A poem by CK Stead in response to a review by Philip Matthews at ReadingRoom.
National Anthems
16 June (Bloomsday) 2021
Philip Matthews says
Stead feels more at home
in France than
in Wellington. My
friend Tony who
has lived in both
asks ‘Who wouldn’t?’
Maria Stepanova
tells her friend
Sasha that her poems
are an attempt
to love her
country ‘because
someone has to’.
Borges wished to die
in Geneva
which was ‘nice and
not Argentina’.
Joyce chose Zurich,
Pound Venice, because
they were neither
Ireland nor the
U.S. Eliot
preferred England,
Stevenson
Vailima in Samoa,
both far from
home and loyalty
to a flag. It seems
I must pay my
country the respect
of dying right here
but only
(honours to the
pandemic)
because of the Lockdown.
What You Made Of It: 1987-2020, the third and possibly final volume of memoirs by CK Stead (Auckland University Press, $49.99), is available in bookstores nationwide.
