Southern View: June 03, 2021

SOUTHERN VIEW Latest Canterbury news at starnews.co.nz
Thursday June 3 2021 5
Arts Centre residency a poet’s dream
• By Matt Slaughter
CLAUDIA JARDINE is doing
what many poets only dream of.
She is being paid to write
poetry and live in a space known
for breeding creativity, The Arts
Centre.
The 25-year-old, who recently
moved back home to Christchurch
after studying classics at
Victoria University of Wellington,
is one of four artists selected
for The Arts Centre’s Arts Four
Creative Residency programme,
between now and July. It is being
funded with support from Creative
New Zealand and the Stout
Trust.
The artists are living in the
residence above Lumiere Cinema
on Rolleston Ave, which opened
in 2019.
By the end of the 12 weeks,
each artist will complete a project
in their chosen art form.
Jardine aims to complete her
first full collection of poetry,
which explores the themes of
textile manufacture in the ancient
world and the history of the
women in her own family.
A particular focus of her
poetry will be on loom weights, a
type of ancient weaving tool used
to weigh down warp threads,
which hung from looms. Jardine
said: “My sort of research-poetic
WEAVING: Claudia Jardine is combining textile themes with
family history during her Arts Centre residency.
PHOTO: GEOFF SLOAN ​
job is like a poetic essay on the
loom weights research and how
it relates to my own life and my
own relationships with women in
my family.
“It’s highly likely that mothers
were passing on loom weights to
their daughters.
“There are still these connotations
around textile manufacture
in the modern world as being
sort of a woman-centric job, and
it’s an interesting relationship to
explore.”
Jardine developed a passion for
poetry as a student at Cashmere
High School and said it is growing
in popularity in Christchurch
and New Zealand-wide.
“I think that, although New
Zealand has always had quite a
rich writing scene, poetry in particular
is really hot right now. I
think more people are writing it,
Some of Claudia Jardine’s poems from AUP New Poets 7
Sulpicia 3.16 – Nina Simone
how nice it is
your surrender to apathy
me
in decay
let you have your harlots and
their baskets
pinned down in a pile of their
own togas
not this daughter of Servius
sting of the pessimists
fancy me giving in
to a nameless bed
Sulpicia 3.17 – Madonna
surely surely
your piety extends to the temple
of your girl
altars afire with fever?
why choose to conquer
wretched infection
you not wishing it too
what is the use in evisceration
if you can stomach it
heart unmoving?
more people are appreciating it.”
Jardine’s poems have been
published before, including in
Auckland University Press’s AUP
New Poets 7, which was the number
nine best selling book in New
Zealand at one stage in August
last year.
Jardine is also a accomplished
High Functioning
I’m being eaten by my feelings
face down in the mud
like a farmer with a brain
aneurysm
surrounded by piglets
face down in the mud
nudged and kneaded
hither! the scoffing piglets
me?
fat pheasant flushed from the
thicket
nudged and kneaded
tossed mid-air between kārearea
flat present smushed under a
winglet
ex-lab rat on pingers on a
treadmill
receiving Aro Park autopsy by
absent-minded accipiter
like a farmer with a brain
aneurysm
chewed by swine and birds and
rodents
I’m being eaten by my feelings
musician, who released her first
ep, North, in 2019.
The other artists completing
the residency are Jo Burzynska, a
Lyttelton multi-sensory artist, Ana
Iti, a visual artist from Wellington
and Julie Hill, a playwright,
essayist and documentary maker
based in Auckland.
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