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Poetry Archive Now Wordview 2020: The Coffin Club
by Pippa Little
I was intrigued and delighted to read about this club based in Rotarua, New Zealand. The elderly learn carpentry skills as community support and to save on funeral expenses, make their own coffins. Their motto is 'It's a box until there's someone in it'.
Poetry Archive Now Wordview 2020: The Coffin Club
Happy afternoons under the tin roof of HQ,
Sanding and sawing the ta-ra-boom-de-ay of our hearts.
Dowels, endgrain and radiata pine delight us,
Surfaces release topnotes of forest
Charged with our hands’ sweat. We’ve been made
Strong again by these ‘joyful epitaphs
In wood’. Handles get tapped-in Brasso-ed,
Then last of all we fetch and fold
Family linens, hand-sewn, heirloom,
So lying down to rest will smell of home.
The radio plays Cuando Cuando Cuando,
It’s time to fill Brown Betty, catch up on chat
And ailments: today there’s another gap around our table
But soon everything we love will be all around us.
Recording provided as part of Poetry Archive Now: Wordview 2020. Used by permission of the author.
A special thank you to our WordView 2020 poets.
Chair of the Judging Panel, Imtiaz Dharker, says: “The hundreds of entries we received blew in to the Archive like a breath of pure, unpolluted air from all over the world, revealing something of the time we are living in, some telling it straight, some slant. It was exciting to check in to the Poetry Archive’s Youtube channel every morning and come upon one unexpected voice after another."
See the collectionWatch the full Wordview 2020 playlist