wonderful to relate

posted by Michele

We were in Hawke’s Bay last weekend for a family wedding, a year on from the big ceremony at Matahiwi and the presentation of Jacob Scott’s laureate sticks. So it was a blast to find out some months back that my Australian niece and her Kiwi boyfriend were planning to get married in Hawke’s Bay where his large family has its headquarters. We were happy indeed to gather at Clearview Estate, just down the road from Haumoana, for the wedding which brought people from far and wide and was a high-water mark for both families.

The matua tokotoko was along for the occasion and was passed from speaker to speaker at the reception. It seems clear that the more this and the other laureate sticks go hand to hand, the greater their mana becomes. The wedding speeches were eloquent and moving, and of course the groom’s father knew Jacob Scott and is a published poet himself. These are the things you find out at weddings.

My part in the speeches was to read a poem written a few weeks ago and soon to be the last-but-one component of the collection that will be published in late June as Mirabile Dictu. It’s fair to say that of many wonderful things that have happened in the course of the laureate year and a half, none is as wonderful as the story that brought us all to Clearview for Almitra and Joel’s wedding.

wonderful to relate

my brother leaves a message    call me
something has happened    is it an emergency
or terra incognita waving about in the trees
closer than anyone imagined    a daughter
he says when I call him back    I have a daughter
and she is twenty seven years old

this takes a bit of explaining    and when
he has I ask is there a photo    did you take
some photos    the files arrive as we talk
I open them and there she is    someone
who looks like all of us    and is most surely
herself    the stranger who is his daughter
our niece    and now eldest of five cousins
it takes a long time to work out
the delicate shapes that might be    and when
it is done    she comes to meet us
more photos more talk    we have given her
our grandmother’s rings    she gives us
the gift of herself    if we will have her

that part is easy    and now there’s
a wedding in the air    they will tie the knot
with his people and we will travel again
to Te Matau a Maui    this time
with everyone on board    and in a vineyard
at the far end of summer    with strangers
who have made us welcome    my brother
will give away his daughter    knowing
she has made us into something bigger
and more precious than anyone
could have imagined    she is herself
and she is one of us    for her
we will travel the miles to Haumoana
looking at the windy sea    thinking about
long ago family weddings and how this one
is adding its quota of surprises
and serendipity to the story we thought
we knew    mirabile dictu we say
wiping away a sneaky tear    such wonders
and everybody talking    we are here
with a million champagne bubbles
bursting miraculously against our lips
wish us well    we are going to a wedding

How the story circles: our grandparents were married in Woodville in 1924 and my father was born in Hastings a year later, so there is a family connection to the Bay that just got a whole lot stronger.

Images
Top; (left) Five cousins at Clearview, 14 March 2009, (right) Joel Watson and Almitra McQurade
Bottom: Henry Nelson Leggott & Janet Rintoul Elder, Woodville, 1924

Chalking with Mr Harlow and all

posted by Michele

It was chalking day on campus last week as this year’s Poetry off the Page cohort fanned out with poems to put into public space. With them was Michael Harlow, 2009 Burns Fellow and holder of the inaugural Caselberg Residency, in Auckland for the launch of his new book, The Tram Conductor’s Blue Cap (AUP). Student chalkers became Harlow ‘translators’ and were encouraged by Michael to co-sign the poem that went down outside the university library during the busiest part of the day. Elsewhere other chalking gangs were taking Harlow words up steps, across a road and around a parked bus. It was, said Michael, the best pre-launch a book of poems could hope for; and he finished the morning by taking requests from the class who by then had very close knowledge of some of his texts. Later we went to look at the range of poems that had made it to the pavements and were already wearing off under the tramp of feet.

The weather gods were kind to us this year and nobody had to watch their chalk poems vanish into gutters. Down by Old Government House digi-poet Helen Sword chalked graphics for her Stoneflower Path. And at the bottom of the OGH drive, hot and dishevelled but perfectly happy, I finished chalking a poem that traces the journey made by 24 year old William Leggott to Aotearoa in 1865.

Photo credits: Tim Page and POTP

Maggie Rainey-Smith on 'Houses by the sea'

posted by Michele

Wellington writer & bookseller Maggie Rainey-Smith has blogged about last week's event at the National Library, 'Houses by the Sea – Celebrating Robin Hyde'.

You can read her post on Beattie's Book Blog.

Houses by the sea

posted by Michele

The Alexander Turnbull Library has announced its acquisition of a major collection of Robin Hyde’s literary papers. To celebrate the occasion there will be a reception and reading at the National Library in Wellington on February 26 as per the invitation above.

'Houses by the Sea' is Hyde’s most famous sequence of poems and the title of the collection of her later poems published posthumously in 1952. The sequence explores her Wellington childhood and adolescence, looking back at the 1900s and 1910s from 1937-39 as Hyde prepared to leave New Zealand, then travelled through war-torn China and on to England where she died in August 1939. 'Houses by the Sea' travelled with her and was worked on in places as diverse as Hankow (now Wuhan) and Charles Brasch's Wiltshire cottage. Hyde was fully aware of the effect geographical distance was exerting on early memory, explaining in a letter to her family from Shanghai 2 May 1938:

N.Z. is my country beyond any possible mistake [. . .] I’d like to be home, in the back-yard among the black-eyed Susans, or in the front garden with the hose sprinkling – it'll be autumn now, and Wilton's Creek soft and smelling of wild mint and burning gorse. By whiles I have tried to write and link up a series of poems about our childhood places – Wellington – and like some of the results, though very fragmentary as yet. But in travelling, peace isn’t deep enough – if at all – for the writing of real poetry. For prose, however, it hasn’t been so bad, and I think the inarticulate blurred mass of Eastern noise, which is just enormous, is easier to stand because I can’t understand it – my mind isn’t hunting a thread here, a word there. (Challis and Rawlinson, The Book of Iris, p.531)

The prose from China became her last book, the travel memoir and anti-war polemic Dragon Rampant (1939). The poems, dazzling collages of image and memory, were already more than fragmentary when she wrote from Shanghai (she was always supercritical of her own work). By the time she was typing in the spring sunshine outside Bishop's Barn in April 1939, they had become the 20-page typescript from which the published sequence derives. That typescript is part of the vast treasury of manuscripts and photographs that has come to the Turnbull as part of the Derek Challis Papers. The collection is now available to researchers and interested readers of Hyde.

Image: RH writing at Bishop's Barn during her first visit as a guest of Charles Brasch, April 1939. From Derek Challis and Gloria Rawlinson, The Book of Iris: A Life of Robin Hyde (Auckland University Press, 2003)

Papers Past

posted by Michele

A big hand for the folks at the National Library who are putting our newspapers online bit by bit, paper by paper. The project is called Papers Past and it means you can search in all kinds of ways for all kinds of things that made local news. Just before Christmas I found that The Timaru Herald had been put online, not a moment too soon for some tinkering with family history I was doing. When your ancestors don’t leave many clues, the papers have to fill in the gaps (see below, ‘family sightings on the mainland’).

It helps to have an oddly spelt name but even so there were more than 350 search results for leggott between 1873 and 1900 which is when the past stops. My arm was about to drop off coming through the 1890s when I arrived at the following story:

TOWN & COUNTRY.
Timaru Herald, 11 January 1898

Mr Leggott, quite an old identity of Timaru, has shown us a curiosity in the shape of copies of a newspaper, The Greyhound Chronicle, published in February, 1865. The ‘copy’ for the paper was written on the voyage of the ship Greyhound, and each MS. day's paper carefully bound, and on arrival at Christchurch the whole was printed and distributed among the passengers. The daily record is interesting reading, the short articles dealing with the voyage, the medical officer's report, astronomy, correspondence on various matters, poetry, humourous paragraphs, etc. Mr Leggott, who was a passenger by the ship, assures us that the paper was eagerly looked for, and helped time to pass very pleasantly.

That’s William, who arrived as a 24 year old farm labourer from Lincolnshire, married 19 year old Catherine Thornton in 1868 and went on to have a family of 11 children. We knew about the Greyhound. We did not know about The Greyhound Chronicle. I searched the databases for a copy, and wonder of wonders, found just one, an ancient photocopy of the publication held by the Turnbull Library. Interlibrary loan has done its work and I am looking at a copy of a copy of the printed version of a handwritten ship’s newspaper that my great great grandfather read February through June 1865 as he made the one-way voyage from London to Lyttelton.

family sightings on the mainland

there was a lot of singing            solos glees duets
recitations and a dialogue in character         sometimes
an initial will show which one of them it was
with the unregistered dog the prize for conduct
the five shilling donation the worst competition score
they play cricket rounders and draughts         they object
to religious instruction in state schools         they join
the Loyal Lifeboat Lodge of Good Templars
the Blue Ribbon Army and the Band of Hope
they are drain layers dry salters road contractors
and they sing         Strike Out the Top Line         The Holy City
Come Unto Me All Ye That Labour And Are Heavy Laden
And I Will Give You Rest         they address remarks on
How to Reach the Unconverted and Can God Furnish
a Table in the Wilderness         they occupy chairs
and second motions         they tender successfully
for local contracts and become identities
in the district          one does jury duty
for an embezzlement trial          one plays a B Flat Bass
they are surface men boot finishers consignees
of shipping from up and down the coast
a son comes second in the three legged race
a daughter is commended for her writing
every eligible name is on the suffrage roll
nobody volunteered for the Transvaal war
and they sing         solos duets quartets         it is never quiet
each morning they open their newspapers
and pick up where they left off
the news goes round and everybody knows
who has been uproariously applauded
who has been struck off the householders’ roll and why
who spoke at length or wished business
speedily disposed of         who sang alto
in one of the pleasantly rendered vocal items
and who is in the conveyance
leaving Gabites’ corner at 1 o’clock sharp today

the tuwhare special

posted by Michele

Hone Tuwhare went to Jerusalem in November 1972 to farewell his friend James K Baxter. He wrote what became a well-known poem about driving overnight to get to the tangi, picking up three young men along the way and putting time and place into context as the sun came up at Jerusalem that morning. The poem is called 'Heemi' (Deep River Talk: Collected Poems 96) and it ends:

Joy for the brother sun chesting over
the brim of the land, and for the three
young blokes flaked out in the back seat
who would make it now, knowing that they
were not called on to witness
some mysterious phenomenon of birth on
a dung-littered floor of a stable

but come simply to call
on a tired old mate in a tent
laid out in a box
with no money in the pocket
no fancy halo, no thump left in the old
ticker.

Several of the contributors to nzepc's e-journal ka mate ka ora #6, a Hone Tuwhare special issue, recall the poem in their own tributes to Tuwhare. Robert Sullivan has assembled the rich mix of critical essays, memoirs, poems and photographs just now launching in the September issue. Yes, it's late: there was a much bigger take-up than expected to kmko's call for Tuwhare material, but it's worth waiting for: 8 essays, 3 sets of archival photographs and 25 tributes plus an editorial by Sullivan and a poroporoaki (farewell) by Hana O'Regan called 'He tītī me te waihoka pōhutukawa / Mutton Birds and Red Wine'. Much to savour, much to ponder. Here's a gem from Jean McCormack, who married Tuwhare in 1949:

Calling the ex at seventy-nine

He's in the hospital
in Balclutha
eighty-two now
heart trouble, etc...

I'm reasonable,
high blood pressure
now under control
watery eyes when I go out
in the cold
but that's minor

Who is it he says..
Jean..
Who?
JEAN..
Who? Spell it!
Louder this time…J E A N…
Joan?
No! JEAN…
Jane?
NO! JEAN!

Oh! JUNE! JUNE! (delighted)
(Those names from the 1920s! But who is June, I wonder...
haven’t heard of that one..)

JEAN! YOUR CHILDREN’S MOTHER!

Oh, JEAN!

We talk for a while
as much as is possible,
he asks after the sons, the mokopuna..

He tires
says good-bye
but I hear no clicking off.
I hold the phone

Then I hear faintly, the quavery but
melodious voice..

My heart is sad and lonely, de da, de da, de daaa...

Image
Hone Tuwhare at Jerusalem, 1972
Photograph by William Farrimond

please put the poem back

posted by Michele

There was a move recently at The NZ Listener to cut publication of the weekly poem which has appeared in that magazine for decades. It’s one of the few places that offer a substantial fee for a poem ($150 per acceptance) and the only NZ print publication to publish a poem 51 weeks in the year. For the past few years the Listener poem has also been archived online (here’s CK Stead’s elegy for editor Robin Dudding, written after a visit to the Michael King Centre on Mt Victoria in Devonport a few months ago).

Bookman Beattie has logged the uproar over the proposed cut here and it seems likely the Listener will reconsider its decision. Here’s my letter to the editor, dispatched yesterday. The readership figure is cited from the latest Nielsen Media Research National Readership Survey.

30 October 2008

Dear Listener editor/s

A lot of time and effort is put in by poets, publishers and readers to get poetry into public places. When poems reach the walls of galleries or cafes, the signboards of buses and trains or the surfaces of beaches and pavements, public response is positive and everyone is reminded that poems live in the world as well as on the page. So why has The Listener decided to discontinue its weekly poem, the one place in this country that prints a poem which reaches 286,000 potential readers every seven days? Cost? I wouldn’t think $150 per week (the current fee) is too high a price to pay for the preservation of an honourable tradition that tells us poetry engages hearts and minds wherever it goes. Please put the poem back.

shore space

posted by Michele

Auckland’s North Shore is heavily populated with poets, past and present (it used to be a cheap place to live). So it seemed like an excellent opportunity to profile some of them during the launch of Shore Space, the North Shore City Council’s new arts portal, at the Bruce Mason Centre in Takapuna last night.

Robin Hyde spent most of 1937, her last year in New Zealand, living on the Shore in a series of baches in Castor Bay and Milford. It was a very difficult year but she got a lot of writing done before leaving for England in January 1938. Here she is, taking a bus ride from Devonport to Milford, finding diverse company along the way.

And already the poem is out of date: Sonja Yelich’s new collection Get Some (Auckland UP) was launched last week in Devonport and Stu Bagby had the first copies of Just Another Fantastic Anthology: Auckland in Poetry (Antediluvian Press) in the boot of his car last night. Watch that space!

shore space

Robin Hyde is getting off the ferry
weeping like Niobe   she's been to see
Work and Income and her case manager
is not enthusiastic about the novel
or the new poetry collection   her tears fell
like marrow fat peas as she crossed the harbour
but now the sun is mopping them up
she posts a letter to John A Lee telling him
she is not pregnant with a third child
and his government should do something
about the land grab going on at Orakei
then she catches the bus for Takapuna
and contemplates the shape of things to come
as it rattles along the waterfront

look there's the Fairburn house
but no Rex   he was sent to buy chops
for the family dinner and wandered off
to the Masonic   where the public bar
is critiquing the second draft of Dominion
Robin Hyde waves from the bus
the bar waves back   bring us yours
next time you’re down this way they call
she pats the typescript in her bag
a little book of dream and philosophy
something for everyone there
and here's Kevin Ireland with jaunty Sid
heading for the cricket pavilion
after a narrow escape from the fangs
of a neighbourhood fiend in Domain St
Sonja Yelich pulls alongside   honk honk
in a big car full of kids and books
caught your last one on National Radio
she calls   let me know if there’s anything
I can do   Robin Hyde perks up
as the bus swings past Narrow Neck
look at all those sailboats   surely one or two
hold world-class poets in the making
she likes the look of the bicycle lanes
on Lake Rd   she spots Frank Sargeson
ambling home to Esmonde Rd   hey Frank
let's get together next week at my place
the pale idea of Janet Frame floats
around the corner but this is not the moment
to compare notes on mental health
and anyway the bus is grinding past the lake
where Leigh and Susan Davis
are watching rowers and swans drift past
on a perfect map of the sky
isn’t that tony green tony green tony green
jogging by in lycra and an experimental hat?
Robin Hyde gets off the bus in Milford
and down the road comes Wystan Curnow
fresh from a swim at Castor Bay
with D'Arcy Cresswell and Sam Hunt
they've heard about the plan
to sail for England and are here to offer help
with packing when the time arrives
Robin Hyde is touched   guys that's awesome
she thanks them and they all walk up
the hill to Prospect Terrace
to meet the gang of people waiting there

it’s quite a scene   a small room
with large windows overlooking Rangitoto
John Yelash and Robin Dudding uncork the Lemora
Greville Texidor tangos past with Anna Kavan
Mary Stanley blows a kiss
to three boys trailing home with towels
and a typewriter thumps in the back room
where Kendrick Smithyman is putting
finishing touches to the masterpiece of the day
he hands out copies and everyone
offers comment so useful
he gets back on the job right away
Stu Bagby's asking for contributions
to Great New Zealand Sex Poems Volume II
Jan Kemp is arranging TV contracts
for those whose Collected Works have gone
platinum on international charts   yes platinum
Keith Sinclair's heart is in his mouth
be kind to one another, kiss a little
and here's Karl Stead fronting up
with the keys to a London flat   please I insist
the big pohutukawa at the gate
leans out over the iron roof   fantails hop
in a mesh of boughs   the typewriter thunders on
above the talk of poets living and dead
and suddenly Robin Hyde no longer minds
that the landlady wants her out
in time to catch the Christmas rentals
Kendrick look there's this new machine
I could take overseas   why don't you keep
my old clunker   she's bought
the tickets to go to England by way of China
Japan Russia Germany and France
the whole World War just waiting
to happen   and who knows
what will become of her novels her letters
and her poetry collections   one thing's
for sure   she would be pleased
this spring afternoon above the bays
where gorse and mangroves present
a united front and choko vines run wild
she would be pleased to see Jack Ross
and friends rolling in with a box of books
and a sausage sizzle to do a fundraiser
for a poet who has run out of cornflakes
on the other side of the world   Robin Hyde
is living on baked beans and disprins
soon she will leave the places we can see
and walk the seaward road that glistens
with disappearances   she waves her stick
in farewell as the sun goes down
on the blue and blissful bay   she finds a piece
of Exquisite Bond in the wilderness of paper
that is her boat   and starts to write

Image: Robin Hyde, 1936
Photographer: Spencer Digby
From Young Knowledge: The Poems of Robin Hyde, Auckland University Press, 2003 

travelling tapa

posted by Michele

Here’s Rachel Blau DuPlessis settling in at Durham, North Carolina, where she and partner Bob DuPlessis are visiting fellows for the North American academic year at the National Humanities Centre. Rachel is flagging the recent publication of Ron Silliman’s monumental work The Alphabet (U of Alabama P, September 2008), a long poem published serially over 30 years and appearing now in its full 26 parts. She’s also sitting under a beautiful piece of Tongan tapa that travelled from Auckland to Umbria in June when we went to stay for a few days with Rachel and Bob at their summer place in Italy. There it is (below) unrolled in full on the terrace.

It was at this point we learned that Bob is an authority on, among other things, the history of textile production in central Italy (what he doesn’t know about wool, linen and the farming of silkworms isn’t worth knowing). But the bark cloth from the Pacific, involving a different kind of mulberry tree, was new to him and to Rachel. We’re glad to see the tapa is still travelling and look forward to having the roving Americans in our part of the world. They’ve been to Australia twice and they’re keen to come here. Text and textiles could be the drawcard.

Images from top:

Rachel Blau DuPlessis with The Alphabet.
Photo credit: Bob DuPlessis

Rachel and Michele with tapa.
Photo credit: Mark Fryer

for the record

posted by Michele

A catch-up on events and activities winter through spring:

5-7 July NZSA/CNZS conference in Florence, Italy, keynote presentation ‘Talking to the Future in the Mountains of the Star’ and presentation with Brian Flaherty of nzepc’s LOVE, WAR AND LAST THINGS: A Digital Bridge for Florence.

18 July Poetry Central at Auckland City Library, launching New NZ Poets in Performance and Bob Orr’s Calypso on Montana Poetry Day.

4 August Hand to Hand: Five Laureates at Writers on Mondays, reading with Jenny Bornholdt, Bill Manhire, Elizabeth Smither and Brian Turner at the National Library, Wellington.

13 August Chancellor’s Lecture ‘Resuming folding life’ at Massey University, Albany campus.

28 August Mollie: On the Track of the Ohakune Elephant 1957-2008, University of Auckland.

5-7 September The Press Christchurch Writers Festival, panel discussion with Bill Manhire, Bernadette Hall and Brian Turner.

20 September Poetry off the Page, presentation with Helen Sword at Going West literary festival in Titirangi.

Images:
Top: With Penny ('Crone Queen') Somervaille.
Bottom: Penny chalking
Photographs by Renee Liang.