Over the ditch

I feel like an amnesiac who has come home to a city I don't remember. On the one hand, Wellington, NZ is new and disorienting and I feel the sense of drift and the elasticity of time and space that one feels after months of travel; on the other hand, though, its hills and harbours and wet sky and chilly winds seem very familiar to me, and Cuba Street feels like I had a hand in creating it, in a forgotten former life. Yesterday was sunny and I travelled with a carload of poets up the coast, where the landscape was rippled and green, to a boathouse retreat where we drank wine on the dock, then to Paekakariki to do a reading, and then another in Porirua. I glimpsed a breathtaking sunset through the curtains, as I sat on stage at an echoey community hall, on the edge of the Tasman Sea.

I plan to stay in New Zealand for the next five weeks.