RICHARD REEVE is the author of two books of poetry, Dialectic of Mud (2001) and The Life and the Dark (2004), both published by Auckland University Press. He has also written a doctorate partly on New Zealand poetry. Until November 2004, he was editor of Glottis: New Writing.

Reeve comments: ‘The toilet mentioned is likely to be a composting long-drop, common throughout New Zealand’s backcountry as a manageable, biodegradable alternative to the flush system. In the poem, I attempted to fuse together my sense of the historical contingency of human thought and religious activity with the marginal existence of the flies that padded about on the waste below.’

 

Poem: Blowflies at the Bottom of a Fiordland toilet