A Riderless Horse

By Tim Upperton

In his third poetry collection, award-winning poet Tim Upperton takes us to the end of the driveway, over the Manawatu twisting like an eel and on to Topeka and Paris. These are poems of acid wit (I have been to Paris / and apart from the architecture / and the food and some very fine cemeteries / and of course the language / it's quite like Palmerston North'), intimations of loss (The wrong life cannot be lived rightly. I should know') and unexpected resolution (like pollen, / like grace so available nobody wanted it'). Unpredictable and restive, A Riderless Horse stands in the everyday and then runs with it.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Independent Publishers Group
• Release date: Aug 11, 2022
• ISBN: 9781776710911

Book preview

Front Cover of A Riderless HorseHalf Title of A Riderless HorseBook Title of A Riderless Horse

First published 2022

Auckland University Press

University of Auckland

Private Bag 92019

Auckland 1142

New Zealand

www.aucklanduniversitypress.co.nz

© Tim Upperton, 2022

ISBN 9781776710911

A catalogue record for this book is available from the National Library of New Zealand

This book is copyright. Apart from fair dealing for the purpose of private study, research, criticism or review, as permitted under the Copyright Act, no part may be reproduced by any process without prior permission of the publisher. The moral rights of the author have been asserted.

Book and cover design by Duncan Munro

For Oscar, Tess, Ben and Katrina

Contents

My childhood

YRROS

True story

In Topeka, Kansas

Love poem

Grace

Mayfly

Lunch on the grass

The end of my driveway

School caretaker

Manawatū

Nobody knows

Sparrows

The truth about Palmerston North

Sizewell A and B

Wild bees

Game show

Television

The Kingdom of Suck Balls Mountain

Bone

Small griefs

Three men in a lift

Space

Moon

Green monkey soap

Dead pets

The riderless horses

Door

Cough

Roadside trees

Writ on the eve of my 53rd birthday

Homecoming

Notes

Acknowledgements

My childhood

I was Dick. I teased Anne and George.

I was Edmund, betrayed my friends

for a sweet. Something rotten in me.

Cast out, castaway. For long years

I had an island to myself.

I lived on corn, goat meat, fish. All changed

by a single footprint in the sand.

I harkened to the call of the wild.

The trees cracked in the cold.

How lost, how alone I was. I howled.

I hunted. I ate. My bloodied muzzle.

I left that place and took rooms

in foggy London. I solved the case

of the speckled band. Then I split in two.

I avoided mirrors. My other self

was murderous, but