VIVIENNE PLUMB is a Wellington writer who writes prose, poetry and drama. She was born in the St George V Memorial Hospital for Mothers and Babies in Camperdown, Sydney, (1955) to a New Zealand mother and an Australian father.

Her first novel, Secret City, was published in 2003 (Cape Catley Press, Auckland). Her collection of short fiction, The Wife Who Spoke Japanese In Her Sleep, was awarded the Hubert Church Prose Award. Her poem, ‘The Tank’, won first prize in the 1999 NZ Poetry Society competition.

Vivienne’s new collection of poetry, Nefarious: poems and parables, was published in December, 2004 (HeadworX, Wellington), and also features about twenty parable-like prose poems which are mildly amusing.

Vivienne has also been a recipient of the Bruce Mason Playwrighting Award, and several residencies, including the Buddle Findlay Sargeson Fellowship (2001) and a University of Iowa International Writing Programme residency (2004).

She comments: ‘The writing of “Lorikeets” physically began when I woke up very early one morning in someone’s spare bedroom in Brisbane and began to write quite a long poem that was eventually to become “Lorikeets”.

‘The imaginative creation of “Lorikeets” evolved from an incident at a Sydney railway station. Upon entering the Ladies’ toilets I found a young girl collapsed on the floor near the sinks, obviously suffering from the intake of some drug. Her boyfriend (also out of it, but still walking) was beside the Ladies’ door shouting to her, but when I told him she had collapsed, he ran away. The true life incident was messier than the way it sounds in the poem.

‘As a writer I feel it is my job to rearrange these small events of life into a more interesting display before I present them to a reader.

‘One existing theme in “Lorikeets” is that of Australia as a gorgeous lush tropical “Eden”, and the reality of that being overbearing heat, humidity, creepy crawly insects that can suck your blood, and people who go “troppo” from too much heat and rain during the wet season. I use the exotic rainbow lorrikeets (Trichoglossus moluccanus) to bring some beauty and colour to the picture. In the poem they are a sign of hope.

‘Of course “Lorikeets” is primarily about family and how we try to help each other, and about how it doesn’t always work. Instead, we can feel like strangers travelling in a strange land. It is also about having the courage to take action even in the most disturbing situations. I exhort all readers to refuse to stand on the sidelines, and to make an effort to discover “the fluttering pulse.” ’

 

Poem: Lorikeets