2006<\/p>\n
Dante\u2019s Heaven<\/em> by Jan Kemp, Puriri Press, $30.00, ISBN 090894330X<\/p>\n Beauty Sleep<\/em> by Kate Camp, Victoria University Press, $24.95, ISBN 0864735111<\/p>\n The Gas Leak<\/em> by Anna Jackson, Auckland University Press, $21.99, ISBN 1869403568<\/p>\n In the fragile world of poetry publishing it is always interesting to see what\u2019s in a name. The title of any art work is important but in the verbal economy of poetry it is doubly so. The title has to intrigue and, literally, divert us. It gives a glimpse, a flavour, a nudge or a wink. It encapsulates and highlights, and when it selects a single poem, like a favoured child or a special stone, it tells us that not all pearls on the string are equal, not all gauds similarly beckoning.<\/p>\n For her eighth volume, and her first since coming back to New Zealand after an extended sojourn in Europe, Jan Kemp has invoked Dante Alighieri \u2013and used, as a cover design (from Arthur Mee\u2019s Encyclopedia !) a navigational diagram placing his purgatorial Antipodes at the top of the world, thus turning his cosmos on its head. Kemp celebrates her New Zealand return with new eyes and welcoming exultation : \u201cThis place you name Purgatorio –\/which though not paradise \/we call heaven.\u201d<\/p>\n The Dante theme governs the first section of the collection while the fourth channels the voice of Beatrice. Those which most take the paradisal motif for granted work best. In \u201cSailing Boats\u201d, for instance \u2013 \u201cWatch from the deck \/the origami Ps and optimist Qs \/slip off \/ the tide tongue\u201d. Or the humorous lyricism of \u201cA Pukeko\u2019s Trip South\u201d describing a \u201cnorthern swamp hen \/with sticky red beak.\u201d There is a sense of immersion in \u201cSwimming\u201d \u2013 \u201cNothing reduces you to your skin like the sea\u201d – that is less convincing elsewhere. In the self-conscious historical compression of \u201cWe are all Newcomers\u201d, perhaps, which in summoning both Curnow and Tuwhare, and bestowing a multicultural gloss on successions of arrivals, oversimplifies the vexations of territorial entitlement. Better to remember it was something different, after all, something nobody counted on.<\/p>\n Kemp is keenest when she is close and personal, as in the sections named \u201cTributes\u201d and \u201cRequiems\u201d. There is the solidity of friendship in these poems, and the weight of sadness. Old friends are cherished \u2013Ian Wedde in \u201cEloquence\u201d and Michael Smither in \u201cMing-blue fish\u201d – but it is the whisk of lyric in \u201cGlance\u201d that captures so much in its tiny entirety:<\/p>\n \u201cBy the time we are old<\/p>\n we shall know one another<\/p>\n with a glance<\/p>\n as the gods would<\/p>\n had they cared<\/p>\n for friendship\u201d<\/p>\n The elegies, on the deaths of Allen Curnow, Alan Brunton and Stewart Whaitiri, are circumscribed by the tides of men and the things of nature, but there is a nervy and more memorable directness in \u201cStaunch\u201d, her tribute to Michael King and Maria Jungowska :<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019d have wished you a gentler death<\/p>\n in keeping with your generosity & deft, liquid speech<\/p>\n yours of right, Michael, not this bizarre<\/p>\n fireballing out, though your friend said,<\/p>\n with your wit, you might have appreciated it.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cLove is a babe\u201d is the title of the Beatrice set and there is a sense of undue artifice, of five finger exercise about some. But not those anchored in particulars, like\u00a0 \u201cJousting\u201d where the poet describes her Hermes \u2013 \u201cblonde, sandals streaming– \/he\u2019s the one held her till kingdom come\u2026 \/– how she still favours him\u201d.\u00a0 Dante\u2019s Heaven<\/em> is a strong collection \u2013 dense, varied, occasionally arch, more often perceptive and affecting. And less in need of the literary apparatus of Paradiso<\/em> and Purgatorio<\/em> than the poet, perhaps, imagines.<\/p>\n Kate Camp has called her fourth collection Beauty Sleep<\/em> and it is full of reveries, dream diaries, insomniac confession and languid whimsy. Camp has a sure touch and a welcoming ease. Whether describing a Waikato homecoming \u2013 \u201cAt the end of my street you could almost cry to see the trees\/ that reached across and touched in the middle\/ and the tiny lawn the size of a pair of sheets.\u201d \u2013 or \u201cthe man walking through Country Road\/ with his X-Rays\u201d, or listening to Billie Holliday through walkman headphones dangled in a plastic champagne flute (\u201cRussian Caravan Tea\u201d) – she creates wry and vivid vignettes.<\/p>\n There is an unstudied freshness in her observations, finding quirky detail in a luxury hotel \u201cwhere there was also a phone\/ by the toilet\/ a la Elvis.\u201d or noting – in \u201cAt the restaurant\u201d \u2013 \u201cThe masts of tied-up boats move just a little\/ like shy men at concerts dancing on the spot.\u201d These are innocent details infused with warmth at the human comedy of it all. She brings a similar generosity to \u201cLawns\u201d with its snapshot of the neighbour Harry and her own Flymo expertise. An eye injury in \u201cDemolition of the hospital\u201d celebrates a return to familiar seeing, even the more edgy \u201cInsomniac\u201d series is effortlessly weighted, as in \u201cThe insomniac reads about the Aztecs\u201d :<\/p>\n \u201cthe insomniac can see<\/p>\n That the sacrifice of a human heart<\/p>\n Is the most natural thing in the world<\/p>\n It is a small thing, and warm, and shaped like a football.\u201d<\/p>\n Beauty Sleep<\/em> is witty without being merely clever, ironic without the collateral indifference. Kate Camp writes poetry for people who think they don\u2019t like poetry, and those who think they might not understand it. This is not to say that it isn\u2019t complex or asks nothing \u2013 it just means she hears cadence in the babble of everyday language and sees signs even in the listing laundry \u2013 \u201cand that shirt on the line waved its arms and sang, \/come into my life like a pirate.\u201d <\/em><\/p>\n <\/em><\/p>\n The Gas Leak <\/em>is a more esoteric venture but, in its coolly managed structure, full of implication and intrigue. Anna Jackson appends notes to her collection alerting us to the fact that the third section, \u201cThe gas-fitter\u2019s wife\u201d is a response to the sonnet sequence \u201cBallade van de gasfitter\u201d by Gerrit Achterberg. Jackson is further provoked by a commentary on the poems\u00a0 by J.M. Coetzee, noting the triangular link\u00a0 between the poet, a \u201cYou\u201d figure and the leaking pipes that may be gaseous expressions of God Himself. Despite these intertextual possibilities, The Gas Leak<\/em> fortunately requires no significant transfusions of information \u2013 beginning, as it does, with the fourteen, fourteen-line poems collectively entitled \u201cThe gas-fitter\u2019s marriage\u201d\u00a0 In \u201cSilence, it means something\u201d we are drolly informed – \u201cThe celebrant had laryngitis, \/ they were never pronounced \/ man and wife in so many words.\u201d<\/p>\n The gas-fitter moves about empty apartments, \u201centering like a burglar\u201d, helping himself to coffee he would refuse if there were something there to offer it. There is an almost cinematic oddness here \u2013 the images are plain but the montage is cryptic, and the ambivalent mood reminiscent of Robert Lowell in \u201cTo Speak of the Woe that is in Marriage\u201d. There is a strangeness between this gas-fitter and his wife, and also a deep familiarity – \u201cthough\/ it doesn\u2019t answer the question\/ of her sister.\u201d<\/p>\n The gas-fitter\u2019s daughter is a much livelier case. A rebellious adolescent, she is exasperated by her carping mother (\u201c\u2019no texting \/ when I\u2019m talking\u2019\u201d) who does not see the girl is in her own erotic thrall \u2013<\/p>\n \u201c- she wants<\/p>\n me three dimensional<\/p>\n but you have to be thin as a needle<\/p>\n to enter life\u2019s vein<\/p>\n and I\u2019m out of here<\/p>\n in a rush –\u00a0 \u201c<\/p>\n In the final section, the wife herself speaks and, while Anna Jackson describes her use of the\u00a0 poems as \u201can interesting extension of the more usual feminist project of reversing the terms \u2018desired\u2019 and \u2018desiring\u2019 \u201c, these last poems have a purposeful sense of girl\u2019s own breakout \u2013 \u201cWhen I spill all, \/don\u2019t expect me to leave\/ a stain\/ no need for salt\/ on your shagpile streets, \u201c\u00a0 Or, concluding \u201cAn explanatory wave of the hand \u201c \u2013 \u201cI am much too hot\/\u00a0 to fall \/ I am rising far above you, \/ on the boil.\u201d<\/p>\n The poet is intrigued to find a third hand in her work when the final poem literally won\u2019t print \u2013 \u201c – the words come out like little corpses\/ squashed into the margins \/ by an Almighty \/ thumb.\u201d But these published idiosyncrasies of her Lexmark are not the last word. Instead, the bubble jets of yearning, in both the gas-fitter and his elusive wife, are the real subject – and object, of Anna Jackson\u2019s shrewdly lyrical, and most accomplished, sequence of poems.<\/p>\n Murray Bramwell<\/p>\n Murray Bramwell teaches Drama at Flinders University of South Australia. He is a regular theatre and music reviewer for The Australian<\/em> and The Adelaide<\/em> Review<\/em>.<\/p>\n New Zealand Books, Autumn, 2006<\/p>\n <\/em><\/p>\n <\/em><\/p>\n <\/em><\/p>\n <\/em><\/p>\n <\/em><\/p>\n <\/em><\/p>\n <\/em><\/p>\n <\/em><\/p>\n <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" 2006 Dante\u2019s Heaven by Jan Kemp, Puriri Press, $30.00, ISBN 090894330X Beauty Sleep by Kate Camp, Victoria University Press, $24.95, ISBN 0864735111 The Gas Leak by Anna Jackson, Auckland University Press, $21.99, ISBN 1869403568 In the fragile world of poetry publishing it is always interesting to see what\u2019s in a name. The title of any art work is important but in the verbal economy of poetry it is doubly so. The title has to intrigue and, literally, divert us. It […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,20],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1383","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-archive","category-books"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/murraybramwell.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1383","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/murraybramwell.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/murraybramwell.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/murraybramwell.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/murraybramwell.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1383"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/murraybramwell.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1383\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/murraybramwell.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1383"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/murraybramwell.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1383"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/murraybramwell.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1383"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}