Ben Egerton

Ben Egerton is a poet and education lecturer from Wellington, New Zealand, where he teaches in the Faculty of Education at Te Herenga Waka | Victoria University of Wellington. Ben holds a PhD in creative writing, exploring post-secularity in poetry. His work has been widely published in journals in the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, Australia, and at home in New Zealand, including in Relief, The Windhover, Ekstasis, Landfall, The Cresset, Cordite, Among Winter Cranes, and Magma. Ben was runner-up for the Magma International Poetry Prize (2018, UK) and the Kathleen Grattan Award (2019, NZ) and shortlisted for the Beverly International (2020, UK) and Christopher Smart/Joan Alice (2022, UK) prizes. Follow him on Twitter at @ben_egerton.

Long time cALLER, fiRST Time Listener

It’s late, gone nine. I’m driving home
from Palmerston North along the back road

through Tokomaru and Shannon after

another session with the teachers. There’s

never consistent reception on that road.

It’s not until you’re almost at Levin

that you can hear what Bryan is saying

on Nights on RNZ. So I auto-seek

because it’s not good to drive that stretch alone

with your thoughts, especially after

a session with the teachers, especially
as parts of that road are so dark. The worst

patch is around Tokomaru. The steam

museum at Tokomaru still hadn’t sold.

About 18 months previously I didn’t take

that back way to and from Palmerston North

with my parents because I didn’t want dad

to see that it was for sale and think

it would be a good idea to buy it.
There’s a good reason why steam museums

on back roads to Palmerston North remain

on the market for so long. The auto-seek

settles on a talkback station. The host

provokes his callers with his devil-

may-care attitude and his devil’s-advocating

and it’s easy to be an advocate

for the devil when you’re broadcasting
to people driving in the dark, heading home

on back roads to Wellington after sessions

with teachers when the reception is a bit iffy.

You might even expect to see the devil

loitering at the crossroads, like with Robert

Johnson down on his knees in Mississippi, except
in the Manawatū at the junction where State Highway

56 meets State Highway 57—which would have taken

the blues down a different route. The topic

of conversation isn’t all that

controversial, something about dairy

export prices. This year farmers aren’t getting

their forecast dividend. The fields I drive past

are full of cows whose production worth

might be less than it was on my way up.

Even at night the Manawatū is dairy country.

Fields still full of cows by dark.

But there are methane flares. Flares that may

or may not be aliens—or aliens that may

or may not be methane flares. The methane flares

probably interfere with radio

reception, especially if they’re real

aliens. Perhaps living with the threat

of aliens is another reason
why steam museums linger on the market:

steam can’t really compete with space technology

any more than cows can. About 3km

from Levin, still on the back road, more or less

where the streetlights start, I flick back

to Nights with Bryan Crump cutting off
the talkback host just as he’s devil’s-advocating

for dairy nationalisation. And in the re-tune

there is the briefest of pauses

like in the surprising emptiness
of a lighter-than-expected box or that breath

after a gust of wind has just blown through—
and you’re standing at the mouth of the wind’s cave

in the silence of high mountains and the silence

of heaven—when for the first time

on the back road I really listen and the reception

is so crystal my ears tingle.

Read more of Ben’s work in Solum Journal Spring 2022 and Solum Journal Volume III.