I probably started
publishing too early, with two small books during the 1970s (my 20s) from
Trevor Reeves’s Caveman Press in Dunedin. There are still people who maintain
that this is my best work, with the suggestion that I have since gone astray.
On the other hand, the experience began my lifelong preference for independent
presses and magazines, fugitive imprints and individual associations with my
editors and printers.
Of course, you can’t start writing too early. ‘Cut Lilac’, dating from 1980 – one of
several surge-years – was my first widely anthologised piece and the product of
a lot of experimentation. I still like it because it seems to have remained
true to the situation it was made in. Its dependence on unfashionable adverbs
also pleases me.
A later poem, ‘River’ was part of my growing
understanding of poetry as a kinetic, even cinematic process. By now, most
usual punctuation had disappeared; line breaks and stanza breaks offered in
each case the exhilaration of an optional end-stop or run-on. The stanzas had
become the equivalent of frames through which the poem moves, enacting rather
than recording. Much later (of which more later) the tanka sequence offered a
main means of developing this technique.
‘Sang aus dem Exil’
– the title recalls Karl Wolfskehl, the German-language poet, who ended his
life as a refugee in Auckland in the 1940s – pursues the stand-alone yet linked
stanza further. I was also starting to be interested here in the particulars of
a New Zealand content: this isolated end-of-the-world simultaneously so much of
a cultural disadvantage and advantage, the freedom of the largely ignored. I’ve
never been able to work up much enthusiasm for the internationalist fantasy,
preferring the curiosity of making do at one of the most far-flung outposts of
the English language.
Written around the turn of the century, ‘Bread and
Stones’ is one of several desert poems of the period, to do with sterility and
uncreative complacency. Given the events of 2001, my prediction that
nothing much was about to happen was way off the mark!
The new century seems somehow to have liberated my writing, or simply my perception of it. Electric Yachts, my first true 21st Century book, from the title poem of which my fifth poem here is an extract, was longer, more comfortable with itself, allowing in more of my customary humour. Its German speakers are obviously more willing to find themselves at the ends of the earth.
The new century seems somehow to have liberated my writing, or simply my perception of it. Electric Yachts, my first true 21st Century book, from the title poem of which my fifth poem here is an extract, was longer, more comfortable with itself, allowing in more of my customary humour. Its German speakers are obviously more willing to find themselves at the ends of the earth.
There is, though, always a place for the local voice and
its traditions, and readers have appreciated this in ‘The South Island’. It’s
also a useful reminder of how new concepts of identity don’t always eclipse
those of the past, often in fact strengthening them. This place and the ways we
find to voice our belonging in it are at the core of valuing environmental
existence. We also honour other cultures by having a culture of our own,
however flawed or patchy.
‘Easter Motets’ takes its place here as something
different but not entirely alien to the others. The fixed-form implications of
rhyme have always been part of my practice, but you have to be careful not to
use them all the time. Sound is important and I always recite before I write. A
rather pagan, small-“c” christianity is also inseparably a part of me and my
knowledge of existence.
As a New Zealander, I have to acknowledge that
English-language literature in this part of the world is only a very few
generations old. Its distinct flavour is the achievement of close but
significant ancestors, one of whom, Ruth Dallas (another South Islander!), I
celebrate in ‘The Pine Hut’.
Two love poems follow, derived from various sequences
currently on the go. My scope of being is immediate: the household and its
concerns; those around me who are also representative of a wider humanity; the
persistent elation and exasperation of being alive.
In ‘Human Voices’ we are back in the primordial New
Zealand of river-crossings, boasts and come-uppances, where drowning is still
one of the more popular ways of dying. The close association between humans and
nature is the one national characteristic we ignore at our peril and, of
course, we continue to do it daily.
Also at the turn of the century, I stopped being sceptical
about the use of Japanese short forms as a genre in English-language poetry. I
decided to accept the challenge this type of writing affords on its own terms
and see if I could do it well. For better or worse, many haiku and tanka
followed and never had line breaks seemed so urgent. ‘Tidelines’ is my chosen
example of a tanka sequence. I like the flexibility of this form, encompassing
Japanese linkage by association and European-style permutation of a
more-or-less given stanza shape.
Considering the number required, I gave great thought to
the meaning of thirteen. A Baker’s Dozen is certainly a tradition on the
positive and fortunate side. Then the poem ‘Thirteen’ came along. I was intrigued
by what I found under the stone with this number on it.
Reading over my “Baker’s Dozen” I’m aware that it is a
fairly stringent selection in formal terms and that another thirteen poems
might have presented me as another, entirely different writer. This is as it
should be. That these thirteen poems, written over thirty-odd years, all look
like parts of the same poem foreshadows my current preoccupation with longer
poems. But it also points to what a lifetime commitment can look like: air and
water; birds and plants; a grounding in the Classics, English and French
literature, and American modernism. What else do you need? Reader, the poems
are no longer mine; they’re yours.
Cut Lilac
the dead
smell the rain gives
to bunches of cut lilac
in bay windowed living rooms
to bunches of cut lilac
in bay windowed living rooms
is another
version of the skull
your mouth feels when you kiss
a lover’s or a child’s clear forehead
your mouth feels when you kiss
a lover’s or a child’s clear forehead
but these
are impetuous blue
upon the stems that throng
the vase’s throat and splay from it
upon the stems that throng
the vase’s throat and splay from it
half captive
or as free
as wands of light the recent sun
by peering wetly forth outside
as wands of light the recent sun
by peering wetly forth outside
has
interspersed among them
divining paths like ours in time
that sprawl and gather haltingly
divining paths like ours in time
that sprawl and gather haltingly
towards the
next blind cervix
of the grave the best of us
will shoulder through with joy
of the grave the best of us
will shoulder through with joy
River
the river
brings down stones
that mumble
and scrape over
each other’s
averted backs
as a poem
brings words
brings something
to tap against
the teeth or
weigh in the hand
or spin
to skip flat water
while you remember
that the poem
is the river
not the stones
Sang aus dem Exil
1
sleeping through daytime rain
and the dreams it summons
is one of the great earthen passages
sound temperature and light
infinitesimally modulated
in the palm of one huge hand
then pierced by bird song
relaying some distant intelligence
into distance out of hearing
2
I need not wander further
than the street address of my birth
to be challenge as a stranger
one season only in this city
one flavour of rain
the locals praise immoderately
I’m going to give you my images
flat sleep without dreams
with an egg-blue tablet
3
tell me the light still moves
finger by finger breadth
over the salt whitened table
cane creak of conservatory chairs
gone in one breath of fire
indestructible in memory
ripe smoke calligraphy
so many thoughts like words
yet to enter language
4
I hang my shorts on a chair
for the night like a boy
and lie outside the covers
sometimes the stars
in their eternal formations
watch me watching them
on the edge of sleep
who can be sure
of the intentions of moonlight
5
setting of the plum tree
green roofed shed
and brick paved ant tenement
a young man in a T shirt
leans forward pursing his lips
to drink from the hose
persistent discourse
with those for one
or another reason absent
6
what is the message
each bird cry calls to the next
without understanding
prayer rhythms
of the tails of summer cattle
swinging at flies
master
I am waiting
the mad man in his cage eating flies
as the world awaits its prince
Bread and Stones
this time the doctrine
from the desert
is considered and dismissed
without prejudice or violence
and the prophet advised
to get a shave and a job
there is an acceptance
of dreams
in their refined form
as stories in the marketplace
worth a seat at least
and a bowl of food
no one’s head is turned
no one’s life
changed irrevocably
by the startled glance
of the speaker’s grey
mendicant eye
with reasons
for power and war
other than greed suspended
it will be difficult
to recruit martyrs
or shed righteous blood
but simple stew
over a thorn fire
the devil’s recipe
never fails to produce
visions of a better world
getting in the way of this one
the watchmen
on the city walls
with nothing but night
between them and the stars
can only call out the hours
resignedly and wait
from Electric Yachts
III
that first hostel
where we stayed
was mainly let to
singles teams and pairs
of German backpackers
girls in tartan shirts
who could each
miraculously produce
a little black number
for a night at the pub
or solo frauen
more advanced in years
who took the slightest
cloud break as occasion
to sprawl nude on the lawn
the boys were freckled
voluble and active
dawn till dusk
but turned in early
snoring in relays
older men outside
greeted us after dark
with Dracula accents
pleased to be
nuclear-free and green
some of the words we heard
for the international
beauty of the moon
riding over ponga tops
have remained with me
The South Island
compressed by sleep
into dream fragments
memories of salt
works
on the coast
roads that followed
ridge lines
through spectral hollows
of clouds
a gate
and a river of
pebbles
a church left to
settle for a century
like angels’
new-marbled wings
landscape as dry and
firm
as a good man’s
handshake
Easter Motets
1
cicadas recall
among the trees
all of nature’s
trinities
egg to nymph
to doomed adult
tripartite
messianic cult
2
what we call
the dead of night
is more than
interrupted light
darkness in the
human mind
is of a
metaphysical kind
3
the sun comes out
and dries the dew
reminding me
reminding you
of earth as
paradise before
the application
of the law
The Pine Hut
(remembering Ruth Dallas)
1
founding a literature
we think less
of founding fathers
than grandmothers
mothers
older sisters
cradling the flame
rather than
blowing it up and out
in isolation
the bird at the
window
flutters against the pane
where the sky
is the same blue
as possibility
2
to make poetry
easy as breathing
so the words disappear
and the blue bowl
containing paper clips
on the table disappears
and its contents
neatly folded wires
invisible as always
to their blind makers
hang in the air like
one
repeated pictogram
from Some Wellington Poems
alone
in a park
in that city
at the other
end of the island
I remember
the excitement
of walking
to meet you here
and copy
your habit or
gesture in passing
of lightly pressing
fragrance
from a leaf
then raising
my fingers
to my face
Measure
we prune big
splashy heads
of fresh blossom
off the hydrangeas
in wild weather
so they can bloom
out of the wind
in vases in the house
Shiki says
of flowers like these
to stand their stems in
strong wine when they wilt
and they will flush
with colour again
Human Voices
those who
drowned
in this
river
still speak
with its
voice
I was a
child
on a raft
we’d made
when it
turned
leaving me
under
and my
brother
struggling
weeping to the bank
my raincoat
flared up
in the wind
causing my
horse to shy
and throw me
into the
torrent
I was drunk
for the last
time
and decided
to swim
all the way
home
something
about an axle
and baling
wire
farm kids
with a
drizzle of freckles
over the
nose bridge
and under
the eyes
the river’s
own voice
is like the
conversation
in a crowded
lunch room
the day
before a holiday
murmur
hubbub
and
rodomontade
come to mind
but the
river has many voices
by the time
it reaches
the shingle
flats
near the sea
its silence
is the silence
of old men
whose eyes
twinkle
without
explicit pleasure
among the
skin creases
long passage
over earth
has given
them
Tidelines
among shoreline trees’
imitative shadows
the sand holds
signs of repose
and movement well
*
here tea was poured
and here
a wasp crushed
with the flat base
of a picnic cup
*
bird song
gongs
in the high branches
soundtrack
for colour and light
*
a kingfisher
turns bright side out
at speed
down the face
of the cliff
*
from the water’s edge
I watch you
in hat and dark glasses
basking over the pages
of a trite magazine
*
waves lift
the lace skirt
of the shore
a little higher
each time
*
constant small
fallings of sand
will by evening
have erased
our presence here
Thirteen
in an upper room
she sets the table
then becomes
historically invisible
the work of her hands
her remembrance
thirteen places
earthenware cups and bowls
the coarse but excellent
flat bread of the region
dry wine in flasks
cut with water as is the custom
nor should it be thought
the bread is without garnish
slivers of aromatic fish
dates figs
the company is as subdued
as the décor
some despondent
at least one eager to be away
but in their midst a loaf is torn
into twelfths and distributed
a draught is raised
to the light
then passed around
for each of them to taste
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