Joan Fleming

Joan Fleming is the author of two books of poetry, Failed Love Poems (Victoria University Press, 2015) and The Same as Yes (VUP, 2011), and a chapbook, Two Dreams in Which Things Are Taken (Duets, 2010). She won the Biggs Poetry Prize in 2007, and her work has since been anthologised in The Best of Best New Zealand Poems, Dear Heart: 150 New Zealand Love Poems and Essential New Zealand Poetry: Facing the Empty Page. She currently lives in Melbourne where she is working on a PhD in ethnopoetics and doing occasional teaching. Conversations, collaborations, and dance all feed her life in unmeasurable ways.

Fleming comments: '"The Invention of Enough" is a story with holes in it. I feel very close to this fictional couple, but I also can’t claim to be telling their whole story. Marriage seems to me to be full of delicate, difficult, charged negotiations; these create a web of trust and home-feeling that is rent all over with small betrayals. Writing this poem was my way into understanding the tender care and sticky darknesses of a relationship that keeps moving into new phases. While it breaks my heart, every time, that the poem ends in the delivery suite, I also know that’s not the end of the story.'

Previous section.

Next section.