Joan Fleming
Joan Fleming's debut collection of poems, The Same as Yes, was published by Victoria University Press in 2011. Her poems, prose poems and stories have been published in Landfall, Sport, the Listener, Hue & Cry, Enamel, JAAM, Takahe, Snorkel, Turbine, Blackmail Press, and the DUETS chapbook series, and have been anthologized in The Best of Best New Zealand Poems and Dear Heart: 150 New Zealand Love Poems. In 2012, Joan will take up a Masters scholarship in Iterative Poetics at the University of Otago.
Fleming comments: ‘This was one of the first “conversations” I wrote in the series of poems that became The Same as Yes. I can't say with any certainty where the images came from. Why a sea captain? Why a stone? I don't know, except that they felt right.
‘The sort of “difficult poem” I imagine the young woman talking to is, say, “Casabianca” by Elizabeth's Bishop, or James Galvin's “The Heart” – compelling poems that are clear of language and don't seem to be holding anything back on purpose, and yet, seem to shift and change with every reading, never fully revealing themselves.’
