gulls cry overhead. Their flight writing the signs of the cross. In the distance Taranaki watches in silence. Already it has seen too much. Blue This blue has nothing to do with darkness. It is Arabian nights remembered from childhood, the sky watching the Nile in fairy tales. It is mystery of mountains so far out of reach and high they can only be imagined dwelling in deeply dark waters lambent with passion angels revere. In their light gold mantles of blue they enter now the magic imaginings floating between sea and sky - that space where all the world's blues sing electric. Blue Window To hold the sky in your hand for just one moment as though your heart would break. All that devotional blue swirling the 'Oh!' out of breath promising such a morning roofs of mosques stretching their azure curves voluptuously, a mountain startled into purity - in these heavenly vapours of air. Always the knife glinting on the blue table. Ghosts coming to wound in poems writing themselves as fragments of pasts that are never other than now always (still) shaping, putting the point to that hollow where life pulses. The sky Tiepolo blue but clouds out of focus feathered with rain. Small consolations. Waitakere River Valley for Derek March - painter I. Lost, you say, the songs of the forest where the light never shone and listen to the wind remembering adventures through trees smothered in liana. See how the water flits over stones and all the colours of darkness suddenly speaking. The currents swirling in great swathes of sound. Clouds make a choir rolling their sadness through a sky heavy with rain and mist. Where the sea curves and breaks in land spirits roam in the drift of waiata shivering through bones of trees dank with grief. II. Hill hunker down and slide into the bellies of eels excavating sites older than winds finding no resting place in the remembered past. Silver slips into the light clouds glimpse flowing through water searching out landscapes furrowed with sorrow and loss. Morning Glory The neighbour's out with his binoculars. He's having a good time watching the birds. This one's in the shower. I lean out to open the window wider. Let out the steam. His. I wave. My boobs dance delighted with such abundance. He fumbles to adjust his focus. I shout him joy of the world. All works copyright Riemke Ensing

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