Showing posts with label David Howard. Show all posts
Showing posts with label David Howard. Show all posts

Tuesday, January 27, 2015

When Love Comes to Town (14 Feb 15)



Brydee Rood: Accumulation (2004)


Well, for anyone who's curious to hear four weird old geeks reading out love poetry of their own composition, fear not & say no more: here's the event for you!


When Love Comes to Town:
Poetry Reading by David Howard, Michele Leggott,
Jack Ross & Fredrika van Elburg


14 February 2015, 1.30pm, Drawing Room

Michele Leggott (Poet Laureate 2008/2009), Jack Ross (editor Poetry New Zealand), and Fredrika van Elburg (Dutch poet) will join the current Otago Wallace Resident David Howard to celebrate St Valentine's Day by reading love poetry.

This event is free to attend however seats are limited, please RSVP to enquiries@wallaceartstrust.org.nz.


For more, and for bios of all the participants, please visit the webpage here.

And if you don't know where the Pah Homestead is, here's the address:

The Pah Homestead, TSB Wallace Arts Centre
72 Hillsborough Rd, Hillsborough, Auckland
Open Tues to Fri, 10am – 3pm
Sat & Sun 10am – 5pm
T 09 639 2010




Midworlder: Pah Homestead (2010)


Looks like the kind of place you could film The Shining, doesn't it? It's certainly a beautiful old building: a great place to give a reading, in fact.



Poetry at Pah (14/2/15)


Wednesday, January 09, 2013

Leicester Kyle: Selected Shorter Poems


"Another Rare Botanical Discovery for the Millerton Botanist!"
(Jim Conolly: 2005)

Yesterday I finished posting online the last major remaining section of Leicester Kyle's posthumous poetic works: a selection of his shorter poems, the ones he didn't himself collect in book form during his lifetime.

It's a bit under two years (15 February, 2011, to be exact) since David Howard wrote to me suggesting that we finally bite the bullet and face up to our duties as Leicester's officially designated literary executors. The dual website that resulted, one site devoted to indexing and secondary literature, the other to primary texts, which we launched on July 4th 2011, is now substantially complete.

Of course there are still a number of things to do: I need to make a list of his published poems in periodicals from the copies included in his archive (the remaining sections of which I collected from David when I was down in Dunedin in June last year). The - very perfunctory - chronology page on the website needs a lot of work, too.

Those are inessential tasks, though, I feel, when set alongside the basic imperative of getting the bulk of his work up online so it can be read by poetry-lovers and ecologists everywhere.

That's not to say that I'm anticipating an avalanche of interest: just that I think that Leicester's unique blend of environmental activism, combined with spiritual acuity and a lively interest in postmodern aesthetics, makes him a very useful role model for contemporary poets. If he has anything to say to writers grappling with similar issues in their work right now, then his writings have to be available. In that sense, then, I think David and I have fulfilled our trust. I hope so, anyway.

Leicester was a very good friend of mine, but he was not always the easiest of men to get on with. The surviving volumes of his diary (in particular) contain some very unvarnished word portraits which I doubt he would have wished to be made public. Similarly, there are a good many tentative and unsuccessful pieces in the two fileboxes labelled "Collected Poems," which contained (as he told me) all the work in this genre he wished to preserve.

While I've thought it best to present in full all of the finished works he left us with: the 19 books extending from Options (1996 / 1997) to Breaker (2005), as well as complete texts of those which were substantially complete (albeit unpublished) at his death: Message from a Lightboard (1996), Koroneho (1996 / 2011), The Galapagos Tracts (c.1999-2006) and the God Poems (c.2005), I've accordingly been far more selective with the shorter poems.



Boxfiles I-IV (of 8)


To give you a sense of what I mean, here are a few statistics to mull over:
  • 19 published books (1996-2005) = 913 pp.
  • 4 posthumous books (1996-2006) = 303 pp.
  • 2 boxfiles of shorter poems (1983-2006) = 957 pp.
To be more precise, there are 746 poems and sequences included in the two boxfiles (some in more than one version). This translates to 860 separate poems, occupying the 957 pages listed above. Quite a few of them (66, to be precise [= 80 poems / pages]) are, admittedly, included in one or other of the 23 books. But then there are another 36 uncollected poems among his computer files, not to mention various miscellaneous verses in Christmas cards, pamphlets, etc.

In all, then, I've so far counted up 2194 pages of poetry left behind by Leicester on his death. The 23 major books account for 1216 pp. of this. I've also posted 14 pp. of miscellaneous pamphlets and ephemera, plus 24 of the 36 uncollected poems on the website. Of the remaining 746 shorter poems and sequences, I've selected roughly a quarter, 193 [200/680 poems; 253/957 pages]. This brings the grand total up to 1570 pp. of his poetry now available online.

I think that's enough. Admittedly it's a subjective judgement. There are still 488 poems and sequences (530 separate poems / 624 pp.) left: all accessible in typescript, and some available as wordfiles also. Future students are welcome to look them over, but I don't myself feel that it would add greatly to his reputation to publish them all online at present. Even Keats and Pushkin must blush to see some of the slighter verses included in their collected works by sedulous editors. The time may come when that's appropriate for Leicester Kyle as well, but that time is not yet.

So, in any case, here they all are:






Collected Poems I: 1983-1998

Shorter Poems: 1
(1983-1995)

    Contents:

  1. Grapefruit [1983]
  2. In a New Country [n.d.]
  3. Hallelujah [June 1994]
  4. Kerikeri, 1946 [n.d.]
  5. Dancing Maria [n.d.]
  6. Ancient Worship [n.d.]
  7. Coal Kingdom [March 1995]
  8. Pipes [April 1995]
  9. House Guest [n.d.]
  10. Edge [July 1995]


  11. Shorter Poems: 2
    (1995-1996)

    Contents:

  12. I Love You (for Miriel) [n.d.]
  13. Quietly [Sept 1995]
  14. Maundy Thursday at the Mangonui Pub [n.d.]
  15. God [n.d.]
  16. Karamea Jones [n.d.]
  17. Blue Orchids at Burnetts Face [n.d.]
  18. Unworldly Thoughts in an Auckland Brothel [n.d.]
  19. Walking to Taylor's [n.d.]:
    • Clematis
    • The Heads
    • Geckos
    • Water
    • Cave Houses
    • My Father
  20. Caravan Club [n.d.]
  21. Where Do I Want to Be [14/1/96]
  22. Time Please [n.d.]
  23. A Walk Around My Church [n.d.]
  24. Living on the Cheap [n.d.]
  25. I do magic ... [n.d.]
  26. Clean Café [n.d.]
  27. My Father’s House [n.d.]
  28. Sweeney on a Bicycle [n.d.]
  29. A Visit to My Psychiatrist [23/9/96]
  30. A Cliff on Mt. Owen [n.d.]


  31. Shorter Poems: 3
    (1996-1997)

    Contents:

  32. His Place [n.d.]
  33. Re-Possession [n.d.]
  34. Deep Throat [n.d.]
  35. Morning Magic [n.d.]
  36. Your Spirit Comes to the Aid of My Weakness [n.d.]
  37. A Visit from the North [n.d.]
  38. On the Slab [n.d.]
  39. Sometime in the eighties ... [n.d.]
  40. Greymouth [n.d.]
  41. The Christchurch Botanical Gardens Horticultural Apprentices’ Mutual Improvement Society [n.d.]
  42. Breakfast in Our Block [n.d.]
  43. This Book of Ours [3/10/96]
  44. Goethe in Sicily [3/10/96]
  45. Hound [n.d.]
  46. Ancient Worship [n.d.]
  47. Ibn al Farid (Cairo, 1280) [n.d.]
  48. It’s so quiet ... [21/2/97]


  49. Shorter Poems: 4
    (1997-1998)

    Contents:

  50. Mavis [n.d.]
  51. Day From Under A Lillypilly [n.d.]
  52. Last Night At Poetry Live [1/5/97]
  53. Comfort Stop [5/5/97]
  54. Passing On [5/5/97]
  55. ‘The nothing, not pure nothing, left over …’ [5/5/97]
  56. Ornebius aperta(new-settled from Australia) [21/5/97]
  57. Letter to Lorine (Niedecker) [21/5/97]
  58. Twice Shy [21/5/97]
  59. Villas in Milton Street [6/6/97]
  60. A Letter from Elise [24/6/97]
  61. Mary's Yard [24/6/97]
  62. A Question At The End Of The Line [11/9/97]
  63. The Lady Meets The New Land [11/9/97]
  64. Death [30/9/97]
  65. Precinct [30/9/97]
  66. Epithalamion (for Anna and Richard, 14.6.97) [12/6/97]
  67. By Touch [10/10/97]
  68. To Live In A Cave [31/10/97]
  69. rustling / says Jack ... [31/10/97]
  70. An Artichoke In The White Garden At Gledswood [25/11/97]
  71. On hot spring nights ... [27/11/97]
  72. On The Way [27/11/97]
  73. Small Change [27/11/97]
  74. If I Were a Tree [27/11/97]
  75. The Tent [31/12/97]
  76. This ... [31/12/97]
  77. Last Lost [31/12/97]
  78. Her Grand-son’s Son [n.d.]:
    • When you found out …
    • Remember though …
    • Meet me Mama when I do …
  79. If I don’t get my words out ... [12/2/98]
  80. At A Time Of Sickness [12/2/98]
  81. Birthday [17/3/98]
  82. The Other Half [17/3/98]
  83. Bivouac [17/3/98]
  84. Independence Day [31/3/98]
  85. Thelymitra pulchella [16/4/98]
  86. Death In A Tower Block [16/4/98]
  87. At Night [16/4/98]
  88. Liturgy (for Miriel) [16/4/98]



  89. Collected Poems II: 1998-2006

    Shorter Poems: 5
    (1998-1999)

    Contents:

  90. Surf [3/6/98]
  91. I saw the soul ... [3/6/98]
  92. An Incomplete List [3/6/98]
  93. Over The Hill [3/6/98]
  94. An Answer to the Last Thing [17/7/98]
  95. Burnett’s Face [17/7/98]
  96. Metrosideros [17/7/98]
  97. Home Thoughts by a Rough Sea [18/7/98]
  98. Sunday Morning at Millerton [19/7/98]
  99. My Home [20/8/98]
  100. Water Lines [n.d.]
  101. Driftwood [20/9/98]
  102. Dear Judy [21/10/98]
  103. Cursor in a Tangled Field [23/10/98]
  104. As In Burden Bound [27/11/98]
  105. Marlowe Overwritten [3/12/98]
  106. An Argument With Houses [22/1/99]
  107. Below the Fall [23/3/99]
  108. Life on the Flatlands [23/3/99]
  109. New Year at Millerton [28/4/99]
  110. Whistler’s Mother [21/5/99]
  111. Local Resources [3/6/99]
  112. The Call [3/6/99]
  113. The Bones of an Arse [13/7/99]
  114. A Rule [16/7/99]
  115. Puzzle Poem [16/7/99]
  116. My Coughing Cat [Sept ’99]
  117. From ----, With Love [Sept ’99]
  118. My New Flower [21/10/99]
  119. The Buried Village [21/10/99]
  120. It’s a stubborn day ... [2/12/99]
  121. “The River Sluices with Many Voices” [2/12/99]


  122. Shorter Poems: 6
    (1999-2004)

    Contents:

  123. At The Falls [4/4/00]
  124. Outage [4/4/00]
  125. The City Lies Foursquare [n.d.]
  126. Mr. Gonzales [10/5/00]
  127. Battle of the Bands [10/5/00]
  128. Lyn’s Zinnias [14/8/00]
  129. The Great Buller Coal Plateaux [10/10/00]
  130. Omnia Propter Femina [10/10/00]
  131. Cars Cash and Convertibles [8/11/00]
  132. I am two weathers ... [11/11/00]
  133. The Plateau [11/11/00]
  134. Downpour [30/10/01]
  135. The Lesser Leptopteris [30/10/01]
  136. Trail-Blazer [n.d.]
  137. A Bone at the Bushline [n.d.]
  138. Before the Throne [n.d.]
  139. Summer, Sumner, 1946 [n.d.]
  140. Mr Muir and Mr Emerson [n.d.]
  141. A Work Of Love In Remembering One Dead [31/5/02]
  142. The Impresario’s Muse [31/5/02]
  143. Poa cita [31/5/02]
  144. Endstop [20/12/02]
  145. Posterity [20/12/02]
  146. The Pit-Ponies' Picnic [1/7/03]
  147. Swing-Bridge [1/7/03]
  148. Night Shelter [28/8/03]
  149. (Proust Says) [12/9/03]
  150. I Like It When The Sun Doesn’t Shine [12/9/03]
  151. Happy Valley [31/10/03]
  152. In High Fog [20/1/04]


  153. Shorter Poems: 7
    (2004-2006)

    Contents:

  154. A Person, Two; if not the Sun [22/1/04]
  155. ‘To Father Huc’s tree of Tartary / on which we are each leaves’ poetry.’ [26/1/04]
  156. Ev [30/1/04]
  157. If the words say silence suffers less / They suffer silence [26/3/04]
  158. Portent [7/5/04]
  159. The Tinder Box [7/5/04]
  160. Mother [7/5/04]
  161. View From the Roundabout [16/5/04]
  162. Home [16/5/04]
  163. Native At Midnight [16/5/04]
  164. Diary Of A Country Cop [17/6/04]
  165. To a Daughter Who Has Taken Her Life [11/8/04]
  166. For A Lost Longdrop [16/12/04]
  167. Tell Me [6/1/05]
  168. Water Talk [6/1/05]
  169. The Little Mermaid [6/1/05]
  170. Useless Love [6/1/05]
  171. Educating The Stream [6/1/05]
  172. Opus [6/1/05]
  173. The Four Comforts [4/2/05]
  174. Scar [8/2/05]
  175. The Toro Tree [8/2/05]
  176. Gloomy Friday [15/3/05]
  177. When The Bus Stops [4/7/05]
  178. The Rain-Callers [4/7/05]
  179. Herodotus [7/7/05]
  180. Paris [8/7/05]
  181. The New Mayor at the Old Mine [11/10/05]
  182. time out [17/10/05]
  183. Pre-Loved Days [16/1/06]
  184. Rain:

  185. Quiet Rain [19/1/06]
  186. The Southerly [19/1/06]
  187. Welcome [2/2/06]
  188. Yesterday [2/2/06]
  189. Flood [2/2/06]
  190. From The East [2/2/06]
  191. Night Rain [2/2/06]
  192. With Ice [2/2/06]
  193. Of Earth and Sky [2/2/06]
  194. The Botanist and his Dog [15/2/06]
  195. The Tree [15/2/06]
  196. The Sky Must Fall [15/2/06]
  197. We Were Talking [15/2/06]
  198. Nematoceras triloba [n.d.]
  199. The Creeping Sky Lily [n.d.]
  200. Actinotus suffocta [n.d.]


  201. Contents:

  202. After They Left [n.d.]
  203. Blue Orchid [n.d.]
  204. Braided River [n.d.]
  205. By Hand [n.d.]
  206. Clearance [n.d.]
  207. Close-up [n.d.]
  208. From the Dam, the Day After [n.d.]
  209. Give to the Flower [n.d.]
  210. Grace on the Plateau [25/12/99]
  211. In a Secular Time [n.d.]
  212. My Amiable Mate [n.d.]
  213. Our New Snail [n.d.]
  214. Photograph [n.d.]
  215. Porphyry Reef [n.d.]
  216. Potter’s Coil [n.d.]
  217. Rising Damp [n.d.]
  218. Sunday Late at Grafton [n.d.]
  219. Tai Poutini [n.d.]
  220. The End of the Day [n.d.]
  221. The Hairdresser and the Hat [n.d.]
  222. The Last Day [31/12/99]
  223. Uncomfort Rock [n.d.]
  224. Utu [n.d.]
  225. Weak Before You [n.d.]


  226. Contents:

  227. Christmas letter (1998)
  228. Christmas letter (c.1999)
  229. Red Dog / Brown (2005):

"Red" (2005)
(Jocelyn Maughan: Patonea, NSW)





I thought I'd finish by reprinting one of those Christmas messages. It seems somehow to sum up how I feel about the whole enterprise, now that it's (mostly) finished, as well as being a beautiful elegy for Leicester's first wife Miriel:



REMEMBER MIRIEL, D. 29.3.98.


I’ve worked for you
for forty years or so,
wandering about
in some pretty strange places,
and liked it.

Thanks, God,
it’s been good.
You treated me well
and watched over those
whom I love.

But now, if you will,
let me be.
Let me off the hook
for a time,
to loaf in the garden,
write a poem or two,
and read a book.

Then, when I go to bed,
give me a long sleep,
and strength for a good work.











Saturday, September 22, 2012

A Day out with David Howard



Poster at Massey Albany
[photograph: Jack Ross]


Funnily enough, last weekend I was teaching a poetry course in the very room this poster adorned - or should I say "infested." It was, admittedly, a session on two contemporary poets: a New Zealander and a West Indian, but the cap still seems to fit, somehow.

After all, who else around here can be held responsible for a Doctoral thesis entitled "An Elusive Identity: Versions of South America in English Literature from Aphra Behn to the Present Day" (University of Edinburgh, 1990)? Written, incidentally, on a large institutional mainframe computer - which did take a bit of mastering, but which has certainly prepared me pretty well for all the idle tapping around I've been doing on them ever since.

I guess the only Mexican poets I looked at in any depth in that epoch-making masterwork were the sublime Renaissance genius Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz and (closer to the present day) Nobel Prize-winner Octavio Paz, together with certain of his contemporaries - I don't actually recall any nineteenth-century Mexican poets worthy of being discussed alongside the Argentine José Hernández (author of the epic Gaucho Martín Fierro). I could well be wrong, though.

Anyway, to hell with those dweebs! They're just jealous. Let them go back to their haggling and huckstering in the precincts of the temple. It gave me great pleasure to shake the dust of the place off my feet, and instead head north for a day-long road trip with my good friend and fellow poetry-obsessive David Howard, up here for the Going West Festival.



[Howard in Helensville]


I've known David for many years. We first met in Auckland in the late nineties, when he was making a living as an entrepreneurial pyrotechnician and events-organiser. He could never completely submerge the writer in him, though. The books have continued to appear in steady succession since the mid 80s:

  1. Head First. Auckland: Hard Echo Press, 1985.
  2. In the First Place: Poems 1980-1990. Photographs by Paul Swadel. Hazard Poets Series. Ed. Rob Jackaman. Christchurch: Hazard Press, 1991.
  3. Holding Company. Christchurch: Nag’s Head Press, 1995.
  4. Shebang: Collected Poems 1980-2000. Wellington: Steele Roberts, 2001.
  5. How to Occupy Our Selves. Photographs by Fiona Pardington. Wellington: HeadworX, 2003.
  6. The Word Went Round: Poems. Paintings by Garry Currin. Dunedin: Otago University Press, 2006.
  7. S(t)et. Port Chalmers, Otago: The Gumtree Press, 2009.
  8. Beyond What is Said to What Is. Graphics by Roger Hickin. Governor's Bay, Lyttelton: Cold Hub Press, 2010.
  9. The Incomplete Poems. Governor's Bay, Lyttelton: Cold Hub Press, 2011.
  10. You're So Pretty When You're Unfaithful To Me. Auckland: Holloway Press, 2012.

After he left Auckland around the turn of the millennium we stayed in touch, even after he moved to the frigid paddocks of Purakanui, north of Dunedin. Financial necessity forced him to visit Auckland from time to time to organise fireworks shows (his principal source of income), and most times we'd end up heading out into the wilds on various crazed excursions to the heart of the New Zealand dream ...

A surprising number of those drives ended up in Warkworth, mostly involving a trip to the Unicorn Bookshop, then run by the late lamented Richard Wasley. I wrote an obituary for Richard here, but since then his beautiful Unicorn Bookshop has reopened under new ownership. They'd been enlightened enough to offer me a $20 book token in their monthly prize draw, thus offering another reason for turning our footsteps in that direction.



[Welcome to the Kaipara!]




[Still a bit of colonial pizazz left in the old town]




[along with other things ...]

Scary, isn't it? If I'd been more assiduous, I would have got some shots of the bizarre old cinema complex at the bottom of the hill as you drive out of town, which is now home to a huge collection of art and antiques, only occasionally open to the public - mostly on weekends. This time we had to content ourselves with staring through the windows and speculating about the effects of damp on pre-loved paperbacks ...

The whole point of these road trips is to barrel along in the car in no particular direction, with no clear destination in mind, shooting the breeze about life, books, poetry, and the doings of mutual friends and acquaintances. We originally met through poet-priest the Rev. Leicester Kyle, long before his departure for the Coast and a date with ecological destiny. We're also the joint executors of his literary estate, so there are generally a few things to sort out about that.

These are not particularly high-pressure conversations. I can't recall us ever having a serious falling out in the fifteen or so years of our friendship. I find a lot of his work incomprehensible, and much of mine seems to him (I suspect) perversely raw and underwritten. Who cares? We get on with the job, always with a certain respect for each other's judgement and dedication to the task in hand.




[The new-look Unicorn Bookshop (Warkworth)]




[The children's section]

And yes, I asked permission before taking these shots. We did spend a fair amount of money on various obscure books of poetry in there, so I guess Tania thought it would be churlish to refuse. She insisted on staying out of the photo, though. Which is a shame, because it's a beautiful little shop she's building there. Much of Richard's old stock still remains, but her own taste for children's books is beginning to make real inroads.

And so the day meandered on. We'd started from Glen Eden, driven north along the coast, via Helensville, then crossed over to Warkworth. By now it was time to hurry David off to the airport - which took a tiny bit longer than anticipated, but still got us there with time for him to check in.

As he left, he gave me a copy of this beautiful little book of poems by Lithuanian poet Tomas Venclova (David does love those obscure Eastern-European writers) ... so I'll close with some lines from one of his sparse, spare, fascinatingly deadpan poems, "In the Lake Region" (trans. Ellen Hinsey):

The past does not enlighten us — but still, it attempts
to say something. Perhaps the crow knows more about us
and about history's dirt than we do ourselves.
Of what does she want to remind us? Of the black photos,
the black headphones,
of radio operators, black signatures under documents,
of the unarmed with their frozen pupils — of the prisoner's
boot or the trunk
of the refugee? Probably not. We will remember this anyway,
though it won't make us any wiser. The bird signifies
only stoicism
and patience. If you ask for them, your request
will be granted.

Pretty cool, huh?

If you want to check out some of David's own poetry, why not go to his author page on the nzepc?



['Astonished' Howard named Robert Burns Fellow
(Otago Daily Times September 12, 2012)]


Monday, July 04, 2011

Launching Leicester Kyle's Collected Poems


Leicester & his trademark fire-engine-red Land Rover
(Buller, 2000)



It's five years to the day since poet, priest and ecological activist Leicester Kyle (1937-2006) died in Christchurch hospital. I doubt that he'd recognise the city of his childhood if he could see it today. That former Christchurch is now a thing of the past ...

The main purpose of this post, though, is to advertise the Leicester Kyle website which has been set up by his literary executors (David Howard and myself) to make his writings more accessible in the future - both to those already familiar with his poetry, and those who've never heard of him or it. My model was Kendrick Smithyman's online Collected Poems 1943-1995 site, edited by Margaret Edcumbe and Peter Simpson, and designed expertly by Brian Flaherty.

There are eleven books (at present) listed under the name "Leicester Kyle" in the NZ National Library database, together with another earlier prose pamphlet indexed under "L. Kyle". My present intention is to put all of these up on the website. We'll be supplementing them with another eleven or so works which are not presently available in any public collection, though.

I certainly can't rival the snazzy production values and (very useful) search engine facilites on the Smithyman site. This will be another attempt on my part to make free space on the internet work for us as well as the corporate giants. What I've done, then, is to set up two linked websites:

  • The first site - Leicester Kyle - is basically confined to bibliographies and indexes. It aspires to provide complete listings of all primary and secondary material by and about Leicester. It gives details of each of his works, together with notes, and a table of contents hyperlinked to:
  • The second site - Leicester Kyle Texts - which will provide complete texts of each of the major books, together with a selection of the shorter poems.

The first site is as complete as I can make it at present, without further information and research. The second site is more of a foretaste at present, with only a few of his books up in full.

Basically, if you just want to read through one of them, you can go straight to Leicester Kyle Texts, and scroll down reading it page by page (I've also included a jpg illustration of each page, in order not to obscure any details of the original formatting. If you click on these pictures individually, they will enlarge).

If, on the other hand, you want to see the table of contents for a particular book, together with any notes or details from letters about it, you can go to the Leicester Kyle index site and click on the relevant link.

The list below will tell you which works are available already, and which ones will be going up over the next few months. I'll try to keep it continuously updated as each website grows:



Contents

[* = listed in the NZ National Library Network]


    Accessible online:


  1. Koroneho: Joyful News Out Of The New Found World (1996-2001) [A4: iv + 96 pp.]
    This work, a kind of Zukofskyan verse epic about the life and times of William Colenso ("Koroneho" in Maori) has never before now been published in full, although four extracts from it appeared in Alan Loney's magazine A Brief Description of the Whole World between 1997 and 1998.


  2. A Christmas Book (2000) [A5: 26 pp.]
    After moving to Millerton, an old mining town on the West Coast of the South Island, in 1998, Leicester developed the habit of producing a small book of poems every Christmas to send to his friends and family. This is the first of them, and one of the most charming and accessible of all of his works.


  3. * The Great Buller Coal Plateaux: A Sequence of Poems (2001) [A5: 31 pp.]
    Despite its unpretentious packaging, this little chapbook is one of Leicester's most important publications. It was an attempt to harness deliberately the propaganda power of poetry and the Arts in general against a large-scale commercial mining company. Of course we're constantly being told by every authority in sight that this is wrong, that Art should not be "political", that it's concerned with "higher things" etc. etc. But are there any higher things than the systematic despoliation of an untouched environment? The destruction of any joy or profit that any of us or our descendants can ever take from it in the future? This is an important book, and I'm glad to be able to make it accessible here to more people than were ever able to read it in Leicester's lifetime.


  4. Dun Huang Aesthetic Dance (2002) [A4: 10 pp.]
    One of Leicester's shorter poetry sequences. This was posted to me by him as a separate pamphlet, or else I might simply have included it in the "Shorter Poems" section of the site. It reflects his strong interest in syncretic religious traditions and in their bizarre and excessive linguistic registers.


  5. * Things to Do with Kerosene (2002) [A5: 34 pp.]
    Another one of his Christmas books, this one compiled from Aunt Daisy's depression-era household hints. One of the most entertaining books he ever put out, its publication was partly funded by the Buller Community Arts Council. It was launched by the Mayor, and got a great reception from the West Coast locals (by all accounts).


  6. * Panic Poems (2003) [A5: 39 pp.]
    Another Christmas book, this one concerned with the mechanics of his life in Millerton. His move there from Auckland was motivated (at least to some extent) by the death of his wife Miriel in 1998, so there must have been a lot of issues for him to work through. Others in similar circumstances may well find this book very helpful.


  7. Living at a Bad Address (2004) [A5: 38 pp.]
    The last of the full-scale Christmas books. This one is an anthology of shorter poems with brief introductions. Some of them are very moving to read, particularly those concerned with his daughter Anna's funeral.


  8. * Miller Creek (2004) [A5: 22 pp.]
    This is a beautiful gem-like little book of poems and pictures designed to draw attention to the ecological devastation caused by rivers poisoned by runoff from the mines. Joel Bolton's sketches are colourful and deft and the whole production deserves a wider audience, I think.


  9. Pamphlets & Ephemera
    This section includes the first and last of his Christmas letters and pamphlets, sent to various correspondents - principally Richard Taylor - between 1996 and 2005.


  10. Miscellaneous Prose
    A preliminary gathering of Leicester's reviews and critical introductions to the various publications he edited or contributed to in the last ten years of his life.


  11. Secondary Literature
    Articles, poems, reviews and tributes by a variety of people, among them Stu Bagby, Tony Chad, Scott Hamilton, David Howard, James Norcliffe and Richard Taylor. Again, this is a preliminary collection which will undoubtedly grow in the future.


  12. Bibliography
    As complete a listing as I can make at this point of his published works.




    Not yet available:


  1. * Options (1996-1997) [A4: 63 pp.]
    Leicester's first long narrative poem: "This set of four poems examines, with a wickedly satirical eye, a series of religious and mystical vocations. We have Evagrius, the fourth century ascetic; Jeremy Taylor, the seventeenth-century Anglo-Catholic Jeremiah ...; Fran, a thirteenth-century Franciscan mendicant transported to contemporary Northland; and finally Maria, the celebrated nineteenth-century dancing prophetess of Kaikohe." [Jack Ross, "Leicester H. Kyle: Prophet without Honour." Pander 6/7 (1999): 21 & 23.]

    [posted online Monday 19/12/11]


  2. * State Houses (1997) [A4: 43 pp.]
    This is a more personal piece: "interweaving tragic family history with the history of the first state houses in the Christchurch suburb of Riccarton. Leicester's 'dream-like recollection' of childhood 'is set against the ideology of which the state houses were part' (hence the Bauhaus epigraph, and the various diagrams and maps), but that 'progress is provided by a ritual house-blessing, an alternative ideology, which moves the family group from room to room, part to part, of reality'.” [Pander 6/7 (1999)]

    [posted online Monday 12/12/11]


  3. * A Voyge to New Zealand: The Log of Joseph Sowry, Translated and Made Better (1997) [A4: 117 pp.]
    This is an actual nineteenth-century emigrant's journal, which has been "teased ... into strange shapes on the page and in the imagination. It reads as an affectionate tribute to the spirit of our pioneers, a fin-de-siècle version of Curnow’s 'Landfall in Unknown Seas'.” [Pander 6/7 (1999)]

    [posted online Tuesday 20/12/11]


  4. Heteropholis (1998) [A4: 52 pp.]
    Some readers see this as Leicester's masterpiece. "It concerns a fallen angel, who has descended to earth in the form of a small green native gecko (species: Heteropholis gemmeus). This gecko has been caught by an apartment-dwelling Aucklander, and makes observations on his habits, on the weather (a subject of particular concern to angels, who are used to looking down), and on sundry other matters. ... It is, nevertheless, a profoundly serious and, indeed, partially autobiographical work." [Pander 6/7 (1999)]

    [posted online Friday 16/12/11]


  5. * A Machinery for Pain (1999) [A4: 37 pp.]
    This is his first book written entirely at Millerton: "a ... sequence on pain management, prompted by close personal experience" - the death of his wife Miriel, in particular.

    [posted online Monday 14/11/11]


  6. * A Safe House for a Man (2000) [A4: 86 pp.]
    The blurb copy I provided at the time read (in part) as follows: "The landscape of Leicester Kyle's long semi-narrative poem ... will be familiar to most of us: separation, self-analysis, acknowledgment of loss. There's little that's recondite or difficult about this poetry, and yet the craft and subtle intelligence of its author come through in every line. The title poem is accompanied by two others: The Araneidea - an oddly disturbing account of how to 'make good-looking, sightly cabinet objects' from live spiders; and Threnos - a moving elegy for the poet's wife Miriel."

    [posted online Saturday 10/12/11]


  7. * Five Anzac Liturgies (2000) [A4: 45 pp.]
    Calum Gilmour, whose Polygraphia Press published both this and A Safe House for a Man, wrote of it at the time: "This set of poems contains five pieces addressed to the South Island towns of Hawarden, Waikari, Rotherham, Culverden and Waiau respectively. Each poem is based round the theme of Anzac Day and how it affects each place addressed. The focus is on Anzac, on the people involved, on the significance of the remembrance in each place."

    [posted online Tuesday 29/11/11]


  8. King of Bliss (2002) [A4: 46 pp.]
    This book contains Leicester's thoughts on the subject of psychoanalysis, prompted by his experience of various therapies for clinical depression which he underwent while still living in Auckland in the 90s.

    [posted online Thursday 1/12/11]


  9. A Wedding in Tintown (2002) [A4: 36 pp.]
    This is a portrait of a place, revealed through a blow-by-blow account of a wedding celebration. Leicester wrote to me about it: "The wedding is one I took here in Millerton, and this is a faithful account of its proceeding; I've set it in Tintown, a now vanished mining village on the Plateau ... My aim was to describe the events, with little overt interpretation, and by means of a low tone to - by contrast - heighten and clarify the colours of the day. ... My hope is that the peculiar culture of the occasion just might make it interesting enough to be a good read."

    [posted online Tuesday 15/11/11]


  10. 8 Great O’s (2003) [A4: 46 pp.]
    This is a set of interlinked pieces connected by themes of religion and ritual. Leicester's preface specifies that the main text "is an adaptation of the last page of a pious biography, ‘The Life of St. Mary tbe Harlot’, written by her uncle, Ephraem, deacon of Edessa, around the year 370. ‘The Word' is a family story. 'The Great 0 's' is a term taken from the Advent liturgy."

    [posted online Friday 18/11/11]


  11. Anogramma (2005) [A4: 64 pp.]
    An amusing and lighthearted piece of autobiography, which records Leicester's first job after leaving school: as a "horticultural apprentice at the Christchurch Botanical Gardens ... All apprentices were required to attend monthly meetings of the Christchurch Botanical Gardens Horticultural Apprentices Mutual Improvement Society" and much of the text is devoted to an account of these meetings, together with some details of the 50 year reunion of the apprentices.

    [posted online Saturday 10/12/11]


  12. * Breaker: A Progress of the Sea (2005) [A5: 78 pp.]
    Leicester's last book, and one of his most ambitious, "suggested by the Catalogue of Armed Forces in the second book of the Iliad. I read it in Pope's translation, and was fascinated by the whole idea and the poetry of it. The fascination led to a desire to do something of the kind myself and, casting about for a local battle, I hit on the idea of our self-defence against our eroding coast." says Leicester in his preface. The illustrations, by John Crawford, are very fine.

    [posted online Sunday 20/11/11]


  13. Collected Shorter Poems: 1 (1983-1998) [A4: 428 poems & sequences / 568 pp.]
    This is a list of all the poems and sequences included in the first of the the two large "Collected Poems" fileboxes which David and I inherited from Leicester's estate, and which contained (in approximate chronological order) all of the individual poems (outside published books) he wished to preserve. I'll be putting up a bare selection of these poems to start with - more over time, if demand warrants it.


  14. Selected Shorter Poems: 2 (1998-2006) [A4: 318 poems & sequences / 387 pp.]
    This includes all of the poems written after Leicester's move to the West Coast, mostly contained in the second of the the two large "Collected Poems" fileboxes. I'll be putting up rather more of these poems than the ones in the first box, as befits their superior quality (in my opinion, at any rate).


  15. Five Millerton Sequences [A5: viii + 48 pp.]
    This is a preliminary selection from the Millerton poems, chosen in consultation with David Howard, and intended both as an advertisement for this site and (hopefully) to revive some interest in Leicester in general. Few people have ever had the chance to read any of these poems before, after all. I hope you enjoy them. The book will be launched sometime next year - details to be announced on this blog (and hopefully elsewhere as well).

    [posted online Friday 16/12/11]


  16. Prose Fiction
    • * I Got Me Flowers: Letters to a Psychiatrist [A5: 56 pp.]
    Leicester began as a prose writer, in the 1970s, and had some success with this and some of his other stories before switching to poetry in the early 1990s. This "excessively Jungian" (as Leicester himself described it) novella from the mid-70s is the finest of his extant works of fiction - or at any rate that was my impression when I read through them all while staying with Leicester at Millerton in 1998.

    [posted online Sunday 13/11/11]


  17. Chronology
    As complete a listing as I can make of the known events and dates of Leicester's life.

    [posted online Saturday 12/11/11]






So there you go. I know it's a bit crazy to entrust all this material to the tender mercies of blogspot, but you can be sure that I'll be keeping sedulous backups and printouts of everything as well.




The view from Leicester's verandah at Millerton
[photographs: Jack Ross (2000)]