Live Encounters Poetry & Writing April 2025
Gambling, poems by Siobhan Harvey.
Gambling
They’ll say you couldn’t help yourself
They’ll say you took too many chances
They’ll say you studied the form
from the credit agency, court and bailiffs
They’ll say the odds stacked against you
were longer than an accumulator or lottery
But I knew the gossip was idle as a windfall
and I knew nothing was worth the paper
it was written on, except the life insurance
and I wasn’t trading that in for anything
So I put the last of my savings on red
then let the dealer roll the dice
Sexton
I stalk the dormant with an empty stare,
aware that death nourishes all. Inside,
cold stone forms a place of worship
decorated with pulpit, altar and cross.
There too, in memoriam, the past
haunts the visitor with reminders of
the torture of a Sunday morning sermon,
“offer your bodies as a living sacrifice …”
I forfeit all that to observe my nightly turn
around this resting place and the silent
communion I conduct with the peaceful
for each epitaph recalls a life, a companion,
a lost friend. Just as, time edging close
to midnight, my twilight turn over at last,
I will find comfort and unity in them.
© Siobhan Harvey
Siobhan Harvey is an author of eight books, including New Zealand richest prize for poetry winner, Cloudboy (Otago University Press, 2014). She was runner up in 2025 UNESCO City of Literature Robert Burns Poetry Prize (NZ) and 2024 Bridport Memoir Award (UK). She won 2023 Landfall Essay Prize. In 2021 she was awarded the Janet Frame Literary Trust Award for Poetry, and in 2020 NZSA Peter & Dianne Beatson Fellowship. , 2019 Kathleen Grattan Award for a Sequence of Poems, and 2016 US Write Well Award. Additionally, she has been runner up 3 times in the New Zealand Poetry Society International Poetry Competition and 3 times selected for inclusion in Best New Zealand Poems. In 2021 she was awarded the Janet Frame Literary Trust Award for Poetry.