Kia ora Koutou,
in 2006 I was a student in a Whitireia poetry class taught by Lynn Davidson. Sarah Delahunty, another playwright, also attended. We both agreed that playwrights (or anyone wanting to write good dialogue), could gain a lot from studying and writing poems.
I was remembering that year and its benefits, recalling that Lynne decreed that we had to write a poem a week and bring it to the weekly class and there were many such days when some frantic writing and rewriting would be done, lines crossed and recrossed while eating a hurriedly made piece of toast and marmite or peanut butter before, with one last scribble and the certainty that this was probably the worst poem ever written (was it even a poem?) I walked out the door and along Courtenay Place to that classroom on the second floor.
I remembered Sarah’s poem, written for one such class and which I always loved because the theme is universal and it seemed appropriate for this present time (or any time perhaps?) so I asked her for permission to publish it on the Busk and she said yes, so here it is… many thanks Sarah.
Renée
If there was somewhere to be safe
If there was somewhere to be safe
I would have found it long ago
made up my fire and crouched there
My head would bow down
thank gods for mercy
ask only to remain beyond their furies.
If there was somewhere to be safe
you would be there with me
the air between us warm with breath
Our eyes would flicker at each other
through the firelight, our whispers
would be wilder than the wind
If there was somewhere to be safe and be with you
I would have found it long before tonight.
Sarah Delahunty
