The Tattooed Poets Project: Natasha Dennerstein

As we enter into the last week of this, our fourth annual Tattooed Poets Project, things are picking up speed and readers should check back later in the day, after 3:00 PM EDT, as we have days of "double postings," to accommodate demand and greater interest among the participating poets.



Although, I'm not sure how that works with the first of today's contributors, Natasha Dennerstein. Natasha hails from New Zealand (a Tattoosday first!), where it is a different day, already, I believe, but so it goes.



Natasha sent us this snapshot of a portion of her tattoo sleeve:

Here is what Natasha has to say about this colorful body art:

My sleeve started as a bracelet of flowers and birds done by a girl called Megs in Sydney, Australia. It just kept growing to encompass a giant snake wrapped around the whole arm and then grew to encompass a Garden of Eden theme. I included birds, underwater creatures, clouds and things marvellous in the natural world. Eventually it covered the entire arm from wrist to shoulder and took three years to complete in fortnightly settings. I have left my other arm completely bare for the contrast. The artist is called Kyle and he works from his own studio in Wellington, New Zealand.

Natasha's poem, is called Emergency! and, she says, "is a good example of my style of poetry and some of the themes that interest me." It was originally published in November 2009 in the literary journal Landfall # 218 in New Zealand:



EMERGENCY!



She goes to work every afternoon in the Emergency Department

and she boards a superceded vessel on a treacherous sea

and the captain is a colossal squid

and the crew are diagnosed with drug-induced psychosis.

The patients are squawking fledglings abandoned in the nest

and their wounds are gaping mouths. She feeds

them Diazepam, Oxazepam, Lorazepam and other pams

but they're still hungry for blood and intravenous fluids

and they still want changing. She is

the Indian Godess Kali with many arms and a blue face

and she smokes secretly, privately, in the fire escape

and the smoke is saffron. The accident

victims have pizza faces and butcher-shop limbs

and their cries are winter waves smashing on graphite rocks

and their car-wrecks are a pasta of metal and flesh.

She is a hungry dog and she wolfs down her tea

and her tea is a piece of putrid meat. The patients

can harm themselves and can not heal themselves

and they run in screaming : “it's an emergency – I'm in love!”,

and the intercourse is an addiction and the pregnancy is a trauma

and the child-birth is a piece of litigation waiting to happen.

And they all say “ help me, help me” and she can not help them

and their cries are stones in a bottomless well. She

gives them a drink of love – 125 mls in a styrofoam

cup - and they are healed. Their wounds are pink

zippers and their skin is a leather garment and

they are all done up and they are going home. She is

going home and she abandons the vessel on a paper life-raft and the

life-raft is made of medical journals and last years Womens

Weeklys and newspapers and the forecast is for rain.

~ ~ ~ 

Natasha Dennerstein was born in Melbourne into a Russian/Polish Australian family and now lives in Wellington. She has spent many years working as a psychiatric nurse. She completed writing poetry for her MA in Creative Writing at the International Institute of Modern Letters at Victoria University in 2011. HYou can check out her Facebook page here.



Thanks to Natasha for sharing her wonderful work with us here on Tattoosday!



This entry is ©2012 Tattoosday. The poem and tattoo are reprinted with the poet's permission. 




If you are reading this on another web site other than Tattoosday, without attribution, please note that it has been copied without the author's permission and is in violation of copyright laws. Please feel free to visit http://tattoosday.blogspot.com and read our original content. Please let me know if you saw this elsewhere so I contact the webmaster of the offending site and advise them of this violation in their Terms of Use Agreement.

The Tattooed Poets Project: Amy Rafferty

Today's tattooed poet is Amy Rafferty.

Amy narrates her history of getting tattooed:

 "I've never been that sure why I got my tattoos and to be honest I'd probably put it down to poor impulse control.

I got my first when I was seventeen. Me and my friend Suzy were wondering around bored one day and we found ourselves looking in the window at Terry's Tattoo Studio. We could see all the big, hard men in there, grimacing and posing, with their arms covered in thistles and doves and black panthers.

To us it looked dead exciting and grown up and 'cool' and so we snuck in for a closer look.

An hour later we came out, all red-faced and tearfuI, me with a butterfly on my stomach and Suzy with a flaming heart on her shoulder.

We thought we were pure rock 'n' roll but we were too scared to tell our parents what we'd done.

We both left it at that but then, ten years later, I got a Chinese good luck symbol on my back, ostensibly to bring me good luck but mostly it was to impress a sailor I was keen on.



My dragon was next and that was to show I was brave (or getting braver) and the flowers on my leg started off as a single bud from when my friend Polly and I went to get tattoos together and over the years the bud has grown. I think there's some meaning in that.

In 2007 my Dad died suddenly and I had this strange instinct to let him know that I was okay, that I was coping, and so I think that's why my flower grew as it did. 

And if somehow my Dad was aware of all this? Well he'd probably be shaking his head and saying ruefully "daft lassie, what are ye up to now?"

I love the idea of that. He thought when it came to making big, life-changing decisions that I was an idiot and yes, he was probably right but he also showed a grudging and loving admiration for my impulsive side. 

For now, I think I'm done with tattoos, but you never can tell when I'll take a wee notion for another."

It's cool seeing the evolution of this, Amy's floral tattoo, that has grown along with her.



She sent us this lovely poem:





Directions.



What you remember of them most is



that they could not stop talking,

and that the road from Inverardran veered left,

and took you from the kirk by the Toll

of Atholl to the Shoulder’s Choke

where you heard them both,

heralding their own as the worst.



Then by Stob Binnien,

shrouded in cloud and the eldest,

who sucked black mints,

black-tongued, bright-eyed and spry.

She picked at stitches and thought aloud

if it had been made in ‘Ehberdeen’

then it would have been made fitter

for its own purposes.



And the younger, the witcher,

the one you loved,

all hook-eyed and pleasure driven,

passing the pretty lace between them.

She pulled it through but worse

this time, tighter, the threads biting.

She winked at you, slowly, dropping a lid

and said “it just depends who you know”



And then Ben More and the great pools,

the flooded lights of Saint Fillan,

patron saint of the mad and the over-bound



and between them, a circle of pretty white lace,

holding them both together.

~ ~ ~

Amy Rafferty is a Glaswegian living in the West Midlands. Her poetry and prose can be found in several anthologies and publications, both on-line and off.



In 2009 she received a highly-commended mention for her poetry collection, Pétursdóttir and the Land of Tiny Voices and in 2010, two of her poems were short listed for the international Fish poetry prize. Amy is a postgraduate student of Creative Writing at Glasgow University and sings with the cult, Glasgow band, The Recovery Club. She is also the baby in the graveyard scene of the original Wicker Man movie but she doesn't like to talk about it. 




If you should wish, you can hear Amy singing here.



Thanks to Amy for sharing her words and ink with us here on Tattoosday!



This entry is ©2012 Tattoosday. The poem and tattoos are reprinted with the poet's permission. 




 If you are reading this on another web site other than Tattoosday, without attribution, please note that it has been copied without the author's permission and is in violation of copyright laws. Please feel free to visit http://tattoosday.blogspot.com and read our original content. Please let me know if you saw this elsewhere so I contact the webmaster of the offending site and advise them of this violation in their Terms of Use Agreement.