The Lustre Jug

In 2007 Bernadette Hall spent six months in Ireland, not far from Blarney, on the Rathcoola Fellowship. The poems in this collection arise from that experience.

With light-heartedness and daring, they track between dualities: the North and the South in Ireland; the rain-washed skies of Donoughmore, Co. Cork and the Queensland rainforest. Between national and personal histories. As for poetry, what is it to be, an axe or a peace offering?

The Glass Harmonica

                    The island is a holy well,
the crystal glasses fill with water.
‘I’ll strike them with a willow wand
with my left
                    then with my right hand
and I’ll call their music laughter,’
                    sings Flaherty’s daughter.

Praise for The Lustre Jug

Hall presents a deeply idiosyncratic map of the world, precisely depicting those details, which make minutes and days warm and inhabitable spaces.
Abby Cunnane CAPITAL TIMES

The Lustre Jug is a warm, elegant little book.
Hamesh Wyatt OTAGO DAILY TIMES

Geoff Cochrane’s Launch Poem for Bernadette Hall’s The Lustre Jug
3 August 2009, Christchurch
I’m here to add sparkle to an already sparkling occasion. I’ve also undertaken to sing
for my supper, but I’ll keep it short and sweet, which I like to think I’m good at.

LARKIN STORY
(Philip Larkin once said he wouldn’t mind seeing China if he could come back the same day)

Yes. And I’m a bit like Larkin, which is why I tell the story.
Our good friend Bernie on the other hand,
travelling hopefully and arriving graciously,
turns out to be a great inhabiter and enjoyer of the places she goes to.

Which brings us to The Lustre Jug and Ireland.
Bernie’s Ireland.
A place where foxgloves are heliotrope thimbles.
A place where there are bridges of glass and moss as thick as the fleece on
Shrek.
A place where raindrops slide gown strings of sunlight.

Click here for the complete poem

Bernadette Hall is an award-winning poet who lives in North Canterbury. Her work has been included most recently in Twenty Contemporary New Zealand Poets, edited by Andrew Johnston and Robyn Marsack (VUP/Carcanet, 2009). She is a founding staff member of The Hagley Writers’ Institute in Christchurch.