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    • Gregory O'Brien + John Pule collaborative works : LISTENING FOR THE BIRDS--ETCHINGS FROM OCEANIA
    • Ayesha Green + Leafa - Home and Away
    • Mua Simone & Tongaporutu Neha - Lei of the Land
    • Christina McPhee - two moving image works
    • YOUNGSOLWARA POSTER ACTION
    • FAFSWAG
    • Lem-ons - Blanchett & Parker
    • as yet untitled work by FAITH WILSON
    • SECOND WIND Alex John K + Cilla McIntosh
    • LRZ an olga project >
      • Mafutaga #1
    • OLGA in CHANDIGARH
    • pictures of you + olga


OLGA presents
LISTENING FOR THE BIRDS - 
ten collaborative etchings by John Pule and Gregory O'Brien
4 - 13 December 2015

Over the past five years, John Pule and Gregory O'Brien have worked on a series of collaborative etchings which are at once a conversation about, and a meditation upon, the South Pacific. The images in this exhibition were inspired by time they spent on Raoul Island, Tongatapu, Rapanui (Easter Island) and in Chile.

Images of the etchings will be viewable here. 

The etchings were etched on zinc plates then editioned by master-printer Michael Kempson at Cicada Press, University of New South Wales, Sydney.

Poems by Gregory O'Brien

​Whale Years - Poems from Across the Pacific 
 
for Phil Dadson -
 

South West Pacific
 
Ocean-sound, what is it
you listen for?
 
 
L’Esperance
 
Anchorstone, sea urchin
waterlogged instrument, tunes
a shrimp whistles.
 
 
Rekohu/Chatham Island
 
If there is
a moon
it is carved into
a dark tree. If
there is
a tree. But
there is always
an ocean.
 
 
Orange supply, Raoul Island
 
Bird rattle of
a cyclone-tossed greenness
ever-decreasing orchard.
 

Tongatapu
 
Your eyes were canoes, your brows
outriggers, your hair a wind-tossed
palm, and your bones
an ocean-polished whiteness.
 
 
Orongo, Rapa Nui
 
Easy on the oar
Steady the sail
Hold the thought
Let go the hand
 
 
Easter Fracture Zone
 
In the book of the ocean each wave
is recorded, but the lives of men are left
where they lie.
 
 
Pulmeria rubra, Tongatapu (a frangipani for Alec Finlay)
 
           aFter
         spRing
           cAme
           aN
         anGular
       musIc
             Piano
             Accordianist
          fiNgering
 everythIng
 
 
 
Quintay, Chile
 
Everything I heard or
did not hear: the ocean
peeled back, wave by
wave, sigh of a once
whale-laden ocean.
 

Tongatapu
 
An ocean never dropped
a fish. The day’s first lesson--
'A Quality Education for Now
& Eternity'—at the Ocean of Light
            School, Nuku’alofa.
~
 
Just beyond a billboard advertising
Rising Sun Beer
uncertainly, dawn flickers.
 
 
Hanga Roa, Rapa Nui
 
It is written. The chickens
of this island
laid only blue and green
eggs. It is written
a large wave came for them.
It is written.
 
 
Kermadec
 
Vast continent of
every tilted or rolling
thing—eyes and teeth
of implausible fish, stars
and planets on their
undersea orbits.
 
 
Southern Pacific Ocean
 
Arms and legs of
the plundered sea, for whom is it
you dance?
 
 
Rekohu
 
HIGH         SEA           LOW
 
LAND        LOW           SEA
 
HIGH        LAND        LOW
 
 
 
Raoul
 
Ghost shark, anvil,
kite
 
starboard, wind-
ward, my childhood
 
on Raoul Island
 sustain me.
 
 
Pest eradication programme, Tuhua
 
With the last rats and mice
and the drinkers offloaded
            at South East Bay
the Cruising Club buried, conveniently
in a landslip
            all we now count on:
the numbered days of the numberless
            wasps of Mayor Island.
 
 
 
In advance of an oil slick, Bay of Plenty
 
Light and colour are
we are told
collisions. How then
in the absence of both,
mid-night, mid-ocean
the MV Rena on course
for Astrolabe Reef?
 
 
Oneraki Beach, Raoul Island
 
Unbreaking rocks
Broken sea
 
Unbroken sea
Breaking rocks
 

Waiheke Island Water Supply
 
On lancewood and five finger
twiggy coprosma
            and lemonwood, rain
 
and the memory of
rain and the persistence
     of all that is not rain
 
but upon which
     rain falls.
 
 
 
Sunrise, Mayor Island
 
Obsidian fish
glittering
in its red bucket.
 
 
Isla Negra, Chile
 
Telescope tree
what do you see?
Hummingbird
what have you heard?
 
 
Obsidian Headland, South East Bay
 
When the tin hull strikes
the glass headland
            the island rings
like a bell. And the boat, also
perfectly pitched.
 
 
Westerly over Te Whanga Lagoon, Rekohu
 
Great tongue, speak
now or forever
enfold us
 
in ribbonwood and matapo
 
indigenous flower
forget me not
forsake me now.
 
 
Off Mayor Island
 
A school of kahawai
the educated eye’s
encylopediae.
 
 
 
Kermadec Trench
 
Were there words
to inscribe
in this blueness
 
lines for the placation
of a storm god
delirious mathematics
 
of the deep, every
living thing with which
the ocean is awash.
 
 
 
Quintay, Chile
 

Mariners can read the ocean
as you would a book, each wave
the upturned corner of a page.
 
 
 
Pitch
 
In the fallen nikau forest, a tui
in two halves, two halves
of a song, sung.
 
 
Tuhua
 
wave-sharpened
headland, headland-
sharpened wave
 
 
 
Te Whanga Lagoon
 
STILL                                             ECHOING
ECHOING                                             STILL
STILL                                             ECHOING
ECHOING                                             STILL
STILL                                             ECHOING
ECHOING                                             STILL
STILL                                             ECHOING
ECHOING                                             STILL
STILL                                             ECHOING
ECHOING                                             STILL
STILL                                             ECHOING
ECHOING                                             STILL
 
 
Star of Bengal Bank
 
Everything overheard
or lost from
hearing: song of
 
coral palm and
one-eyed urchin, chapter
and verse of
 
the Isaiah-fish, bird-
burrowed sea
in which we dive down
 
and are retrieved. That
which light enters so
as never to leave.
 
 
Oneraki Beach, Raoul Island
 
I was raised by rocks, but not
as one of them. Upended
by storms, I was raised
by nikau palms, but I was never
one of them. I was raised by waves--
the waves talking, always talking
to themselves, always listening--
and raised as one of them
 
 
South East Pacific
 
Ocean-sound, what is it
you listen for?

Poems by John Pule 
RAPANUI
 
i
 
Neruda called you the Separate Rose.
 
I remember his poems to describe
the saddest part of your body;
your hair was a petal of red
and your eyes petals of blue
and your mouth green as the isla de pascua.
 
He found that a stone
crushed the first handshake
between agitated locals and nervous visitors;
guns fell from foreign hands
and solitude followed sooner than expected.
You could not comprehend the new fragrance
that men brought to your attention
in the night when the bible was at its brightest
 
so you fled to the insides of a volcano
and, learning why your land, your gods
were cut up, heads strewn around, buried, smashed faces,
could not find what you were desperate for: a heart.
 
ii
 
Te Pito o te henua
 
If this is the pito, where is the ure?
Where is the manava? Where is the ulu?
Where is the tau lima, tau hue, and where is the atevili?
 
 
On Land  ( Tonga ) for Karlo Mila
 
Our motel in Mau afa
is situated opposite the fish market
every morning I eat fat juicy kina
 
every morning the sun
wants to over shadow what the moon
showed me
 
every morning I
lift my feet up to make
sure im not standing in the sea
 
that I haven’t brought
back from the Kermadecs spilt plasma,
or nutrients from the bluest clouds
 
mixed with the soil of a different country
I feel the white cells
gurgling in the bone  marrow
 
of another land:  all the nations
of Polynesia is connected by sea
and never by the idea of the American lake
never, never, never, never
 
below my balcony
is a family spreading a
huge ngatu on the lawn
 
every night I feel the blood
of ancient sediments
spreading through out the islands
 
carried by winds, storms
and in the hearts of emigrants
who only wanted to follow
 
the pathways of the first great
Polynesian explorers
wanting simply to go elsewhere
 

Tomorrow We Leave-Raoul island
 
tomorrow we leave
this island
 
a tree was planted on my tongue
 
 it grew to encompass
my entire world
 
I ate a cloud
 
I ate an ant
I had an
aversion
 
to eating bats
because
the pea’a
 
is a rat
on the bodies
of men
 
who eventually
took flight
with the wings
that belonged to the bat
 
who was deceived
who was lied to
by the rat
 
to loan its wings
and never came back
so the pea’a is
 
about embellishment
of truth
of deceit
between the bat and the rat
and who can tell the best bullshit story
 
 
Island Song ( For HELAVA )
 
The moon is not a shark
the sky is not a mountain
and that hibiscus is not an ant
and that door is not a bird
 
the cloud is definitely not a ladder
the road is a simple petal
and that leaf is really a cup
and that bread is a guitar
 
so let us pray that dream
is really about your hair
and that happy room in your eyes
 
is only your hands
releasing tui into a sack of wheat
to become one beautiful ocean
 

Canto Pia - Liku
 
 
It was here at Pia that I lived for two years.
Two mango trees were planted at the same time.
Tasted my first talo, saw my first sun, got a whiff of cars
and the dispenser of foreign goods like postcards from
that country I will eventually draw my inspiration from.
 
I must have ate the soil as well, as my poetry
was born inside of me about then. I knew
I had birds lingering around my mouth
and my eyes, same as Tagaloa’s, knew the salt
of swimming in a mother’s stomach.
 
Born in the afternoon during a hurricane, behind
the minister’s house, in view of the crooked path of blighted
hymns that found my ears attuned more to the sea,
 
I will never know where my father hid my pito,
nor could my mother remember as she nearly died to                                    
push out the bones of what a poet should be.
 
 
Pito-Liku
 
 
If you were born
at the same time as my mother’s birth
 
and you weighed the same as
the Tuaki, its wings already in the Lalolagi,
 
in your cavity I will
install constellations
 
and my feet takes root
as a way to prolong my stay
 
to gaze upon you
my small and wild pito
 

Hawaiki Birds - Niue
 
 
some are leaving and some are dying
orchestral memory of wings to Hawaiki and back again
 
this is where I shared my first language with the sea
bones of sharks scattered around the fekakai tree
 
what you were born with jumped onto the next cloud
to watch the dreams of my tongue expire
 
my passport issued at the same time as the first light bulb
piercing the air just as the beautiful Hina lulls
 
to sleep the sea that you must eventually step into
across the windows of churches painted blue
 
in the sky we will not recognize your mouth
the compass &  the perfect flight south
 
 
 
Great World- Raoul Island
 
I kneel before the sea
bow to drink
nutrients at the first gulp
instantly I knew my genealogy
 
 the sea is an enormous giant in my blood
 
to stand in the sea long enough
with stones as anchor
 
the transfer of salt into my veins
 
oxygen from the citrus trees
that want to fuel my life
 
The sun opens the heart
and the moon closes it
 
Polynesia is the great Va
 
 
My Life
 
When I try to sleep, my tongue walks away with
the ants. I taste their sugar.
I try to leave with the sun.
 
I wanted the glow from your eyes to show the way
but the moon said: Im not the sun.
 
I make a last attempt to dig through my ribs
to find avian cells in my lungs.
If I could find wings in my left ventricles
I’d lift a war-torn country to heaven.
 
Helpless to alleviate
the rising saliva of misfortune
I try to eat the remains of a hospital.
 
What if there was that one god out there
to look  at my maps and say:
I know where you are?
 
Could I then wait for the sea
to soak my tired hands
 
tired of holding you
tired of waiting
exhausted
 
 
 
Above the Pacific Ocean towards Niue, 8/4/2015
 
over the pacific ocean
over the small clouds
the blueness of air
my feet already rooted
the soil still in my finger nails
the vegetation already in my mouth
the rocks in my arteries
pathways cleared at my birth
kafika as a spine
at the coast I eventually go
as I wait for the sun
as my other name is spelt with insects
long ribbons of sweetness
stories that wait for my time
return to the first time of my life
 
 
 
Aotearoa
The sun will never find my hair
all the birds ever wanted was to eat my tongue
 I lost my arms in the Spring-time
let me lift this siale to that cloud
an angel can determine its colour
 
you may bury your eyes in this earth
you may let me paint your mouth green
you may let me walk to heaven
a country that is a small saliva
 
I’m a sad juvenescent road
I want to speak only the truth
that ships of Polynesians
 
all broken at the spine
all issued with photographs of paradise
all walking into Tamaki Makau Rau
 

  • faleo'o | home
    • olga manifesto
  • Services
    • olgahedwig -writes
    • olgahedwig -consults + counsels
    • olgahedwig -curates
    • about + contact
  • OLGA archives
    • OLGA -installation views
    • Gregory O'Brien + John Pule collaborative works : LISTENING FOR THE BIRDS--ETCHINGS FROM OCEANIA
    • Ayesha Green + Leafa - Home and Away
    • Mua Simone & Tongaporutu Neha - Lei of the Land
    • Christina McPhee - two moving image works
    • YOUNGSOLWARA POSTER ACTION
    • FAFSWAG
    • Lem-ons - Blanchett & Parker
    • as yet untitled work by FAITH WILSON
    • SECOND WIND Alex John K + Cilla McIntosh
    • LRZ an olga project >
      • Mafutaga #1
    • OLGA in CHANDIGARH
    • pictures of you + olga