ReCooper8

ReCooper8 started 2013 in the most promising way for a community arts show – I had the pleasure of interviewing Madeleine M Slavick, a locally based poet and artist with an international background and a global repertoire.  We discussed her development as a writer, her time in Hong Kong, where she spent several years and to which she still has considerable ties, and her recent move to the Wairarapa.  Madeleine was generous enough to read a couple of her poems, including this untitled prose poem from her book, Delicate Access.  This deliciously fruity number lingers in my mind for the playful image of the plum’s bellybutton, but bubbling up beneath the plumpness of the language is a more serious reminder that, these days, little remains untouched by man’s hunger for profit.  My thanks to Madeleine for allowing me to reproduce this poem here.  

Three of Madeleine’s books can be purchased from the Village Art Shop on Main Street in Greytown.  They are Delicate Access, Fifty Stories Fifty Images, and Something Beautiful Might Happen.  My own copy of Fifty Stories, which focuses on Madeleine’s life in Hong Kong, is well loved – the colour images are beautifully produced on paper of such old-fashioned heft it’s a privilege to hold!

Here is my interview with Madeleine, recorded back in January.  If you would like to read more of her work, visit her blog where she has been posting a short poem and image a day for well over a year.  It’s a beautiful blog, and a great introduction to Madeleine’s work.