Details

Abstract / Summary

When the crazies are let outThey go by bus to see the seaIn ones and twos in hats and shawlsAnd when the time comes to departThe empty bus stands on the sandThe full pale moon looks down and grinsAnd out of sight they sing their songBehind a hill beneath a treeTheir shoes are hanging from their ears Shaggy Magpie Songs is a celebration of poetry’s potential – for drama and comedy, narrative and nonsense. Presented in four parts – Praise, Nonsense, Blues and Pop – the poems are at times jazzy and rollicking, at other times crooningly melancholic. Murray Edmond is a poet of lyricism and wit, reference and pastiche, thought and memory, all of which he brings in abundance to this collection. Edmond writes: ‘Songs are poems that are incomplete without their music, so I think of these poems as all wanting to get off the page and start singing and dancing. The magpies of Aotearoa are silly (and slightly dangerous) birds who have given rise to the most profound line in the New Zealand poetry canon: Quardle oodle ardle wardle doodle . . . . I like to think the poems are the kind of songs that magpies might sing if they were into making up words: a little bubbly, a little bitter, a little absurd, and echoing with the sound of laughter: songs with shaggy tales to tell.’

Field of Interest

Literature

Author

Murray Edmond, 1949-

Copyright Message

Copyright © by Murray Edmond, 2015. Licensed for Australasian Literature Online by permission of Auckland University Press.

Content Type

Poetry

Duration

0 sec

Format

Text

Sub Genre

Poetry

Original Publication Date

2015

Page Count

72

Publication Year

2015

Publisher

Auckland University Press

Place Published / Released

Auckland, Auckland Region

Subject

Literature, Literature & Language, Poetry, Poesía, Poesia

Keywords and Translated Subjects

Poesía, Poesia