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)

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