Angela Stretch is one of the poets featured in Te Purere/The Exodus: The Anthology of Expatriate New Zealand Poets, Edited by Vaughan Rapatahana and John Gallas, Cold Hub Press, 2025, which will have it’s Sydney launch on Saturday, 6 Dec from 3pm – 5pm at the Stanley Street Gallery, 1/52-54 Stanley St, Darlinghurst NSW 2010. This is a Poetry Sydney event. Tickets are $15 and are available from https://events.humanitix. com/sydney-launch-te-purere-the-exodus

---

in the oratorium of water

imagine the turgid dark waters / swirling round the sturdy trunks of red-gums / the rush of white
water where the river once ate / flood of strength / spring of creation / summer a murmur of truths
too infinite to dream gather among memories running through the land on and on towards the
future
…………………………..listen – hear the rises in water
…………………………..listen – hear the ripples
…………………………..listen – hear the quivers
…………………………..listen
…………………………..listen now
…………………………………..the night a robe of timelessness flutters its dark-winged bats / rustles the
…………………………………..magpies / accepts life’s flow into other things
can you hear something?
relax / let your mind listen
use perception to to feel your way
let go / with the sense of hearing
make you make sense
now / imagine a circular structure
deep with high walls
…………………………………..chorally they reply
……………………………………………….trust me
……………………………………………….feel safe
we’re going round together
we’re on the same wavelength
a soundtrack filled with water
almost to the brim / like in the movies
hear / as best you can
a dull industrial hum
swirling / entraining the rotation
………..round and round

…………………………………..chorally in a long unbroken line:
……………………………………………trust me
……………………………………………feel safe
……………………………………………we’re going round together
…………………………………listen to the swift current
…………………………………listen to the rumoured motion
…………………………………listen again
…………………………………listen
……………………………………………chorally forever ~
……………………………………………trust me
……………………………………………feel safe
……………………………………………we’re going round together

**

Go beyond the surface of any place

After swimming I take up a spot on the sand
the land against the water
feeling the temptation to erase the city
cities are cyclical like waves, tidal on change
shaped by a complex network of forces
disruptive places, symbolic of the passing
of time changing values
where memory and imagination can embody
a suburban swell of breakers that intensify
as its surrounds wither
A varicose vein, acts on the city’s conscience
subterranean thoroughfare offers smooth
efficient anachronisms with poisonous effect
their traces can exist one day only to vanish
the next, somewhere in between
the contemplators, sometimes in the moments
before their disappearance, a chance
a moment of distinction
they are gone
just slip away

---

Angela Stretch lives on Gadigal/Sydney, She is a poet, curator and writer from Otautahi/Christchurch, Aotearoa/New Zealand. The artist uses language and poetry through different mediums and has been exhibited and published nationally, and internationally. She is the director of Poetry Sydney and intelligent animal, and produces Arts Friday on Eastside Radio.