Tuesday Poem features Best First Book of Poetry Winner

Auckland poet and Judge of the District and Family Courts, John Adams, won the Best First Book of Poetry Award in the NZ Book Awards this year and his poem 'Fuck You' is up on Tuesday Poem this week to celebrate that fact. The poem collection is an unusual one and the post, by this week's editor - and one-time tutor of said Judge Adams, Mary McCallum - captures some of its flavour ....  

"Ladies and Gentlemen of the Jury, what you have before you is a poem (Exhibit A) found amongst legal documents in the Briefcase (Exhibit B) of a Judge John Adams  (Family Court & District Court), identified in Exhibit C.

See if you will how this poem is written in the language of a speech language therapist which is the job of Verity Charlotte Button - hit by a stapler during a fight with her husband John Portsmouth Button (solicitor). Did he do it deliberately? That's for the courts to find out.

'Fuck you' is not the only poem in Judge John Adams' Briefcase, not by any means. Yes, there are legal documents - as one would expect, or what appear to be legal documents, court reports, police reports etc, until one looks more closely. The form is there, the language too, but they are all strangely askew (Exhibit D), defaced, cut adrift from their origins. There are also other documents not usually found in a Judge's briefcase: a sudoku puzzle, a menu, a dictionary entry."

For the poem itself and more on the collection Briefcase, go to Tuesday Poem, where you will find 30 poems in the sidebar selected and written by the Tuesday Poem group. Next week, the blog celebrates the NZ Book Award for Poetry with extracts from all the finalists.