Live Encounters Aotearoa New Zealand Poets & Writers March 2026
A Widow’s Quilt, poems by Siobhan Harvey.
A Widow’s Quilt
She stitches together her life
with the one who’s now gone.
There’s a heaviness to this act
of surrendering to age, normally.
Deteriorating eye. Irregular heart.
The cruelty of a body bearing
its’ suffering. Normally, the past
would have surfaced in pieces
of trousseau, wedding and maternity
dresses, aprons and hand-me-downs
mothballed. A lost time, lost life,
though, the possibility of this
deserted her when he deserted her.
So now, this is different. A quilt
she arranges from choice, a body
representing its identity and love
for another in various milestones:
a first kiss; a first Pride parade;
a civil union; a rainbow badge;
portraits of icons: Anne Lister,
Josephine Baker, Sylvia Rivera …
Her thread completes its’ work,
draws the night in like a net
raising its catch. The moon
is full as the quilt enfolds her
in its warmth. The clock ticks
on as she closes eyes, dreams
her heart at one with her wife.
Belonging
© Siobhan Harvey
Siobhan Harvey ninth book, a memoir, What We Remember, What We Forget will be published later in the year. She’s longlisted for 2026 Heroines Women’s Writing Prize (US) and has won 2023 Landfall Essay Prize. She was awarded 2021 Janet Frame Literary Trust Award for Poetry, 2020 NZSA Peter & Dianne Beatson Fellowship. 2019 Kathleen Grattan Award for a Sequence of Poems, and 2016 US Write Well Award (US).