Bernadette Hall
Bernadette Hall lives in a renovated bach at Amberley Beach in North Canterbury. Poetry has taken her to Iowa, Ireland and Antarctica. The most recent of her ten books of poetry are The Lustre Jug (Victoria University Press, 2009) and Life & Customs (VUP, 2013). In 2015 she collaborated with the Christchurch multi-media artist, Robyn Webster, on a project called Matakaea: Shag Point. This was based on the plesiosaurus fossil found at Shag Point and was exhibited in the Ashburton Art Gallery. In 2015 Bernadette was awarded the Prime Minister’s Award for Literary Achievement in Poetry.
Hall comments: 'I love reading this poem. To myself, inside my own head. And to an audience, when I’m acting up the drama as the story zigs and zags like the hare among the lupins. The first time I come to the words "poor boy", I’m almost laughing out loud at the naivete of that beautiful besotted boy. What a fool to give himself away like that. Grow up, I want to say, be careful. By the time I get to the repeat, "poor boy", I’m horrified and heart-broken, full of remorse and pity. They do that to you, the ancient Greeks, with those stories of theirs. Grow up, they say, grasp the nettle. How else are you to become fully human?’
