Essential New Zealand Poems:
\nFacing the Empty Page
\nSelected by Siobhan Harvey, James Northcliffe
\nand Harry Ricketts
\nA Godwit Book, Random House, New Zealand
\nISBN 978-1-77553-459-4
\nRRP: $ 45.00. 319 pp.<\/p>\n
Murray Bramwell<\/p>\n
So what makes poems essential ? In their introduction to this most appealing collection, the three editors mull the problem of their own title. Actually it is not their<\/em> title, but a reprise of an earlier Godwit collection also called Essential New<\/em> Zealand Poems<\/em>. That was in 2001, a now out-of-print edition edited by the late Lauris Edmond and Bill Sewell (who are both represented in this current anthology). Their selection criterion for \u2018essential\u2019 was that a poem had \u201cimmediate impact \u201c. As Sewell elaborated :<\/p>\n \u201cA poem had to present at least some aspect that made it instantly appealing to the heart and ear \u2013 to be memorable, or have a quality that would make the reader want to go back to it, preferably many times.\u201d<\/p>\n But as the present editors drily note – \u201cThe first Essential New Zealand Poems<\/em> made no mention of the word essential except in the title, and, wisely perhaps, made no attempt to tease out what might or might not be labeled an essential New Zealand poem.\u201d (p.14) They go on to pose other possible meanings; essential, as in absolutely necessary, indispensible, – only to note that that would be something of an overstatement for even Shakespeare or Homer.<\/p>\n They also considered the conundrum of what makes a poem an \u201cessentially\u201d New Zealand one, perhaps they meant, quintessential<\/em> ? Allen Curnow is invoked -and the phrase \u201cpeculiarly New Zealand\u2019s\u201d from his poem \u201cAttitudes for A New Zealand Poet (iii)\u201d This is not surprising. It is likely that most anthologists, consciously or unconsciously, have had Curnow\u2019s culture-shaping Penguin Book of New<\/em> Zealand Verse<\/em> somewhere in the brain pan when they set about their tasks. Published so long ago \u2013 1960, it still challenges the cartographers who follow. Or perhaps we might say, published so recently; noting that our confident sense of a national literature has been barely fifty years in the making.<\/p>\n I find it disarming that, after rumination, the editors eventually declare they have kept the title mostly to tip their collective hat to Lauris Edmond and Bill Sewell\u2019s project and, dispensing with essentials whatever they may be, have instead looked at the state of the parties in 2014. And, my, have things changed. As the introduction emphasizes:<\/p>\n \u201cContemporary poetry can be personal and public, passionate and disengaged, complex and simple, formal and informal. It can be condensed or distilled, rambling or bardic. It can be serious and comic, sometimes in the same poem. It can be for the page, the stage, the blog, the chat-room, the CD, the DVD, the iPod, the mobile, the Kindle and the Kobo. Wherever and however it is accessed, New Zealand poetry takes its influences from the present, the past, from Asia and the Pacific, from Europe and America\u2026 In short, with a magpie-like enthusiasm, it takes its influences from anywhere and everywhere.\u201d (p.13)<\/p>\n So perhaps this collection could be called \u201ceSensual New Zealand Poems\u201d, a diverse selection of 150 items, loaded with Sewell\u2019s immediate impact and, for the most part, pleasurable to both heart and eye. The editors selected 150 poets and then set about choosing just one poem from each. There are no historical chronologies, no themed sections, no larger and smaller allocations for the major and minor. There is something invigorating about simply arranging the poets in alphabetical order \u2013 Adcock, Aitchison, Alexander; Barnett, Baxter, Beach through to Wong, Wootton and Zelas. They can be enjoyed in their arbitrary (but somehow providential) A to Z order, or, of course, read at random – reset to play on shuffle.<\/p>\n From the first page the collection snares the reader. Fleur Adcock\u2019s \u201cHaving Sex with the Dead\u201d, a sardonic reverie on departed lovers ( their erections now \u201cash and dispersed chemicals\u201d) is a commanding poem; reflective, erotic, unrepentantly pragmatic. \u201cDisentangle their fingers from your hair\u201d, she writes with finality. Then, in immediate contrast, is Johanna Aitchison\u2019s \u201cLetters from Japanese Kids\u201d, a plangent patchwork of student class responses: \u201cI\u2019ll always remember you have a habit to bite your pen\/ I am lonely, but I do my best \/Is this the end\/Ms Johanna ?\u201d<\/p>\n The range of contributors spreads over three generations from Curnow and Denis Glover (born 1911 and 1912 respectively) through to Courtney Sina Meredith, born 1986 and Charlotte Trevella, born 1992. There are eighty women poets and seventy men and they are mixed, matched, contrasted and accidentally aligned in ways which make this collection intriguing and rewarding to read.<\/p>\n There are familiar names from previous anthologies, sometimes represented by unexpected poems \u2013 C.K. Stead\u2019s \u201cDeconstructing the Rainbow Warrior\u201d, Charles Brasch with the philosophical fatalism of \u201cWorld Without End\u201d, Ruth Dallas with the wryly brisk \u201cPhotographs of Pioneer Women\u201d \u2013 \u201cYou can see from their faces\/Life was not funny\u201d. James K. Baxter\u2018s bellicose \u201cOde to Auckland\u201d reminds us of his topical pamphleteering, those impromptu ballads he knocked together in student refectories before heading for the microphone. And elsewhere, we find \u201cHonestly\u201d, his wife, J.C. Sturm\u2019s honestly direct reflection on the turbulent life they shared.<\/p>\n In other poems with an historical perspective, Rangi Faith gives \u201cAdvice to a Colonial Artist\u201d : \u201chere, the blue slash of the plough,\/There, the crimson slice of the harpoon,\/& here the black smear of the factory\/& the gun\u2026\u201d. And Alistair Te Ariki Campbell describes \u201cTe Rauparaha in Old Age.\u201d<\/p>\n In \u201cTwo Nudes on a Tahitian Beach, 1894\u201d Selina Tusitala Marsh\u2019s young women have short shrift for the divisive interloper \u2013 \u201cGauguin,\/you piss me\/off.\u201d Two pages further on is Karla Mila\u2019s shrewdly bitter \u201cEating Dark Chocolate and Watching Paul Holmes\u2019 Apology\u201d \u2013 a recollection of name-calling and casual racism from childhood into adult life.<\/p>\n Many of these poems have an effortless and very distinctive sense of place, most often coastal settings. The titles alone tell us \u2013 \u201cSt Heliers\u201d (Sugu Pillay) \u201cProposal at Allans Beach (Iain Lonie), \u201cAt Katherine\u2019s Bay\u201d (Maggie Rainey-Smith) and \u201cBluff Seas\u201d (Nicholas Read). Fiona Kidman\u2019s celebratory \u201cMakara Beach, Spring\u201d says it all :<\/p>\n \u201c \u2026. But god, it\u2019s good, beside There are elegies to fathers – Sam Hunt\u2019s memorably phrased \u201cMy Father Today\u201d:<\/p>\n \u201cThey buried him today A heavy south wind towed And one of the longest poems in the collection, \u201cThe Sunflower\u201d by Andrew Johnston, dedicated to his father, is a tribute marbled with archaisms and an oracular tone that could easily bring it down, but instead give the poem a heart-felt gravity :<\/p>\n \u201c\u2026if I see thee There are many poems to admire here \u2013 the expert, tender cadences of Vincent O\u2019Sullivan\u2019s \u201cSeeing You Asked\u201d, Brian Turner\u2019s pantheistic \u201cJust This\u201d and Kate Camp\u2019s deftly drawn \u201cPersonal Effects.\u201d Some have a simple structure and a lingering insistence like Rae Varcoe\u2019s \u201cMy Hairdresser\u201d and Alison Wong\u2019s \u201cThere\u2019s Always Things You Come Back to the Kitchen For\u201d. Janet Frame\u2019s \u201cThe Place\u201d is a little pearl, and Rachel McAlpine\u2019s sublimely rhymed \u201cBefore the Fall\u201d redefines the hair on the back of the neck test :<\/p>\n \u201cAfter the bath with ragged towels He dried us all This is a collection that deserves to be shared around \u2013 to libraries, in classrooms, as Christmas presents, to read on the bus and take to the beach. It is not a snapshot of the New Zealand moment, there is strangely little of the zeitgeist here. It is unexpectedly non-urban, barely a coffee bean or a pop culture reference in sight. The tweets are magpies, the landscapes, if anything, still have too few lovers. Even the photographs dispersed throughout the book – Megan van Staden\u2019s strange, double-exposed, low-contrast monochrome land and seascapes \u2013 eerily lack the specifics of time and place, let alone picture any inhabitants.<\/p>\n But the terrain of Essential New Zealand Poems<\/em> is the imagination, and that has many mansions. The anthology\u2019s subtitle is drawn from Elizabeth Nannestad\u2019s \u201cFacing the Empty Page\u201d, but the welcoming accessibility of these selections suggest that these imaginings have rarely been blocked or tormented. Almost all reveal poets who know what they want to say, and have taken care to make it apt, and memorably clear. Essential New Zealand Poems: Facing the Empty Page Selected by Siobhan Harvey, James Northcliffe and Harry Ricketts A Godwit Book, Random House, New Zealand ISBN 978-1-77553-459-4 RRP: $ 45.00. 319 pp. Murray Bramwell So what makes poems essential ? In their introduction to this most appealing collection, the three editors mull the problem of their own title. Actually it is not their title, but a reprise of an earlier Godwit collection also called Essential New Zealand Poems. That was in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32,5,20],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2475","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-32","category-archive","category-books"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/murraybramwell.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2475","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=2475"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/murraybramwell.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2475\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2476,"href":"https:\/\/murraybramwell.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2475\/revisions\/2476"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/murraybramwell.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2475"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/murraybramwell.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2475"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/murraybramwell.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2475"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nthe sea collecting wild flowers and weeds
\nof new zealand. Blue-eyed daisies, white as foam
\nAnd dark as the sea\u2019s centre\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n
\nup Schnapper Rock Road,
\nmy father in cold clay.<\/p>\n
\nthe drape of light away.\u201d<\/p>\n
\non the other side, when I am dead ,
\nI\u2019ll know there is an other
\nside. Till then , while we have breath ,
\nour burgeoning work is not done:
\nwhat we have been given is a rich, difficult day \u201c<\/p>\n
\nmy Dad
\nwould dry us very carefully\u2026.<\/p>\n
\nthe way he gave the parish
\nMorning Prayer:
\nas if it was important,
\nas if God was fair,
\nas if it was really simple
\nif you would just be still
\nand bare. \u201c<\/p>\n
\n <\/em>
\nNew Zealand Books<\/em>, Volume 25, Number 1, Issue 109, Autumn 2015, p.13<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"