Reporter John Gibb spoke to Dunedin poet Peter Olds this week about his interest in photography, and why he once took many photos of graffiti and other images on the city’s walls and buildings. He eventually put the photos to one side, but they are now attracting more interest from others.
Efforts are being made to bring a group of photographs by Dunedin poet Peter Olds and a talk about his distinctive writing methods to a wider audience.
People who write about the work of Olds, a former Burns Fellow, often point to the vividness of his visual images, and the deft way he conveys key details of what he sees.
If he writes with a photographer’s eye, it may not be all that surprising to discover that he is also a keen photographer, who over a 10-year period, took about 200 photographs of graffiti and other cityscape subjects in Dunedin’s north end and elsewhere in the city.
After gathering a large collection of photographs and some pithy, haiku-like "bamboo poems" to accompany them, Olds realised, by 2015, it would be difficult to advance such a big project by himself at that stage, and put the photos aside.
Also previously put to one side for the moment, in terms of publication, was a revealing talk by former Dunedin poet and Cold Hub Press publisher Roger Hickin, now of Lyttelton, given at the University of Otago’s annual symposium on "Book and Place" in 2016.
The talk, titled "A Town Trod by Poets: The Search for Truth on Dunedin Streets", highlighted a strong sense of place in Dunedin writing, and the habits of several Dunedin poets to walk about the streets, as Olds has long done, writing about what they have seen.
Dunedin City of Literature director Nicky Page hopes that Mr Hickin’s talk can be published to a wider audience, and that "brilliant" images taken by Peter Olds could also ultimately be included in the publication.
"I’m really excited to be working with Peter as I’m a huge fan of his work," Ms Page said.
The overall publishing project was in its "very early stages".
She had "really enjoyed " Mr Hickin’s paper, which "expertly connects local writing with specific locations in Dunedin and features Dunedin poets, including wonderful poetry by Peter Olds," she said.
"Peter subsequently offered some of his personal photographs for this exciting project, and his magnificent series of local graffiti images will be a source of nostalgia for one generation and intrigue for another!" she said.
Olds said he had once considered becoming a professional photographer.
"It would have been the career for me if I hadn’t started writing poems," he said.
Writing had won out, but sometimes he still carried a camera and took "snapshots".
People had commented on his strong visual sense in his writing, and had said that in some poems he tended to "pan around" his surroundings, as if looking through a camera lens.
"I always have very strong pictures in my head when I’m writing."
One of his poetry sequences is sub-titled "Small Pictures of Dunedin", and first appeared in his collection Beethoven’s Guitar.
Olds has also previously commented on a strong visual sense in his memories and dreams.
Between about 2005 and 2015 he had taken about 200 photographs of Dunedin scenes, using a rugged 30-year-old Pentax SLR camera, which he no longer owns.
He had photographed graffiti art, some of it colourful and striking, much of it on walls, and near bridges, including across the Water of Leith.
Other subjects included signs and logos, some of them on ageing buildings which had since been demolished.
He took the photos, partly because he had viewed some of the graffiti seriously as works of art, and partly because he wanted to value and preserve such attractive ephemera before it was lost, including through the fading of paintwork, or overpainting by other graffiti artists.
