Hamesh Wyatt reviews Big Weather, Table Talk, The Summer King, and A House On Fire
Poems of Wellington
Eds Gregory O'Brien and Louise St John
Mallinson Rendel, $35, hbk
Quite a few poetry anthologies are out there at the moment. Children, death and animals all get an airing. Not that long ago, anthologies on Auckland, Christchurch and Dunedin appeared too. One of the favourites, released about 10 years ago, and now in a new enlarged edition, is the one on Wellington.
The energy, life, drama and bureaucracy of Wellington is captured in Big Weather. It has inspired many of our best poets: Vincent O'Sullivan, Hone Tuwhare, Ian Wedde, Sam Hunt, Alistair Campbell and Eileen Duggan are included here. They give the reader poems that have depth and sting.
Big Weather is a good introduction to a poet's work. The poems are intimate and inviting. The harbour, hills and environment all get a hard look. Gregory O'Brien and Louise St John have chosen well. In saying this, Big Weather is like the recent Beatles re-mastered CDs. It is all big, brilliant, clear, easy and satisfying but you may have heard it all before.
Kevin Ireland
Cape Catley Ltd, $25.99, pbk
Something new from someone old comes in the form of Kevin Ireland's new book of poems, his 18th, Table Talk. Ireland's first book was published in 1963. In "Parnell Tale" he may have been thinking back then:
We raised our glasses and laughed.
At twenty you have no idea
how a freakish notion can freeze
on the wind and shape you forever.
These 57 new poems are alive with memories and touches. Nothing is long and overwrought, yet, there are plenty of odes to something lost or gone forever.
Ireland is impressive in this new work. His poems are stripped-down affairs, full of elegance. This old dude knows how to write. A couple of books ago, Ireland was leaning on a glass of wine on the cover of Airports.
Table Talk shows how he himself has turned into a glass of wine. Love might be the food filling up this collection but the poet has stripped himself to the bone in this latest work.
Joanna Preston
Otago University Press, $29.95, hbk
Joanna Preston attended the Christchurch Writers Festival earlier this month with Brian Turner, Frankie McMillan, Tusiata Avia and James Norcliffe. She took her latest collection of poems, The Summer King with her.
Preston was born in Australia and lived in the outback for a few years before moving to New Zealand.
Lovers of moving, original poetry will be enthralled by this neat new book published by Otago University Press. She writes very cool poems. If some poets dream back to romantic thoughts, Preston pushes forward with a bruising reality.
She speaks of "throttle the stillness" ("Daybreak"), how "wings will be tattered streamers" ("Moth") and "growling and hissing" ("Phlogiston").
Confusion and cruelty all play a part in her new work. Stories of sex, sport, myth and catastrophe are mixed together in verse. Lions, toads, hares, hens, sparrows and crows are just some of the animals that appear in her poems. Shades of Ted Hughes. Preston takes risks. She mixes it up and follows her nose in what she produces.
A moving sequence called "Cowarral" focuses on her family farm. I like how Preston longs for meaning, even when she feels empty and drained. The Summer King is a great new work.
Tim Upperton
Steele Roberts, $19.99, pbk
Tim Upperton teaches creative writing at Massey University.
A House On Fire offers up 37 new poems.
He remembers a nun dishing out punishment in 1967. A girl cries for her doll, vegetables rot in the ground and a dead hedgehog is not forgotten.
Many of these poems are dark and cold. Even snow, which can be beautiful, is viewed as something that drips with a sense of loss.
There is nothing delicate or gentle about this book.
Sadness is under the spotlight in "It will not gleam".
Magic is not just a bunch of tricks in "Photograph". Upperton gives his melancholy streak room to brood and blossom in this work.
His final poem "Kindness" ends "stay with me, as the light goes from gold, to grey, to black".
Heavy poems can leave a reader with an intense grimy experience.
If you like your poems with sharp teeth and attitude, A House On Fire will do the trick. I will be interested to see what Upperton does next.
- Hamesh Wyatt lives in Bluff. He reads and writes poetry.
