Potluck: Poems about food

Food not only sustains us, it also connects us to our culture, emotions, memories, and identity – all themes at the heart of Potluck, a new poetry collection by Wellington publisher Landing Press. The striking cover image by Porirua artist Moses Viliamu – a steaming pot simmering with a kaleidoscope of colours and shapes – hints at the rich mix of ideas inside the book.

The poets are diverse too. They include community gardeners and chefs, men living at Rimutaka Prison, pastors, parents and great-grandparents, schoolchildren and creative writing teachers, and established writers such as Harry Ricketts, Renee Liang, and former Poet Laureate David Eggleton. Most live in Aotearoa, although many moved here from elsewhere, from Syria, for example, or from Hawaii, Fiji, Ireland, India, Vietnam or the Philippines. There’s an age gap of at least 80 years between the youngest and the oldest poet. The range of ages, cultures, and perspectives represented is a strength of the collection.

Landing Press received close to 450 contributions when they asked for poems about food. The team then faced the daunting task of choosing which poems would be published. They also worked hard to find and mentor people whose voices were initially missing, including those who have encountered hardship, so that their points of view could be included.

Each poem invites reflection. How does the poet’s experience mirror or differ from ours? Many poems spark curiosity and prompt further questions. What might your last meal consist of, and what would be the first meal you would eat after you were released from prison? How would it feel to be cut off from food because your people demanded freedom, or a foreign government starved an entire population? What’s it like to have one pot to cook in, a one-burner stove, one plate to eat off, one spoon, knife and fork for everything? What food would you choose to share with mourners after a parent’s funeral? Do the grieving – or people who have “fallen through the cracks”  – want, or need, lasagne?

Lasagne can even be a new way to track time.

My mum was in hospital for a hundred lasagnes. [Sophie Henderson]

The collection highlights how food connects us to life’s milestones, whether welcoming a birth, honouring a death, or marking other significant events. There’s a strong focus on social justice, inclusivity, and celebration.

Two poems that depict a newborn’s first feed and an older person’s last meals are particularly moving. In the first, a Paekākāriki mother, poet, writer and social activist celebrates “the invisible work of pregnancy … and the extraordinary achievement of growing a human being”.

…milk tailor-made, trip-wired by afterbirth into my big-veined breasts [Kerry Dalton]

In the second, novelist Patricia Donovan’s poem is titled simply “Mother”.

                Did we remember

Did we say thank you

as she ate alone in that room

something pale and mashed

then just a spoonful of gel

then nothing. [Patricia Donovan]

Jian Xu writes about the annual Lunar New Year Feast, the astounding range of food available, the honouring of gods and ancestors, and the blast of firecrackers to “bid farewell to the old and usher in the new”. Xu’s poem is published in both English and Mandarin-based written Chinese. Majid Burhan’s poem Freedom has a price is presented in both English and Arabic.

Several poets with experience of disordered eating reflect on food as a source of stress and guilt rather than nourishment. Another considers the quick and easy though often tasteless “depression meals” that provide emotional sustenance, sometimes alongside “sawdust words and desperate confessions”.

What did you do behind your boss’s back that would’ve probably gotten you fired? [Eleazar Kenese, Year 12]

There are light-hearted and humorous poems too. Poor old Brussels sprouts (and even asparagus) come in for a hammering.

                Brussel sprouts and asparagus are gross but I’m still brave [Rahi Key, age 10]

                …I spit them out when no-one’s looking. [Emily Barrington, age 10]

Some poems offer glimpses of the past, such as the scenes at Everybody’s Butchery, with its sawdust on the floor and cantilevered cash register.

                …the perfect twirl of butchers’ twine

…the spills … spirited away with a blood-stained mutton cloth

The closed stainless-steel chiller door, its latch catching the black rubber seal  … [Paul Robinson]

Some of the kai featured in poems will be familiar, such as kūmara, scones, sausage rolls and Marmite sandwiches. Other foods and ingredients perhaps less so: turtle guts, okra-based Bamya from Syria, and snake beans. Sometimes we are the food.

                The mosquitoes

                have come out again

this evening and

gather like families

strolling an Italian piazza, the Florence of

                our faces, ankles and arms. [Michael Hall]

While most poems are in English, te reo is also woven throughout the collection, sometimes alongside memories of time spent in the whare kai, on a hikōi, or with whānau.

grandma taught / aroha / could be whipped with butter & sugar [Hebe Kearney]

Recalling replenishing times on the marae, a poet suggests that “all our kai is embedded in our wellbeing”.

                …huge cast iron pots

                bubbling over open fires

                nanas and aunties preparing kai for hundreds. [Sonya Kaire Judson]

A poet who calls Ireland, Te Whanganui-A-Tara and Porirua home explores how food and love can intersect, and the actions that can express this connection.

                I am sniffing the bottle of cream to check it is fresh

                                because I love you. 

                I am making sure there are enough clean bowls

because I love you.

I say you can keep me company while I cook

because I love you. [Éimhín O'Shea]

Take time to read the poets’ bios, some of which are almost poetry too. One mentions that their writing is “tattooed on the arms of my friends”, another suggests that although “comfort food is … aptly named … sometimes the comfort it brings comes from distant and complicated memory”. Poetry, says one, is a self-prescribed therapy: “words are less damaging to the self when they are purged onto paper”.

The Landing Press team “want to publish poetry that everyone can enjoy … that will make you smile, or laugh out loud, or stir memory, or change your perspective, or fire up your anger”. Potluck meets and exceeds these objectives. Many poems create vivid images that stay with you long after you finish the book.

Reviewer: Anne Kerslake Hendricks

Landing Press