Can you go through the step-by-step process of writing this poem from the moment the idea was first conceived in your brain until final form? Where were you when you started to actually write the poem? And please describe the place in great detail. What month and year did you start writing this poem? Thank you, Car, for letting me talk about poetry, as, despite being a scribbler of verses for as long as I can remember, I didn’t believe I could, or even should, write poetry; it’s only recently, perhaps as a response to life-changing events, that I have given myself permission to call myself a poet and submit my work to publishers. Today, I’d like to talk about three poems, all written in 2020, which reflect my experience of that tumultuous year, words which helped me to process certain events. The three poems are Retourne, the pestilence followed us, and New Year.
The first poem, Retourne, was written on the day of my father’s death, 9 April 2020, just hours before he passed away in the rest home where he had lived for the past six years. At that time, New Zealand was in Level 4 lockdown, the period in which the strictest constraints were imposed on the country.
I wrote the poem from my “bubble” (in my lockdown household of three) at my desk in the lounge-office I share with my husband, where a large picture window overlooks a cow paddock.
Just days prior, I’d been offered an opportunity to visit my father in the rest home on compassionate grounds. A chance to hold his hand and whisper my goodbyes. With the pandemic raging and New Zealand hospitals closed to visitors, it was an incredible gift. But what do you wear on the last occasion you’re to see your father? I dithered in front of the wardrobe, agonising over garment after garment. In the end, I chose to wear red, the Chinese symbol of happiness, and a colour my father always loved to see me wear. It didn’t matter. Since I was masked up and in full PPE, he would have had no idea about what I wore. What’s more, my father suffered from dementia and was partially blind, so he may have had only limited awareness of my presence. But for some reason the theme was crucial to me: the importance of those moments, and the final messages we might want to convey to a loved one.
Copyright by Lee Murray
The second poem, the pestilence followed us, was written in long hand at my kitchen table less than a month later. In New Zealand, it was autumn, but since I live in Tauranga, one of the country’s sunniest places, light was streaming through the sliding doors, and it was gloriously warm. I was wearing a sundress. A cup of tea cooled slowly beside me. CNN was playing on the television, the sound muted. Outside, it was quiet, with only those performing the most essential functions moving freely about the city.
My family was still in lockdown, still living in our household bubble, but since my father’s death, my mother had joined us, and from the sofa I could hear the quiet clacking of her knitting needles.
Because my dad had died in lockdown, we had been denied any of the usual rituals that offer comfort to the bereaved. There had been no flowers (florists were all closed), no funerals (COVID restrictions meant that all deceased were cremated in New Zealand in that time), no visits from kind friends bringing casseroles and kisses, no family gatherings to sit with one another, share space, and remember. Our experience wasn’t unique—there has been so much suffering and loss over the past two years—and the pandemic distorted all our usual responses; this poem was my attempt to express the isolation and sadness I felt, in my household of four, gliding silently through space.
The third poem, New Year, was in response to a request from the director of our local creative funding body, who needed a poem quickly for the organisation’s final newsletter for the year. Knowing I was well connected with local writers and poets, he contacted me for suggestions. “We’re looking for a short poem by a local writer. Something about a new year, moving ahead, next phase, or the promise of the coming year would be ideal,” he said. They were especially keen to publish an original poem alongside a photograph by a local school student.
I trawled my network over the next few days, but due to the late notice (and other circumstances), nothing suitable came to hand. So, I wrote a poem myself. The poem drew on local landmarks, expressed my gratitude that our town remained free from COVID, and offered a message of hope for the coming year.
Once again, I wrote the work long-hand, this time at my desk, adding some tiny tweaks when I typed the piece on the computer. It took me a morning to write. Another gloriously sunny day, this time in early summer, I might have been wearing the same sundress…
How many drafts of this poem did you write before going to the final? Retourne was written in a single draft, from start to finish. I wonder now why I chose the classic retourne structure, because I did not hesitate to write the poem that way. Looking back, it feels like the decision was a reflex response because we were existing in a time of constraint, and I wanted to reflect that, the form of the poem imposing its own restrictions in terms of cadence, rhyme, and repetition. Perhaps I chose this particular structure for the power and also the safety of the form.
the pestilence followed us was written in a morning. Drawing on my personal experience, and wanting to capture my feelings in that moment, I did not make any revisions beyond that point. But since then, I have changed the word ‘reduced’ in the last line, to ‘bereft’.
New Year was also written in a single morning, although under time constraint, with some tiny tweaks made when I transferred the poem to print. Mostly, my poems get a revision or two, but for some reason these three were each written in one sitting, and I have been reluctant to revisit them for fear of blunting their authenticity and impact.
What do you want readers of this poem to take from this poem? Which part of the poem was the most emotional for you to write and why? Retourne, is a love-letter to my dad; I wanted him to know that whatever came between us, even though we might walk different sides of the veil, I will always love and remember him; it was a plea for him to please remember me, too, to recall the sunny times, in spite of the sadness of our last encounter.
Just its title, the pestilence followed us, points to the second poem as being a response to the pandemic. It was written to capture the strange circumstances that ensued after the loss of my dad, an attempt to describe my feelings of isolation and distance at a time when connection is so vital. I hoped too to reveal the relative safety that we have experienced here in New Zealand when compared to the rest of the world. These two poems were extremely emotional for me to write, since they were dragged from the deepest part of myself, in response to one of life’s most traumatic events.
New Year was a change of theme for me, an opportunity to consider my blessings and deliver a message of hope as the year closed. I’m grateful to Creative Bay of Plenty for this opportunity.
[Notes to understanding the poem: I live in a suburb of Tauranga called Welcome Bay. In our beachside town, sections of the beach have been roped off by the regional council to protect the endangered dotterels which nest there in the sand;
the bronze dogs are reference to the bronze statues of Lynley Dodd’s Hairy McLary children’s picture book characters which stand on the city foreshore.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lynley_Dodd
Sulphur Point is another Tauranga landmark; Mauao is the Māori name for the famous mountain which stands at the entrance of the harbour and whose sorrowful legend underpins our city; crown is a play on words, reference to the new coronavirus and to the crown of the mountain which is visible from most parts of the city; and finally, the pōhutukawa is our glorious native coastal tree which flowers brilliant red in December, the tiny needles shedding as we enter the new year…]
Lee Murray is a multi-award-winning author-editor from Aotearoa-New Zealand (Sir Julius Vogel, Australian Shadows), and a two-time Bram Stoker Award®-winner. Her work includes military thrillers, the Taine McKenna Adventures, supernatural crime-noir series The Path of Ra (with Dan Rabarts), and debut collection Grotesque: Monster Stories. She is proud to have edited seventeen volumes of speculative fiction, including international Bram Stoker Award®-winning title Black Cranes: Tales of Unquiet Women co-edited with Geneve Flynn. Her latest work is non-fiction title, Mark My Words: Read the Submission Guidelines and Other Self-editing Tipsco-authoredwith Angela Yuriko Smith. She is co-founder of Young NZ Writers and of the Wright-Murray Residency for Speculative Fiction Writers, HWA Mentor of the Year for 2019, NZSA Honorary Literary Fellow, and Grimshaw Sargeson Fellow for 2021 for her poetry collection Fox Spirit on a Distant Cloud. Read more at
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