A Life Blighted by Pythons
waiting at the bus-stop
all I can think about
is how my hovercraft is full of eels
but it’s not, of course it’s not
my hovercraft is practically empty
my eels are few
in fact they’re not eels at all
but a netload of whitebait
and it isn’t even a hovercraft
I've never owned a hovercraft in my life
I wouldn’t know what to do with one
it’s not even a dinghy
it’s a reusable eco-friendly shopping bag
and they’re definitely not eels
and not even whitebait
the truth is, I've never been whitebaiting
they’re just vegetables
and I only have one thing to say:
your eels
my hovercraft
now, baby, now
-- Janis Freegard
Based in Wellington, New Zealand, Janis Freegard has a background in botany and the natural sciences--territories her poems are intent on celebrating, excavating, reconfiguring and subverting. 'A Life Blighted by Pythons' is from her first collection, Kingdom Animalia, published by Auckland University Press in 2011. Within the zoo-like enclosure of that book, she collects and catalogues numerous species, inspired by the Swedish naturalist and 'Father of Taxonomy', Carolus Linnaeus (1707-78), about whom Freegard writes on her blog. Like the most interesting bestiaries of past eras, her poems tell us more about the human condition than they do about the natural world of which humanity is a part. What exactly is going on in Freegard's 'blighted life'? A Freudian psychologist would have a field day with her ensemble of snakes and hovercraft. Is the poem propelled by love or lust or neurosis? Or is it simply the product of a hyperactive imagination? For the record, there are no species of snakes living in the wild in New Zealand, although there are a great many eels. And there are no public hovercrafts; the only examples are in the service of eccentric millionaires.
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