No Tuesday Poem from me this week, but I’ve included several poems and extracts from poems in my guest post on the Poetic Inspirations blog, The Swells of the Quiet Ocean, which talks about my uneasy relationship with the sea in general and the Pacific Ocean in particular.
I’m very grateful to Maryanne Pale for giving me the opportunity to write this guest post for Poetic Inspirations – and I encourage everyone to follow her excellent blog.
King Arthur today
a sofa, two chairs
an occasional table
Credit note: First published in Learning a Language: New Zealand Poetry Society Anthology 2005, edited by Margaret Vos.
Tim says: Frantically busy. Running late. No Tuesday Poem posted last week – little chance of one this week. Facing being drummed out of the regiment,* possible court-martial. What to do?
Then – inspiration strikes in the form of P.S. Cottier posting a haiku. Note to self – adopt same policy – post a haiku! RSM McCallum thereby satisfied, honour of regiment intact. One problem: self not a noted writer of haiku, little inspiration to write one.
But! Chap rummages around in old files, finds the above – one and only haiku ever attempted, and by Jove, published too. Matter of Britain – most satisfactory. Not really a haiku in the strict sense but as Padre says, there are no atheists in a fox-hole. (Note to self: must ask Padre if he has experimental evidence of same. Poss. of survey, troops answering questions on religious belief or lack of while taking shelter from live fire. Would take troops’ minds off their troubles, buck them up. Good for morale.)
*The regiment of Tuesday Poets. Jolly good show, everyone!
Gerry Te Kapa Coates (Ngāi Tahu) was born in Oamaru, but has lived in Wellington for most of his working life. He has been a writer since schooldays, initially concentrating on poetry with work published in journals like Landfall. He works as an engineer and company director, but has done many varied and creative things in his career – from journalism and stage lighting design to working with Ngāi Tahu and Te Tau Ihu on their Treaty claim settlements. A past published finalist in the Māori Literature (Pikihuia) Awards in 2001, 2003 and 2007, his book of poetry and short stories The View From Up There was published in 2011. He is now working on further collections and longer works including a novel. An engineer/poet is a rare breed. He still finds that working − and looking after mokopuna – takes its creative toll.
The View From Up There includes both stories and poems. Was it an easy decision to include both in the collection, and are you satisfied with how this combined approach has worked out?
“I admire the grace of these poems, and the carefulness which keeps them clear and direct. I also appreciate the ease with which they are able to bring together the Maori language and English, achieving a synthesis that is uniquely true to the country.” – Phillip Mann
Can you tell us about the ways you have bought Te Reo Māori and English together in your work?
strawberries that crumble into dust.
First of all, a disclaimer: P.S. Cottier, one of the three poets represented in this collection, is a friend of mine. I’d actually turned down an opportunity to review her recent collection The Cancellation of Clouds for this very reason, but I decided I felt comfortable – to use a John Key-ism – with reviewing a book in which her contribution makes up a third: hence this review!
A few years ago, I reviewed AUP New Poets 3, which included chapbook-sized contributions from Janis Freegard, Reihana Robinson, and Katherine Liddy. Triptych Poets: Issue Three, published by Blemish Books in Canberra, follows the same pattern. Here the three poets are P.S. Cottier, Joan Kerr, and J.C. Inman.
I liked two of the three sections of the book a great deal, and though I didn’t enjoy J.C. Inman’s section as much overall, I think it contains some fine poems. So let’s look at each section in turn.
P.S. Cottier: “Selection criteria for death”
What can I say? I really like P.S. Cottier’s poetry, and I like this selection just as much – in fact, maybe a little more – than her collection The Cancellation of Clouds.
Her poetry is a powerful and inimitable (at least, I haven’t ready anything else quite like them) concoction of dark humour – humour that often seems powered by an underlying anger – vivid and often witty description, and most of all intelligence. Sometimes, as in the political poetry of “Abbott’s Booby”, that anger steams off the page.
“Intelligence” can be a double-edged sword in poetry – too often, poets confuse it for academicese and an excessive devotion to critical theory – but that is not a problem here. There is no sense of deliberate obscurity in these poems, but there is the sense of a powerful mind at work, teasing out the poems’ diverse strands.
Because P.S. Cottier often uses long stanzas, it can be hard to excerpt a few lines of poetry to show you what I mean, but these lines from “How To Wrestle An Angel” give you some idea:
Clutching is advised; hold him tight as an idea,
well-loved and convenient. Wriggling will occur,
and it is imperative that the wings be kept from play.
What ring could hold an angel, should he unfold,
flex and soar? No ropes will ever net him.
He will reach out with as many arms
as Kali, as many voices as there are prophets,
hoping to flick slow minds into new holds.
Don’t let the title mislead you. There is plenty of life here.
Joan Kerr: “Dying Languages”
Though Joan Kerr’s poetry is quite different from P.S. Cottier’s in many ways – the stanzas are often shorter, the point of view cooler and more detached – her poems share the first selection’s virtues of intelligence and imagination. I found her poetry a little more opaque than P. S. Cottier’s – at times I didn’t know what she was getting at, but I think that is because a lot of her poems refer to colonial and post-colonial moments I don’t have the historical background to fully appreciate.
Perhaps because its subject matter is closer to my own experience, my favourite poem in this selection is “My Father’s Steps”, which in two-line stanzas ranges freely over 80 years of the life of the narrator’s father, with these beautiful closing lines that expand the scope of the poem:
His mind was the world we lived in once,
from Aeschylus to Xenophon, the Odyssey
to Soapey Sponge’s Sporting Tour,
Dante to Beachcomber, Pepys to Perelman.
Ninety years, spanning three thousand years
close into distance, silence and the moon
going its way across this little world.
But there are striking and memorable lines in many of the other poems. How about this, from “Prizegiving”:
My friend has won a prize for twenty years
of hanging on:
her fingers whiten
on the edges of the world.
Images like this show what a talented poet Joan Kerr is.
J.C. Inman: “Lovers and Brothers”
The bio at the front of J.C. Inman’s entry lists him as a “frequenter of the Canberra poetry slam scene” and frequent performer at festivals. The poems in “Lovers and Brothers” are good poems, and I can see them working really well in a performance setting, but for the most part I didn’t find these poems as satisfying as I did the poems by P.S. Cottier and Joan Kerr.
That’s the easy part – the hard part is to say why. I think it’s because poems that go across well when performed because of their directness and impact can sometimes be less interesting when read.
The opening of “I Dream Of Fidelity” is, I think, a good showcase for J.C. Inman’s poetry:
In the dark I could not separate the snores from the sobs
The smell of love hung dank in the spaces between us
Like semi liquid steam.
You were already sleeping when I met you in your dreams
Half formed and imperfect, standing in the Field of Infidelity,
(a field of impatiens and forget-me-nots)
where the only sport is fucking
It’s got vigour and energy, and a good image in the “field of impatiens and forget-me-nots”, but I don’t think it’s as rich as P.S. Cottier’s or Joan Kerr’s work.
This is J.C. Inman’s first published (part of a) collection. As he adjusts his work from what works best in performance to what works best on the page, I think there will be more and better to come.
Conclusion
I’m hard to please, aren’t I? I want to read poetry that is neither obvious nor obscure, poetry I can at once understand without too much extra reading and not entirely ‘get’ on the first attempt. It’s a pretty narrow sweet spot, and if I applied these criteria to my own poems, I’m sure that a good number of them would fail the test.
As the poet said, don’t be sad ‘cos two out of three ain’t bad, and in this case, I’m going to say two-and-a-half out of three ain’t bad. Triptych Poets: Issue 3 is worth your time and attention.