briar lawry | raw library

review — i am a human being

Jackson is a great human and a stellar poet, and so I decided to review their new collection I Am A Human for the Unity Books Auckland website (oh yeah, by the way, we have one of those now, look at all those titles and think about the fact that aaaaall those titles were loaded manually, with at least 600 loaded by yours truly).

swimswim

Originally written for a CWRT700 portfolio at AUT in 2019. Second part of swim | swimswim.

Elevated

In Honiara, on the hill above Town Ground, at the intersection of Lengakiki Road, Hibiscus Avenue and Mud Lane, there is a complex of expat units and apartments, and that is where my dad has lived for nearly five years.

swim

Originally written for a CWRT700 portfolio at AUT in 2019. First part of swim | swimswim.

If you are born by the sea, you must be connected with it. If you are born on an isthmus, gentle bays on one coast and pounding surf on the other, you must be twice as driven to the water, a siren call from all sides, called by the waves to strip down and fling yourself in. It is foretold by the geography of your birth. I am an Aucklander. I grew up south, then south east, then a deviation via splintered family to the far-flung west from time to time. I dated a boy from the Shore. I went to school in Epsom. I’ve crawled every inch of this sprawling so-called big little city at some point or other. I have stood on many of its beaches. But I haven’t stepped into the sea at many of them.

A catalogue of my body’s scars (to date)

A catalogue of my body’s scars (to date)

i stand before you thick
with curves, bafflement
and scar tissue

Endurance

An essay in five parts, originally written for a CWRT700 portfolio at AUT in 2019.

MORPHINE AND KETAMINE

“Morphine is used for the relief of moderate to severe pain such as after an injury, or operation or pain caused by a terminal illness such as cancer.” (Health Navigator NZ, n.d.)

so i broke my ankle…

I broke my ankle.

In three places.

And dislocated it.

And tonight is my tenth night in a row in Auckland Hospital.

I arrived in an ambulance on a Wednesday.

I was meant to be flying to Honiara on the first Friday.

I’d be back by now if I’d gone.

new work – atlas/pantograph punch

Exciting developments in writing life, one of which is a long time coming in a couple of ways. In the more general, longer term way, I FINALLY have a creative piece in a print literary journal. Hurrah! In the specific, shorter term way, I submitted this piece over a year ago, and it was allocated to the second issue of the journal.

But now, it’s out! Issue 2 of Atlas Literary Journal is out, and my piece, ‘Trading Pain’ is in it. It’s about hospital and scary things like emergency surgery and ketamine and nasogastric tubes.

AWF17

Last weekend I spent a day (and a skerrick of the evening before) roaming Auckland Writers Festival and reviewing sessions for Booksellers NZ. Because you can take the bookseller out of the bookshop etc etc…

You can find the six reviews I wrote here – alongside some from other reviewers.

bad jelly

Witch Baby Briar.

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Fatigue

Just because you have objective truths fuelling your fatigue doesn’t make it any easier to accept.

I am in remission, in essence. But that doesn’t mean that I’m healthy. It means that my CRP levels are acceptable. My ferritin isn’t too bad. I don’t have urgency that inhibits my movements day-to-day. I go to the bathroom more than average but that’s partly because I have less intestine than average. Four or five trips a day is fine for me. There’s no blood, no mucous, infrequent cramps, relatively infrequent full-blown diarrhoea.