Whale years / Gregory O'Brien.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

O'Brien, Gregory, 1961- author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Pacific Ocean--Poetry.

Pacific Ocean.

Genre:

Poetry.

Physical Description:

94 pages : illustrations ; 23 cm

Place of Publication:

Auckland, New Zealand : Auckland University Press, 2015.

Summary:

For more than three years, poet and artist Gregory O'Brien followed the migratory routes of whales and seabirds across vast tracts of the South Pacific Ocean, resulting in a collection of poems that stand as a homage to a series of remarkable locations and the natural histories of those places. In three parts, this collection stretches across the Pacific, following whale-roads, weather balloons, and sons at sea, charting historical explorations and other Pacific realisms, such as the Pacific trash vortex, the wavering democracy of Tonga, and the political history of Chile. These poems are an exploration of outlying islands, the ocean that lies between them, and the whale-species and sea birds found there. From Waihi looking east and Valparaiso looking west, O'Brien surveys the cultural heart and health of an ocean in memorable, musical, moving lines.

Contents:

1 From various islands

The length of the voyage 2

Raoul Island 3

Emotional life of Thomas Bell, Raoul Island 4

Whale Survey, Raoul Island, with Rosemary Dobson 6

The captain of the Rena on Astrolabe Reef 7

Oneraki 8

White Island (Whakaari) 9

A schematic analysis ... 10

A summer of inflatable gifts, Pitt Island 12

Weather balloon, Raoul Island 13

Loneliness of the Raoul Island weather balloon 14

The return of Christ to Futuna Chapel 15

Whale years 16

A burning tyre, Nuku'alofa 29

Luminosity 32

2 Book of numbered days

I South-west Pacific: Nuku'alofa, Tonga, May 2012 38

II South-east Pacific: Rapa Nui/Easter Island, July 2012 53

3 Memory of a fish 75.

ISBN:

9781869408329

1869408322

1775587940

9781775587941

1775587967

9781775587965

OCLC:

904401794