New poetry by Vincent O’Sullivan
Being Here (Victoria University Press) is the first book to survey the entire span of Vincent O’Sullivan’s poetry, from Bearings (1973) to poems published for the first time in this volume. We share a brand new poem from Being Here, a book that shows the full range of one of New Zealand’s finest poets.
Sunday being when I write
‘I want you to know, grandfather,’ writes
a child in a Chekhov story, ‘every day
like today I am beaten, there is no one,
not this far, to hold me. I am sending
a letter so you will know, quickly come
to get me.’ And the child in the story
writes his grandfather’s name, and the name
of a big city, and sends the letter
that he never fears in his heart will not
arrive, will make no difference, today
or any other which will break as this does,
and we know as we read we too have written
his letter, we too believing tomorrow
will not forever be another Monday,
and one day the master who beats us
will not be there. It is such a grand city
we write to, the postman we imagine
is always our friend, although the story now
is so far back. ‘Did I write that?’
the grown man asks, it being Monday still.
Vincent O’Sullivan is one of New Zealand’s leading writers, author of the biography of John Mulgan, Long Journey to the Border, the novels Let the River Stand and Believers to the Bright Coast, and many plays and collections of short stories and poems. He is joint editor of the five-volume Letters of Katherine Mansfield and has edited a number of major anthologies. He lives in Dunedin.
Find out more about Vincent O’Sullivan in his Book Council Writers file. Read the short story ‘Frame’ by Vincent O’Sullivan, published in Families, on Booknotes Unbound.