Classic NZ Poets by Region

The road goes through to somewhere else
– Kendrick Smithyman

Here's my preliminary attempt at a regional breakdown of the 27 poets in our anthology, Classic New Zealand Poets in Performance:

• Place -- Name -- Dates -- Pages in Classic NZ Poets
  

AUCKLAND

• A. R. D. Fairburn (1904-1957) 1-7
• mainly Devonport and the North Shore, though he also worked at Auckland university and at ELAM.
• Kevin Ireland (b.1933) 82-86
• mainly Devonport and the North Shore, though he spent 25 years working as a journalist in the UK.
• R. A. K. Mason (1905-1971) 8-13
• born in Penrose, but lived later at a succession of addresses on the North Shore (including Mairangi Bay).
• Keith Sinclair (1922-1993) 31-33
• brought up in Pt Chevalier, he moved later to Takapuna, across the Harbour Bridge.
• C. K. Stead (b.1932) 75-81
• strongly associated with the Sargeson school on the North Shore, he subsequently moved to Parnell.

CHRISTCHURCH & CANTERBURY

• Allen Curnow (1911-2001) 16-22
• born in Timaru, and moved to Auckland in 1950. Much of his later poetry is set there, particularly on Karekare beach.
• Denis Glover (1912-1980) 23-25
• born in Dunedin, brought up in Christchurch, and lived in Wellington (writing memorably about its harbour).

COOK ISLANDS

• Alistair Te Ariki Campbell (b.1925) 60-64
• though he moved to New Zealand as a child, he has written a good deal (poetry & prose) about his Polynesian heritage.

DANNEVIRKE

• Lauris Edmond (1924-2000) 45-49
• brought up in Hawkes Bay and educated in Wellington, she is strongly associated with the Central North Island.
  

DUNEDIN & OTAGO

• James K. Baxter (1926-1972) 65-70
• also has strong associations with Wellington, Auckland and Jerusalem on the Whanganui River.
• Charles Brasch (1909-1973) 14-15
• lived in Britain for a long time, but came back to New Zealand to found and edit Landfall in the 1950s.
• Janet Frame (1924-2004) 50-54
• from Oamaru, though she lived in many different parts of the country, including Sargeson’s bach in Takapuna.
• Brian Turner (b.1944) 131-137
• lives in Central Otago, after many years of writing and working in Dunedin.

GREECE

• Michael Harlow (b.1937) 98-102
• born in New York, he has lived in Greece, Christchurch and (now) Central Otago.

HOLLAND

• Riemke Ensing (b.1939) 109-112
• moved to New Zealand at the age of twelve; she was brought up in Northland and subsequently moved to Auckland.

NELSON

• Alistair Paterson (b.1929) 71-74
• born in Nelson, went to university in Wellington, and is now living in Auckland.
• Michael Jackson (b.1940) 119-123
• born in Nelson, brought up in Taranaki, but has spent most of his adult life abroad (Sierra Leone, the USA, etc.)

NORTHLAND

• Kendrick Smithyman (1922-1995) 34-39
• though he moved to Auckland at the age of nine, he always retained strong links with the north.
• Hone Tuwhare (b.1922) 40-44
• also strong links with Dunedin and Otago, where he now lives (Kaka Point).

SAMOA

• Albert Wendt (b.1939) 113-118
• born in Apia, he was educated in New Plymouth and Wellington before returning to Samoa (now based in Auckland).

TARANAKI

• Elizabeth Smither (b.1941) 126-130
• born in New Plymouth, she has spent most of her life working there as a librarian.

UK

• Fleur Adcock (b.1934) 87-92
• born in Auckland and educated in Wellington, she has spent much of her adult life in the UK.
• Peter Bland (b.1934) 93-97
• born in Yorkshire, he moved to New Zealand at the age of 20. He is principally associated with Wellington.
• M. K. Joseph (1914-1981) 26-30
• born in Essex and educated in France, he moved to Tauranga at the age of 10, and subsequently moved to Auckland.

WELLINGTON

• Louis Johnson (1924-1988) 55-59
• born and brought up in Wellington, he later worked in Australia and New Guinea before returning to New Zealand.
• David Mitchell (b.1940) 124-125
• born in Wellington, he made his reputation as a performance poet there and in Auckland in the 60s and 70s.
• Vincent O'Sullivan (b.1937) 103-108
• born in Auckland, he taught in Wellington and Waikato before returning to the capital to live.
  
  
  

Classic NZ Poets Teaching Notes

[cover image: Pat Hanly / Cover design: Christine Hansen]

Classic New Zealand Poets in Performance
Edited by Jack Ross.
Poems Selected by Jack Ross & Jan Kemp
(Auckland: Auckland University Press, 2006)

Well, yes, I am a teacher. I teach Academic and Creative writing at Massey University’s Auckland campus, and give lectures on NZ literature as well.

AUP asked me quite a while ago to write some teaching notes for the audio / text anthology which we launched on Thursday last week, so I thought it might be a good idea to put them up here for maximum accessibility.

I guess our desire all along was that the book could be used to promote awareness of NZ poetry in schools and tertiary institutions (though of course it’s priced to appeal to individual consumers as well).

Some of the teachers I’ve met have told me that they don’t quite know how to go about teaching poetry in their classes. Clearly I don’t have any magical panacea for that, but here are one or two suggestions:

Think of a theme or subject you’d like to discuss, and choose a poem (or, if you have time, poems) which deals with it in a way you think might interest your students.

I’ve compiled a thematic breakdown of all the poems in the anthology (and it took quite a wee while, too, so don’t wax too sarcastic at my expense. I know some of the categories are a bit suss):

• ADOLESCENCE
• ANIMALS
• CHILDREN & GROWING UP
• COMMUNICATION & POETRY
• DEATH
• FRIENDSHIP
• GETTING OLDER
• HISTORY
  · colonialism
  · the depression
  · the first world war
  · the second world war
  · the atomic bomb
• LANDSCAPE & LOCALITY
• LIFE IN GENERAL
• LOVE
• MAGIC
• MEN
• NATURE & CONSERVATION
• PAIN & IMPRISONMENT
• RELATIONSHIPS
• SEX
• VISION QUEST
• WAR, VIOLENCE, PREJUDICE
• WOMEN
  

Our book is arranged in chronological order of birthdates, beginning with Rex Fairburn in 1904 and ending with Brian Turner in 1944. (Some of the reviewers appear to think that this implies we believe that one has to be over sixty to be a “classic” poet, but I guess I’d see this as about as intelligent as attributing conscious bias to a librarian’s choice of Dewey decimal numbers. Chronology simply seemed to us the most convenient way of arranging the material. No-one’s yet claimed to find the book difficult to navigate.)

Another way of approaching a poetry class might be through region and locality. Why not get your class to talk about a poet who comes from where you live? The idea would be to get the students to consider the characteristics of their particular place: culture, physical features, lifestyle – even at some distance away in time. What are the continuities (and discontinuities) in your area?

My colleague Mary Paul has been teaching a course called “Auckland Writers and their Region” at Massey Albany for a number of years now, and we’ve always found it an excellent way of approaching the major themes and concerns of New Zealand life and culture: Arrival; Assimilation; Civilisation & Barbarism; Colonial Identity; Cultural Cringe; Landscape; New World / Old World dichotomies; Settler Blues ...

Many of the poets in the book have associations with more than one region, but some (like Kendrick Smithyman or Brian Turner) are very strongly identified with a particular place, and constantly revisit it as subject-matter in their work.

Here are some of the places on offer:

• AUCKLAND
• CHRISTCHURCH & CANTERBURY
• DANNEVIRKE
• DUNEDIN & OTAGO
• GREECE
• HOLLAND
• NELSON
• NORTHLAND
• SAMOA
• TARANAKI
• TONGA
• UK
• WELLINGTON

When it comes to teaching the actual class, I would recommend beginning by introducing the poet, telling them some picturesque details about them, where they lived, what they liked to do (drink too much, in many cases, alas …) A lot of this information is available online, and I’ve tried to provide links where you can find a picture and discussion of each poet.

Hand out the text of the poem, then play them the recording.

Some of the poets, one has to admit, sound distinctly plummy and odd at this distance in time (Fairburn and Brasch, for example); others (such as Mason and Janet Frame) are quite vernacular and plain. You might tell your students that their own recorded voices will sound a bit strange in twenty or thirty years. Or else just let them laugh. After all, it’s not a crime. Some of them do come across as pretty weird, even to me.

The more they listen, though, the less attention they’ll pay to all that. The content of some of the poems (different ones for each person, I would imagine) is just too compelling to be ignored.

Make sure you go through what each poem means in literal terms. Are there any difficult words? Any allusions needing to be explained?

Try to elicit general reactions from the class. Do they like the poem? Does it interest them? Are there are other approaches to the material they’d prefer the writer to have used?

Write up the material generated by the discussion on the board, grouping it into a kind of mindmap of the various reactions (negative / positive; specific / general).

Depending on how much time you have, at this point you might want to get the class to try and write their own poems on the same theme (either individually or in groups). Get them to write them on posters and/ or read them out loud when they’ve finished.

Alternatively, if you have internet access in the classroom, you could get your students to research particular writers and find pictures and information about them.

The best place to begin would be at one of the following websites:

• Authors. The New Zealand Electronic Poetry Centre.
  http://www.nzepc.auckland.ac.nz/index.asp

(A select but valuable list of major NZ poets with pictures, recordings, and critical reactions).

• Homepage. Auckland University Press.
  http://www.auckland.ac.nz/aup/

(Details of books and other publications by a number of the authors in the anthology).

• New Zealand Literature File. University of Auckland Library Website.
  http://www.library.auckland.ac.nz/subjects/nzp/nzlit2/authors.htm

(This has very thorough bibliographies for most major New Zealand writers).

• Smithyman Online. Mudflat Webworks.
  http://www.smithymanonline.auckland.ac.nz/

(The final text of Kendrick Smithyman's Collected Poems, edited with copious notes and chronologies by Margaret Edgcumbe and Peter Simpson. The first substantial presentation of a major New Zealand poet's works on the internet. Hopefully it will be followed by many more such sites).

• Twelve Taonga. The New Zealand Electronic Poetry Centre.
  http://www.nzepc.auckland.ac.nz/features/taonga/index.asp

(A brief account of the creation of the 1974 and 2004 recorded poetry archives, which were the main source for this book).

• New Zealand Writers. The New Zealand Book Council Website.
  http://www.bookcouncil.org.nz/writers/index.html

(This has pictures and short biographical and critical summaries adapted from Roger Robinson & Nelson Wattie's Oxford Companion to New Zealand Literature (Melbourne: Oxford University Press, 1998), but with updated information and supplementary entries on more recent writers).

Dolan Departs

[photograph by Michaela Hendry, cover design by Sarah Maxey]

Well, it's official. John Dolan is leaving New Zealand after more than a decade spent on these shores. In that time he's published three books -- well, five, if you count two Academic works: Writing Well, Speaking Clearly (U of Otago Press, 1994) and Poetic Occasion from Milton to Wordsworth (Palgrave Press, 2000). The books I'm talking about, though, are two poetry collections put out by AUP: Stuck Up (1995) and People with Real Lives Don't Need Landscapes (2003), and, above all, his novel Pleasant Hell (Capricorn Publishing, 2005).

I must confess to having felt a little suspicious of Dr Dolan before actually meeting him (at Bluff, in fact, a couple of months ago). There seemed something just a little showy about that Doctorate on the Marquis de Sade, those slightly smart-arse-sounding reviews and articles one ran across in Glottis or Landfall from time to time. But then we started talking.

Wow. Was I ever wrong! Dolan is not only a fascinating and generous conversationalist, but a genuine polymath. We started on the American Civil War, then shifted to Science Fiction (Gene Wolfe's Book of the New Sun and Soldier in the Mist, Jack Vance, and -- of course -- the Master, Philip K. Dick), religion, regionalism, poetry ... You can see it's a bit of a blow for me that he's leaving.

And why is he leaving? Because he can't get a job, that's why. No English Department will hire him. Because ... um, well, just because, actually. He shows up the others too much. He's too large and opinionated. Because he gets things done, perhaps.

Admittedly, it is true that he was "the subject of various voodoo death cults among the Dunedin med students, some of whom even produced a T-shirt with a highly unflattering caricature of Dr Dolan with the words 'BLAH BLAH BLAH' beneath it." That was as a result of having to teach a particularly onerous compulsory writing course to this particularly disaffected and mutinous pportion of the student body, though. When I had coffee with John the other day in the Alleluya cafe, we were accosted by a succession of his ex-writing students who wanted to tell him how much his teaching had meant to him -- I began to suspect him of planting them after a while, but no, they appeared to be sincere.

The blurb to People with Real Lives Don't Need Landscapes goes on to claim that "Cowardice and vindictive paranoia combine to form Dolan's crude blood-fingerpaint poetic style." He certainly has a number of recurrent themes: Huns, Barbarian Invasions in general, the last days of Byzantium, The Lord of the Rings (especially Elven maidens), the horrors of American suburbia, etc. etc.

All of which brings us to Pleasant Hell, Dolan's first (and to date, regrettably, only) novel. How exactly can one characterise this insane work? The main character is called "John," and seems to have had a more-or-less equivalent set of experiences to his creator: Californian upbringing, Academic job in Dunedin, curious passive-aggressive relationship with his parents (sulking for twenty years is, apparently, the only way of solving arguments in this menage) -- oh, and his surname's "Dolan."

It's appallingly funny. It begins with a long rant about the wondrous workings of providence, and how one particularly obnoxious Pollyanna called "Canny Scot"who used to write in to the Otago Daily Times about "God's plan" should be strapped to the front of a squid boat and made to "look down into that writhing, pulsing water and see in it God's plan for this antipodean Alcatraz. Let him see how much we matter in the grand scheme. Rope him tight to that light-pole and keep him out there facing the water all night, drooling half-frozen ropes of spittle ... A little fresh ocean spray will do him good. Taste God's cold pickled water. Smell God's cheap diesel fumes. Watch God's choppy waves for ten hours, spewing God's fish-and-chips into the chop at intervals."

There is much in the same vein until we come to the irrefutable conclusion:

"God created this place [Dunedin] as a critique of me."

The universe of Dolan's fiction is a solipsistic hell. The awful degradations suffered by his main character as he crawls through High School and on into College do, literally, have to be read to be believed. His ghastly malodorous Karate clothes, the leather biker boots which gradually strip his feet of most of their skin and all of their resemblance to normal human appendages, become characters in their own right. So does Max the attack-dog, a pathetic shit-smeared wreck from a pound, whose only remaining trait is the desire to kill (non-white) passers-by.

You may think you had it hard growing up (I certainly remember vividly lying supine on the floor by the lockers at Rangitoto College, as one boy kicked me in the ribs repeatedly -- he'd taken a dislike to me on sight, apparently, and made a point of coming up and bashing me every time we met thereafter -- something about the expression on my face, it must have been. I never consciously addressed a word to him [except, perhaps, "ouch!" or "no, please, mercy!"] so it can't have been anything I said). Your sufferings -- my sufferings -- were a fucking picnic compared to "John Dolan"'s.

I put in the inverted commas because I tried to console myself at first with the idea that he might have made some of it up -- exaggerated it a bit for effect -- but after a while I was forced to conclude that these awful things had indeed happened ...

Perhaps the most terrible, and the most sickeningly funny of all, is the scene where Corey the Klass Klown manages to intercept the note young Dolan tries to pass to the most Elfin of all the girls at his school, a note written in faux-Gothic handwriting (under the influence of that master calligrapher, and adept student of feminine psychology, J. R. R. Tolkien), which reads as follows:

"O Dearest Leigh -- Much have I wished to give to you some testimonial of my affections, yet I know not how. Willt [sic] thou meet me by the stream ere the sun touches the western pines?"

The response from Corey and his cohorts is brutal and complete. "I'm not still standing there, so logically it must have ended," Dolan muses, as one writhes with transferred embarrassment at the completeness of his humiliation. It's not really funny, I suppose, watching another human being suffer. What am I saying? Of course it's funny -- it's the only thing that is really funny (or so John Cleese asserted when trying to account for the popularity of Basil Fawlty).

There's a lot more. It's a pretty thorough denunciation. Nobody I can think of has ever gone further in dramatising his own hapless misery -- but the beautiful precision and effortless competence of the writing makes it funnier to read than P. G. Wodehouse.

The poetry's very good, too -- don't get me wrong -- but Pleasant Hell deserves to become a classic. It's the Catcher in the Rye of the Love Generation (or has someone already said that somewhere online?).

So many goodbyes there've been in my life lately. John and his wife Katherine (an accomplished critic and poet in her own right) are off to Vancouver Island. I hope someone there notices the extraordinary opportunity that has befallen them. The one we've missed.