Ashes to Ashes: Geoffrey Ashe

[Geoffrey Ashe: All About King Arthur (1969 / 1973)]

One of the first books I ever bought off my own bat was Geoffrey Ashe's All About King Arthur (London: Carousel Books, 1973). The other titles in the series included such gems as "All About Football," "All About Money" and "All About Weather," so you can see that it already stood out as a bit of an anomaly. I must have been about eleven or twelve at the time, and I see from the back that it must have cost 95 cents - not an inconsiderable sum for me back then.

While I suppose that there's no really direct connection with strangely lyrical writer of erotica Aran Ashe, whom I blogged about in a post about different modes of narrative construction last year, one could perhaps argue that both Ashes inhabit a conceptual no-man's-land: in Aran's case, between abnormal psychology and straight pornography; in Geoffrey's, between no-nonsense archaeology and New Age claptrap.

There's no doubt, though, that Geoffrey is the easier to recommend of the two. His books are immensely entertaining, and even quite well written (especially the earlier ones). Nor is there any doubting his basic seriousness when it comes to weighing up stray pieces of evidence bearing on his own King Charles's head: the possible historicity of certain aspects of the Arthurian legend.

For a while after reading that book, King Arthur and the Arthurian Legend was everything to me: T. H. White's The Once and Future King, Mary Stewart's "Merlin" trilogy - you name it, if it had anything to do with King Arthur, I was for it.

The obsession abated after a while, but it left me with an abiding taste for the works of Geoffrey Ashe, author (as I gradually became aware) a whole slew of other titles on King Arthur and kindred subjects. In fact, so many have there come to be, that All About King Arthur has dropped off most of his bibliography lists.

Fair enough, really. It is, in retrospect, little more than a précis of parts of the argument of more "grown-up" books such as King Arthur’s Avalon: The Story of Glastonbury (1957) and From Caesar to Arthur (1960), not to mention the book of essays The Quest for Arthur’s Britain Ashe edited, with contributions by himself, Leslie Alcock, C. A Ralegh Radford, & Philip Rahtz (1968).

For me at the time, though, it was the door to a strange world of history-cum-romance, a realm bordering on full-on New Age works such as John Michell's The View over Atlantis (first published in that same year, 1969); but also with a strong dose of the dry-as-dust archaeological precision of Leslie Alcock's Arthur’s Britain: History and Archaeology, AD 367-634 (1971).

[Geoffrey Ashe: The Finger and the Moon (1973 / 2004)]

Even then it was a difficult path to tread, but - as I've continued to follow Ashe's career and publications over the years - it's one he's persevered in ever since: continuing to flirt with fringe history and even occultism, but still retaining a solid reputation for his more carefully researched historical works.

[Geoffrey Ashe: The Hell-Fire Clubs (2005)]

Here's a brief list of the Geoffrey Ashe books in my collection. It's more representative than comprehensive, but I think it will give you some idea of the breadth of his interests, and the somewhat disconcerting places those tastes have taken him at times:

[Geoffrey Ashe (1995)]

Geoffrey Ashe (1923- ):
Bibliography

1. King Arthur’s Avalon: The Story of Glastonbury. 1957. Fontana Books. London: Collins, 1973.


2. From Caesar to Arthur. London: Collins, 1960.


3. Land to the West: St Brendan’s Voyage to America. London: Collins, 1962.


4. [Ed., with Leslie Alcock, C. A Ralegh Radford, & Philip Rahtz]. The Quest for Arthur’s Britain. 1968. London: Paladin, 1973.


5. All About King Arthur. 1969. London: Carousel Books, 1973.


6. Camelot and the Vision of Albion. 1971. St. Albans, Herts: Panther, 1975.


7. The Finger and the Moon. 1973. St. Albans, Herts: Panther, 1975.


8. The Virgin. 1976. Paladin. Frogmore, St Albans, Herts: Granada Publishing Limited, 1977.


9. The Ancient Wisdom. 1977. Abacus. London: Sphere Books, 1979.


10. Avalonian Quest. 1982. London: Fontana Paperbacks, 1984.


11. [in association with Debrett’s Peerage]. The Discovery of King Arthur. London: Guild Publishing, 1985.


12. The Landscape of King Arthur. With Photographs by Simon McBride. London: Webb & Bower (Publishers) Limited, in association with Michael Joseph Limited, 1987.


13. Mythology of the British Isles. 1990. London: Methuen London, 1992.


14. Atlantis: Lost Lands, Ancient Wisdom. London: Thames & Hudson, 1992.

[Geoffrey Ashe: The Discovery of King Arthur (1985)]

I suppose, on the most basic level, an author has to make a living, and some subjects command better sales than others: notably, in the period in question, books of alternate history in what might be described as the Erich von Däniken mode. Ashe is certainly no von Däniken, but then he's not really a Simon Schama either.

All three could (loosely) be described as popular historians, but - while Geofrrey Ashe is clearly acquainted with archival research and the laws of evidence in a way that von Däniken and his ilk will never be - it's hard to imagine him being made welcome in a modern Academic History department, either. It depends on which university it's in, I suppose.

Books such as The Ancient Wisdom (1977) and Atlantis: Lost Lands, Ancient Wisdom (1992) were therefore a little disconcerting to me. He's always careful to hedge his bets, though: and New Age philosophies, particularly the genealogies they construct for certain of their trains of thought, are certainly a legitimate topic of research. At times the line between researcher and apologist seemed a trifle blurry, though.

Then there was his "discovery" of the identity of the "real" King Arthur, outlined in the appropriately named Discovery of King Arthur (1985). All one can say about this is that, though argued passionately and even quit convincingly by Ashe, it doesn't appear to have persuaded the majority of scholars of this period. I guess the jury is still out on that one.

[Geoffrey Ashe: The Mythology of the British Isles (1990)]

Where I think Ashe is at his best is in books such as his Mythology of the British Isles. This beautifully illustrated attempt to apply the layout and approach of Robert Graves's Greek Myths to a British context gives him scope to develop his idiosyncratic approach to the European Dark Ages. In an era whose records are (by turns) unreliable or non-existent, a more creative approach is needed to get anywhere near the approximate mind-set of - say - a fifth-century Briton. This Ashe can provide, and the book remains the perfect pendant to his more celebrated books about Glastonbury and the excavations at Cadbury Castle / Camelot.

Do I think that more people should read Geoffrey Ashe? Well, yes, absolutely. I don't say that you should swallow everything he argues, but the fact that he does argue for his hypotheses: carefully, and with close attention to what written and archaeological record there is puts him in a completely different category from other best-selling "alternative historians" such as the equally entertaining (but far less trustworthy) Graham Hancock.

[Geoffrey Ashe: Underworld: Flooded Kingdoms of the Ice Age (2002)]

Somehow, in books such as Underworld: Flooded Kingdoms of the Ice Age (2002), the ruins turn out never to be accessible that day - whether it be a recent storm, or difficult tides, the dive has to be postponed, the evidence is not quite ready to hand. His books - cogently written thought some parts of them undoubtedly are - do not stand up to scrutiny. They tease rather than reveal.

Geoffrey Ashe is not like that. He means what he says, and he won't go beyond the borders of his evidence, however hard he strains at the leash sometimes. What's more, he has the gift of conveying something of the magic of the unknown, the conjectural ... I think I made a better choice than I knew that day back in the early 70s, when I bought that unassuming little book from that newly opened bookshop in Mairangi Bay.

[Ashes to Ashes (1980)]

Gibbonian Periods

Edward Gibbon: The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire
Ed. David Womersley. Penguin Classics (1994)

Gibbon observes that in the Arabian book par excellence, in the Koran, there are no camels; I believe if there were any doubt as to the authenticity of the Koran, this absence of camels would be sufficient to prove it is an Arabian work.

- Jorge Luis Borges: "The Argentine Writer and Tradition"

What was my surprise, whilst trawling through the seemingly endless pages of volume 5 of Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire to find the following remark, squirreled away unobtrusively in a footnote?

... Mahomet himself, who was fond of milk, prefers the cow, and does not even mention the camel; but the diet of Mecca and Medina was already more luxurious ...

- Gibbon, vol. 5, chapter L, ftnt.13
[Penguin Classics ed., vol. III, p. 155]

What's most interesting is that this remark follows a long disquisition on horses ["Arabia, in the opinion of the naturalist, is the genuine and original country of the horse" (III: 154-55.)], and is not really concerned with the Koran and its contents at all (except in passing).

Did Borges get it wrong? He did have a tendency to exaggerate the significance of particular passages he'd found in the classics which seemed to vindicate some particularly outrageous paradox of his: witness his claims about the legendary "602nd Night" of the 1001 Nights, when Scheherazade - allegedly - starts to retell her own story (for more on that assertion, see my essay here).

Harem Nights

As in the case of Scheherazade, there's always a whisker of truth in what he says. After all, Mahomet could scarcely "not have mentioned" the camel anywhere except in the Koran, so Borges is teasing out an implication which is undoubtedly there in Gibbon's text - in however tenuous a form.

What else does Gibbon say in this memorable chapter 50 of the Decline and Fall, though? In the midst of a long discussion of Arabic culture, he suddenly gives vent to the following disavowal:

Their [the Arabs'] language and letters are copiously treated by Pocock ... and Niebuhr ... I pass slightly; I am not fond of repeating words like a parrot.

- Gibbon, vol. 5, chapter L, ftnt.39
[Penguin Classics ed., vol. III, p. 164]

It wasn't his field. He was at the mercy of his sources. And (unfortunately) on this occasion - as so often latterly, once he'd left the better-trodden field of the Greek and Roman classics - they led him astray. A simple search of an online version of the Koran gives us no fewer than 18 matches for the word "camel."

X marks the spot.
"It was here on the evening of the 15th October, 1764 that Edward Gibbon formed the idea of writing the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.
More or less ..."

The first volume of Gibbon's masterwork appeared in 1776, on the eve of the American Revolution (or "War of Independence," if you prefer the British usage). The next instalment of two volumes came out in 1781, when that war had reached its climax. The last package of three volumes was published in 1788, on the eve of the French Revolution.

Gibbon's Enlightenment view of the 'settled" nature of modern times was thus continually overtaken by events. Is his book, then, too outdated, too invalidated by subsequent research and archaeology to be worth reading any more?

The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. vol. 2 (1995)

One of the reviewers of David Womersley's magisterial 3-volume Penguin Classics edition remarked that - strangely enough - it was the supplementary notes and "corrections" of such Victorian scholars as J. B. Bury which read most archaically now. Gibbon himself, by contrast, seems to speak every more clearly over the more than two centuries that separate his work from us.

Bentinck Street, London

I first tried to read Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire in 1977, shortly after buying all six volumes of the Everyman edition from Vintage Books in Elliott Street.

Elliott Street, Auckland (2010)

The shop (long since pulverised into dust: it was situated somewhere in the vicinity of the Atrium on Elliott mall, and though intact in my imagination, has now - literally - no earthly habitation) was one of my favourite haunts, and I still remember the day I walked in and saw the red and gold volumes sitting there, in a neat little row. The price was "$9 for 6," which seemed pretty reasonable even at the time.

I promptly scooped them up and took them to the from of the shop. At this stage, however, I was interrupted by a rather flustered gentleman who'd apparently been summoned by phone by the owners to look over this recently acquired set of books. "I've been looking for it for years," he exclaimed, in an appeal to my better nature.

"So have I," I replied, and continued my inexorable progress to the till. I still feel guilty about that, I must admit. He must have seen me as some jumped-up interloper, heading him off at the moment of consummation of the quest of a lifetime. And yet I had been looking for it for years - a complete set of Gibbon was high on my list of most desirable books (along with an unabridged Arabian Nights and the collected works of William Morris) ...

Right was undoubtedly on my side, and yet I can still hear that plaintive voice in my ear. Every time I ran across another second-hand set of that or other editions of Gibbon, I thought of him, and hoped that he'd run across another copy without too much delay. In any case, I bought it, took it home, and - impelled as much by guilt as interest, perhaps - started to read it.

Edward Gibbon: The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire
Ed. Oliphant Smeaton. Everyman's Library. 6 vols (1910)

(As you can see, I used to brand my books with that rather barbarous rubber stamp back then, but it's still quite interesting to see the dates.)

Anyway, to make a long story short, I think I got to the end of volume one before I gave up. The sheer sweep and extent of Gibbon's historical imagination was beyond me, and I just bogged down each time I tried to get going on volume two. I did, however, enjoy reading the standard edition of his autobiography, which I picked up a couple of years later.

Edward Gibbon: Autobiography
Ed. Lord Sheffield. The World's Classics (1907)

In Edinburgh, in the late 1980s, I knew a young American who'd made a fortune on the Stock Exchange, then retired to pursue a more worthy life of scholarship and reflection (though he did have a bad habit of trying to hit on each of the female students in the class one after the other). Like me, he was called Jack, and we became friends of a sort. The main focus of his studies was Gibbon, and he would endlessly extol the beauty and complexity of the Decline and Fall. "Have you read the whole thing?" I asked him one day (somewhat naively, in retrospect).

He stared at me incredulously. "Are you joking? It's huge. No, I'm just reading the passages that my supervisor [a certain Mr. Geoffrey Carnall, if I remember rightly] recommends to me."

So much for the other Jack's scholarship. Not that I could claim any better. Our acquaintance eventually foundered over a rather bizarre graduation lunch party he hosted, where he asked me - as a kind of concession to his fetish for all things old and musty and imperial - to make the "loyal toast" to the reigning sovereign. None of the Brits present had been ready to oblige, but I felt, given that Elizabeth II was titular head of state for NZ as well the UK, that I could do so without any great abridgement of conscience.

Mr Carnall, who was present (and, it turned out, a devout Quaker) was grievously shocked and offended, and I must confess that I've often regretted since indulging Jack's seemingly harmless request. Symbols are realer than they seem, I learned that day, and I've been careful not to bow down too assiduously in the House of Rimmon ever since.

A subsequent attempt to read Gibbon in the late nineties took me as far as the fourth volume of the Everyman edition, where I got snared in the intricacies of Justinian's legal and religious institutions (the account of which seemed to have dominated most of the volume).

Then came David Womersley's great Penguin edition:

Edward Gibbon: The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire
Ed. David Womersley. Penguin Classics. vol 1 of 3 (1994).

Edward Gibbon (1737-1794)


1. Gibbon, Edward. The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. Ed. Oliphant Smeaton. 6 vols. Everyman’s Library. 1910. London: J. M. Dent / New York: E. P. Dutton, 1928.


2. Gibbon, Edward. The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire: Volume the First (1776) and Volume the Second (1781). Ed. David Womersley. 1994. Penguin Classics. 1995. Rev. ed. Vol 1 of 3. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 2005.


3. Gibbon, Edward. The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire: Volume the Third (1781) and Volume the Fourth (1788). Ed. David Womersley. 1994. Penguin Classics. Vol 2 of 3. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1995.


4. Gibbon, Edward. The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire: Volume the Fifth (1788) and Volume the Sixth (1788). Ed. David Womersley. 1994. Penguin Classics. Vol 3 of 3. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1995.


5. Gibbon, Edward. Autobiography. Ed. Lord Sheffield. Introduction by J. B. Bury. The World’s Classics. London: Henry Frowde / Oxford University Press, 1907.


6. Gibbon, Edward. Gibbon’s Journey from Geneva to Rome: His Journal from 20 April to 2 October 1764. Ed. Georges A. Bonnard. London: Thomas Nelson and Sons Ltd., 1961.

The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. vol. 1 (1995)

I'm therefore glad to report, after 35 years (1977-2013), that I've finally succeeded in reaching the end of Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (1776-1788). And what have I learned from the experience?

Well, he certainly does have a down on the Byzantine empire (early and late). I've never read a more sympathetic account of the notorious Fourth Crusade, when the Venetians devoted a mob of French and Germans bound for Palestine into attacking their fellow-Christians in Constantinople instead.

He's very interesting on Mahomet and the rise of Islam; surprisingly well-informed on Attila and Genghis Khan and Tamurlane and other great invaders from the East. He also gets in some amusing side-swipes at Voltaire and Dr. Johnson, both of whom seem to have offended him at various times.

Beyond that, though, all I can say is that if you have the slightest curiosity in how Western civilisation went from Marcus Aurelius to Pope Alessandro Borgia, with extensive divagations down every interesting byway in the history of over a thousand years, then Gibbon is your man. More than that: Womersley's is your edition. The true nature of Gibbon's work comes into focus there, freed of the accretions of nineteenth and twentieth-century commentators and improvers - and complete with his fascinating Vindication of the accuracy of his chapters on the early church, which caused such controversy with Ecclesiastical historians then and since.

And how else will you ever be able to check the accuracy of statements such as Borges's about Gibbon's view on the presence or absence of camels from the Koran? I've seen it quoted everywhere, but nobody else has bothered to check it (so far as I know, at any rate) ...

Sir Joshua Reynolds: Edward Emily Gibbon

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]



Shorter Poems: 2
(1995-1996)

Contents:


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



Shorter Poems: 3
(1996-1997)

Contents:


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



Shorter Poems: 4
(1997-1998)

Contents:


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




Collected Poems II: 1998-2006

Shorter Poems: 5
(1998-1999)

Contents:


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



Shorter Poems: 6
(1999-2004)

Contents:


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



Shorter Poems: 7
(2004-2006)

Contents:


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

Rain:



Quiet Rain [19/1/06]

The Southerly [19/1/06]

Welcome [2/2/06]

Yesterday [2/2/06]

Flood [2/2/06]

From The East [2/2/06]

Night Rain [2/2/06]

With Ice [2/2/06]

Of Earth and Sky [2/2/06]

178. The Botanist and his Dog [15/2/06]
179. The Tree [15/2/06]
180. The Sky Must Fall [15/2/06]
181. We Were Talking [15/2/06]
182. Nematoceras triloba [n.d.]
183. The Creeping Sky Lily [n.d.]
184. Actinotus suffocta [n.d.]



Uncollected Poems

Contents:


185. After They Left [n.d.]
186. Blue Orchid [n.d.]
187. Braided River [n.d.]
188. By Hand [n.d.]
189. Clearance [n.d.]
190. Close-up [n.d.]
191. From the Dam, the Day After [n.d.]
192. Give to the Flower [n.d.]
193. Grace on the Plateau [25/12/99]
194. In a Secular Time [n.d.]
195. My Amiable Mate [n.d.]
196. Our New Snail [n.d.]
197. Photograph [n.d.]
198. Porphyry Reef [n.d.]
199. Potter’s Coil [n.d.]
200. Rising Damp [n.d.]
201. Sunday Late at Grafton [n.d.]
202. Tai Poutini [n.d.]
203. The End of the Day [n.d.]
204. The Hairdresser and the Hat [n.d.]
205. The Last Day [31/12/99]
206. Uncomfort Rock [n.d.]
207. Utu [n.d.]
208. Weak Before You [n.d.]



Pamphlets & Ephemera
(1996-2005)

Contents:


209. Christmas letter (1998)
210. Christmas letter (c.1999)
211. Red Dog / Brown (2005):
     • Red Dog / Brown
     • Where Francis first sang to St. Clare
     • Rules of Engagement

"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.

•