stoatspring

The Last Post

2011-01-03T19:41:00.004+13:00

Harvey McQueen, 13 September 1934 - 25 December 2010

Harvey died peacefully in the early hours of Christmas Day. He had been taken to hospital around midnight on Wednesday, after a fall. By Christmas Eve it was clear that while there was no sign of any new problem such as a stroke, he was too bruised and weak to come home for Christmas as he so much wanted to do. I was worried about how well he would recover, but there was no hint of any danger to his life. So it came as a terrible shock to be phoned at 4.20 am on Christmas morning. His already greatly weakened lungs had begun to fail, and his life closed soon after.

This is how I ended the letter to him which I read at the private funeral service in Wellington, on the last day of the year.

Your ending matched you so well. Quick and quiet, definite and gentle. And above all, kind. Only, for once in your life, not kind to me - the one thing you would have wanted to change.

With all my love
Anne

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A memorial service for Harvey will be held at Old St Paul's, Mulgrave Street, Wellington, at 11 am on Friday, 28 January 2011.

Harvey had planned to post, in the New Year, this poem by Mark Pirie, who has published all Harvey's own poetry under the HeadworX imprint since 1999, when Pingandy: New and Selected Poems appeared.

This Piece of Earth*

For Harvey McQueen, 1934-2010

It was on a Sunday
that we drove to her place,
up there in the Cashmere Hills.

John and Elaine were the tour guides,
enthusiastic raconteurs of
'Canterbury lit tales' - and eager they were

to show Alistair and me a 'slice of history'.
I began to think, as we arrived, so
this is where 'very earnestly digging'

Ursula first raised her head
and discovered her (and our) poetry…
It's true though, most of her best poems

were about her garden
and that digging: the careful
time-honouring of place;

it's similar to what you describe
in your book. How timeless
the ordinary seems, yet so truthful

and appealing. Each one of us
spends their life, some by choice,
others by circumstance -

you and Ursula choose the garden.
It's here you both found those rare insights
into our lives. We are grateful for that.

Mark Pirie

*This Piece of Earth is the title of Harvey's memoir, published by Awa Press in 2004. At the time I was in Christchurch for the Books & Beyond Festival, May-June 2001. John O'Connor and Helen Jacobs (Elaine Jakobbson) invited Alistair Campbell and myself for a tour of the Canterbury region, including visiting Mick Stimpson's grave at Banks Peninsula, where Harvey was born. The area where Harvey grew up featured on the cover of his last anthology, These I Have Loved: My Favourite New Zealand Poems (Steele Roberts, 2010).

Mansfield Still

2010-12-22T11:54:00.001+13:00

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Over the last few weeks I’ve been still savouring Katherine Mansfield’s stories. Two or three at the most and then contemplative time afterwards as I sit and chew the mental cud about each one. It’s a good way to appreciate them. Too many at once and a form of critical and mental indigestion sets in. For these readings being less greedy means more enjoyment

I’m up to her later middle period. What has struck me this time’s reading is how feminist she was. Not in suffragette terms but in her sympathy and sensitivity. The comment probably reflects the maturation of Harvey.

Three stories I’ve just read all illustrate the same point. First ‘Pictures’. A young woman, penniless and hungry, unable to pay the rent, tries to make ends meet by getting work as a film extra. The story ends with her sitting in a café. A stout man sits down with her, has a whisky and shouts her a brandy. They leave together. An internet background note makes the point that the story is about unemployment. No! In the end the poor woman was reduced to prostitution.

Then ‘Daughters of the Late Colonel’! Those two poor sisters, their lives frittered away is meeting the needs of their tyrant father and they are now on his death unable to make up their minds or reach a decision. ‘Josephine had had a moment of absolute terror at the cemetery, while the coffin was being lowered, to think that she and Constantia had done this thing withuout asking his permission. What would father say when he found out? For he was bound to find out sooner or later. He always did.’ Poor women, his intimidation had trained them so well, neither of them can remember what they wanted to say.

‘Ma Parker’ in one way is an old-fashioned tear-jerker. She buried her beloved grandson the day before the story starts. In another way it is an indictment of a class system that creates a life of drudgery for people like Ma Parker. ‘It was cold on the street. There was a wind like ice. People went flitting by, very fast; the men walked like scissors; the women trod like cats. And nobody knew – nobody cared. Even if she broke down, if at last, after all these years, she were to cry, she’d find herself in the lock-up as like as not.’

I acknowledge that at the same time as she was penning these pro-women pieces she was also revealing other sensitivities. ‘An Ideal Family’ seems to me to reveal a growing awareness of her father’ s stronger points. Though ‘At the Bay’ and ‘The Fly’ lie ahead.

That sentence is revelatory. The metaphor is inadequate but it'll serve. This present slow read is an re-exploration of a tourist spot once enjoyed with enthusiasm and vigour. Now I stroll at a more leisurely pace and reflect on the scene with more knowledge and background than before. The idiosyncrasies and movement of people and things take on fresh meanings as they are placed in a wider context.

Tuesday Poem: Albedo by Harvey Molloy

2010-12-21T03:41:00.003+13:00

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Albedo

A terminator line
cuts the moon

like a millionaire cake
into two sharp slices;

white and black.
The earth casts a shadow

across its monochrome twin
that turns so perfectly

in step with our dance
we never see her move.

A vast blanket
of frozen regolith

covers the scarred
brightside face

smashed by a million
meteor punchups

and throws a wash
of pale light

over the black tar roof
of the outside laundry.

Harvey Molloy

A poem by a Harvey put up by a Harvey. There’s a simple explanation. For this Tuesday Weeks’ poem most members of the group have been paired and asked to select a poem of their partner’s. I’m grateful that the organisers paired me with Harvey Molloy. It’s forced me into his work.

In the rush of cards that have come into our household this Christmas there have been lots of stars and the occasional sun. The moon has been ignored. It is not part of the nativity story. Interesting! Down the centuries the moon has excited a lot of human emotion and has been the source of many a legend and tale. There is no space in the inn for the moon.

Harvey Molloy’s take on that cool piece of rock is really striking. I’ve liked it from the moment I first came across it earlier this year.. It’s rational and concisely scientific. At the same time it captures that sense of awe the moon can compel.

I am not a scientist. Nor an astronomer! But in my childhood’s country quiet a cloudless full-moon was a stunning sight as the familiar hills took on a enigmatic colouring. Sometimes, that full moon even bestrode rather ghostly a daytime sky.

There’s nothing elusive about this planetary object, but it seems at all ages to carry an always air of mysteriousness.

Monthly and young I saw then the changing cycles. At that stage explanations left me bewildered. I was told the ocean’s tides were dependent upon those cycles. Down the centuries poets and philosophers had pondered about the meaning and nature of this phenomena.

Now we understand the science. And therefore the miracle of it more. Men have walked on the moon’s surface and returned to earth bringing samples of its surface back. Nevertheless, its existence still retains that ability to create wonder, amazement, inspiration and even fear.

Sometimes people complain about a poet’s obscurity. Occasionally, rightly so. But usually not. T.S.Eliot assumed a knowledge of Christian theology, Classical mythology and European literature. In his period it was a fair claim. More difficult now. So I give some background to Harvey Molloy’s terminology. He’s not being difficult. He’s being accurate. And, as a poet, astute. Like all words technical terms have sound and resonate in their own right and with other words. The moon’s there. He describes it. Accurately! End of story! Not of enigma!.

‘Albus’ is the Latin word for ‘white’. A derivation ‘albedo’ was first used in a scientific sense in 1760 to measure reflectivity, how strongly an object reflects light. The ‘terminator line’ is the term given to the line that separates the illuminated (day) side of a planetary body from its dark (night) side. ‘Regolith’ is loose material covering solid rock. On the moon it is the powdery layer created by meteors hitting the surface.

‘Albedo’ is a very visual poem. That’s one of Molloy’s strengths. He’s good at juxtaposition. And atmosphere! The sun may produce heat while the moon remains inert but there’s a calmness and simplicity in its regular appearance, Speaking about another of his Moonshot poems in his blog he says ‘nothing much happens in the poem at all; no bangs, no surprises, just little movements.’ True of this one as well.

I like his metaphor of meteor punchups on the moon’s face. Down the ages its surface has taken many hits. And I admire the matter-of-factness tone of the last four lines. Yes, that’s exactly how it would have looked. That laundry black tar roof would have appeared pallid and frightful in the moonlight. Our imagination engages – silver and sinister merge and mingle in our mind with scientific certitude.

If you want to read my poem selected by Harvey Molloy hit the Tuesday Poem quill button on the left hand side and enter the site. I intended to put the poem up on my blog as part of my Christmas season. Harvey has done it for me. Thanks!

Como Christmas

2010-12-20T13:21:00.006+13:00

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West Europe struggles with a cold winter. There is traffic chaos. There’ll be a white Christmas.

We were fortunate over the Christmas period of 1989. It was a relatively mild winter there then. I had finished my 18 month stint in the Beehive. Anne had never been to Italy and so we planned an Italian holiday as rest and relaxation for me and excitement for her (and me). We took a gamble on the weather. We had only one really strong storm.

In late November we were staying in London with friends before crossing the Channel, shops already decorated for Christmas. We were in Harrods – gaping mainly – though in the Christmas nick-nacks Anne stopped to buy a small owl for her sister Susan who collects them.

The pimply, toffee-voiced youth serving asked rather condescendingly as he wrapped up her meagre purchase ‘And where will Madam be spending Christmas?’

Inwardly I applauded her assured reply. ‘Lake Como’. Thereafter, he treated us with more respect. Eccentric, wealthy colonials?

It is 21 years to the day when we arrived at Como. We’d pre-booked a lakeside hotel. But when the taxi pulled up there were big signs it was closed and was obviously being renovated. All was well. Panic was unnecessary. We were re-directed to a hotel high in the hills above Cernobbio further up the lake. Its panoramic view included the renowned Villa d Este hotel on the waterfront directly below. A steep footpath took us down to the bus station or ferry into Como city.

We got fit as we used the path to catch the ferry back and forth daily and explored the city. In the industrial area we found an old church with ancient wall paintings. The Madonna had just given birth. There were blood-splattered sheets everywhere and a few women comforting the mother. It is the only painting I’ve seen which accepted the animal act of birth of Christ.

Christmas day arrived clear, bright and cold. I’d carried a good suit all the way from New Zealand, lugged it the bag through Paris, Nice, Venice, Ferrara, Florence and Siena. Just for this one day. Anne had bought a silk tie in Como for my present. I wore it. I could tell the proprietor approved. Anne was also dressed in her best. My present to her, leather gloves had been admired but they were for outdoors and today was an indoor day. We rang New Zealand mid-morning. Mid-evening here.

Lunch was twelve courses. The dining room was full of Italian family groups. There were prim aunts and grim uncles, there were jovial aunts and mischievous uncles, children in their Sunday best, well-behaved, polite and courteous, though I noticed a sulkiness in several. There was one solitary couple, both sagged with age and care but obviously still content in each other’s company. We were the only non-Italians there.

Evidentially, as part of the job, the chief waiter's wife and two teen-age children had a table. He looked harassed. Every time he went near she laid down the law. From her gestures and tone I gathered she considered their seating and service was not to her satisfaction. I could see him pleading with her to speak more softly and to let him get on with his duties. The man who imperiously had ruled the dining room all our stay revealed to have feet of clay. I felt sympathy for him. That was the only unhappy table in the room. He deserved better.

The food was delectable. The noise was loud but bearable,but it was part of an atmsphere of happiness and celebration. The view was superb. And as Anne said, we had to do nothing but eat. I gave up on the ninth course. I was replete. Christmas ‘89 was over, ahead lay Basel, Amsterdam, Vancouver and home. Chrsitmas 1990 was a long way ahead. Christmas 2010 unforseeable at that stage.

Wikileaks

2010-12-19T10:24:00.002+13:00

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Our first Christmas lily of the year has just burst into blossom. Good timing!

There is a definition of an ambassador – ‘a person sent abroad to lie for his country.’ Diplomacy is a cornerstone of international politics.

As long as there have been diplomats they have reported home to their masters. Many a Tudor melodrama has a shifty-eyed Spanish ambassador as its villian. I’m equally sure that Spanish equivalents have an equally dastardly Englishman.

This knowledge means I fail to get excited about Wikileaks. In most cases it seems to me confirm what I already know (or suspect). I would hope that our government has a good handle on what is happening in Fiji. I am not surprised that John Key was disappointed his officials couldn’t arrange a meeting with President Obama. I’d be surprised if he wasn’t.

And I must say much of what has been reported is obvious. Indeed, the American diplomatic service comes out as doing a surprisingly good job. From their angle. That is their job.

The character of the Italian prime minister had been reported in the local and international press long before Wikileaks revealed the diplomats were saying the same thing. The sudden rolling of Kevin Rudd by his colleagues took me by surprise. The Wikileak reveals a diplomatic assessment fairly early on as to why he was vulnerable. I am not shocked to learn that other Middle East Arab states fear a nuclear Iran. I would expect them to be.

And at the risk of bringing down ire on my head I think their judgements about our scene are not too far off the mark.

The big exposure of this week has been the claim that the Lange government was anti-nuclear for reasons of cost-cutting. Well, when Messers Bassett, Tizard and Goff can agree that is not so, the claim is seen for what it is – wishful musing on the part of a few senior public servants.

At the time it was common knowledge around Wellington that some of these boffins were unhappy about the change of policy. Of course the diplomates would carry such tittle-tattle back to Washington. If they were doing their job they would have also reported the overall feeling of the nation. There was a majority conviction. The French testing was still fresh in our minds.

As an education bureaucrat I was surprised at the intensity of the conviction expressed by some middle echelon Treasury officials. In those heady days Lange and Douglas could do no wrong in that quarter.

I understand American outrage. I appreciate their concern that names may be released and people’s lives put at risk.

But as long as there are diplomats people will try to intercept and decode their messages. Such is the nature of Government. And local people will use such information if available for their local causes and efforts. What else is in the Wikileaks that is not being researched or released. That is the question?

A Fairy Tale

2010-12-18T12:11:00.006+13:00

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My blog serves many purposes. The simplest of which is to provide a purpose. What to write, how to write occupies time and space in my mind.

Today’s blog is not the one I intended to put up and composed mentally last evening. That’ll keep. This morning Susanna me caregiver came as usual. She pulls up my bed before she attends to me. This morning she gave each of my feather pillows a solid thumping. I made a casual comment about getting rid of a lot of frustrations.

She told me a Grimms fairy tale I’d never heard before. She grew up in Germany and her grandmother had a wealth of such tales. This was a variation of the Cinderella story – the persecuted heroine who wins through to a happy ending.

A girl had a stepmother and a stepsister. She did most of the work. And got little thanks for it. One day – Susanna’s account was much more complicated she dropped something down the well. Her wicked stepmother forced her to climb down into the well to retrieve the item.

But when she got to the bottom it opened on to a garden, which she entered. There was an apple tree laden with fruit. The tree was groaning and asking for the fruit to be picked to relieve its burden. The girl willingly harvested the crop and stored it as suggested. The tree was very grateful.

Several similar adventures happened (this is Susanna’a abbreviation) before the girl arrived before a large house. The lady there said I’m looking for a maid, and offered her the post. The girl accepted. The lady showed her how to fluff up feather pillows and duvets.

After a month’s work the lady said the girl had earned a reward. She led her to a gate out of the garden. When the girl entered there was a large pot of gold. Another gate and she was spirited back home to be with her stepmother.

Hearing of the adventure the stepsister climbed down the well. She ignored the apple tree and went straight to the lady’s house. Again the same offer. But this girl was lazy. She couldn’t be bothered thumping the pillows into shape. Nor sweeping or cleaning.

At the end of the month she was led to the gate. But instead of gold there was a pot of warm tar. Which miraculously was tipped all over her.

Morality tale! House-care advice! A story to keep attention on a cold winter’s night!

I’ve spent over an hour on the internet seeking more detail about it. So far failure. But the search illustrates another purpose of the blog. Information-gathering/checking/sharing.

I had not realised the Three Little Pigs, Jack and the Beanstalk, Goldilocks and the Three Bears were all English and that Little Red Riding Hood was originally French. Up till now I had wrongly assumed all these had been uncovered by the Grimm Bros research. Of course, later research has discovered that many of the tales attributed to the men had actually been gathered by their womenfolk.

Anyway, thanks Susanna for the story. I enjoyed its telling.

Docking

2010-12-17T12:22:00.004+13:00

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The bellbird was there again this morning. Great! I wonder if he/it/she’ll sing. I haven’t heard a tui for a while; unlike the spring when they were carolling all the time. Humans are rarely satisfied.

The word ‘docking’ for me has two connotations. On the farm it is removing the tails of lambs and in the case of the males, castration. It’s a noisy, dusty, bloody business. The other use of ‘docking’ is spectacularly different - a space shuttle establishing contact with a space station. In older days it was a ship being docked at a wharf, huge ropes to tie it securely to the shore.

I use the term ‘docking’ to describe getting to the stool in my shower. I walk my walker into the new wet shower with its smooth vinyl floor. My caregiver hovers close behind in case I stumble. I turn almost 360 degrees and step backwards to the stool. A rail on the wall helps steady me. Gingerly I lower myself on to the stool.

The caregiver takes the walker away and showers me. Friday is shampoo day. We do my hair first. Then the rest of me. The shower over she retrieves the walker and positions it. I’m already upright. The last act of the showering is for her to wash my backside, so I’ve pulled myself up by the rail to stand and face the wall.

Again gingerly I reach for the walker’s handles. I push it out to the bedroom where she positions the stool and I repeat the reverse docking. She finishes drying me, applies ointments for my dermatitis – my back is especially bad this morning. Why? Humidity? Chinese meal last night? A long night’s sleep – my mask means I have to sleep on my back?

Finished, glasses cleaned, I take the walker out to the lounge where Susanna makes me a cup of tea. No milk, but sugar and a slice of lemon. The nicest cup of the tea of the day. Highly necessary, for I find myself pretty exhausted at the end of a shower. It takes energy, nervous as well as physical. There is that element of risk in the docking. Though my experience is that I have not fallen while being careful. Touch wood.

The biggest element of risk of falling is when I first get up in the morning. After a night with the CPAP machine thumping away plus the oxygen converter putting a flow of that gas into my system I wake up rather mesmerised and I’ve a hunch a build-up of carbon dioxide in my body. I swing my legs out of bed and sit up. I take the mask off and sit there deep-breathing. It’s important to clear the head before I start moving around. It is my biggest moment of risk of falling in the whole day. Eventually I retrieve the walker and begin the day’s activities.

The falls I’ve had have been the result of simple multi-tasking. Like stepping up from the garage two years ago and turning to put off the light switch. Mistake! Balance was lost. The last fall I had was such a simple thing. I was turning and started to sneeze I reached for my handkerchief and next thing I knew I was tumbling.

Those two falls, there were four others, happened when I was using the walking stick only. Now I have the walker. The knowledge lurks that sooner or later there will be further falls. But four wheels are more secure than one sole stick. All I can do is to express gratitude each evening for another day without mishap and each morning to express cheer at the prospect of another day.

America Arose from Revolt

2010-12-16T10:45:00.000+13:00

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By training I’m a historian. But that was long ago. So I’ve got an interest in events and trends, economic as well as political. So here’s an amateur’s tour.

Britain became the dominant power because of iron and steel. It was first out of the starting blocks in the Industrial Revolution. The same economic powerhouse saw the North overwhelm (at great cost to both sides) the South in the American Civil War. Despite gallantry and bravery the South was beaten by rail and industry. It was a harbinger of things to develop.

Germany, and to an extent Japan, challenged that Anglo-Saxon economic supremacy. And failed. (Again at great cost to both sides) (And the economic analysis ignores the ideological aspects that led to the holocaust).

But China is now doing it by a different method. It is using the very industrial muscle that gave that supremacy its strength. Container ships sail to the American West Coast full. They return to China empty. Manufacturing languishes in the USA. Unemployment increases there. The Chinese standard of living improves (relatively). Unrest in the USA festers. Bread and circuses – shades of ancient Rome.

Like all Cook’s tours – suspect. But I consider it contains many atoms of truth.

It seems to me that America is New Zealand writ large – indeed the whole Western world. There are two economies – one is, and this is very crude, financial and big business. Profits on investments increase and top salaries are soaring. Banks are booming. With the best of intentions they were shored up during the recession.

But the rest of the economy and society wasn’t. For the ordinary worker wages are static, unemployment rises, people are scared of losing jobs and homes, small businesses are collapsing.

The big corporations have shifted their operations offshore. Overseas workers with less pay and harsher workplace conditions will produce the goods and services that once were delivered in the homeland. If I could get hold of the Filipino - I think he was - that I recently dealt on the phone with I hope there would be someone near to restrain me. And it wasn’t his fault. He could only work from the information he’d been trained to deliver.

Services! The IT revolution that was supposed to free us has replaced us with digital services. The obvious catch for our workers is lost income. The hidden catch for our economy is that the purchasing power of the people decreases. Market towns know this pattern – a drought season and the farmers stop buying all but necessities. West Coasters fear it – with good reason – after the Pike River disaster.

Both in America and here tax cuts increase the income and spending power of the rich. The majority, if not standing still, are going backwards because necessary expenditure increases. This has societal consequences. In both countries expenditure on pre-school and tertiary is being cut while the school sector is being squeezed.

It’s a topsy-turvy society we’re creating. The historian in me also recognises people power. The French, Chinese, Cuban people all rose up in anger about a two-tiered society. Looking at riots in Athens, London, Rome, Madrid and I’ll predict to come in the USA, I wonder if this unrest is not a harbinger of change waiting in the wings. America arose from revolt.

A Bellbird

2010-12-16T10:09:00.002+13:00

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Ever since we lived here I’ve hoped that one day a bellbird would visit us from the nearby wildlife sanctuary – which for some unfathomable reason has been renamed from Karori (which proclaims its location – Wellingotn would have been acceptable) to Zealandia. To me that is the title of an extinct Catholic newspaper, not a refuge for birds.

In my healthy days I bird fed in the sanctuary – sugar water for the bellbirds. It was a delight to see these songsters in their natural habitat. But I’ve never seen them outside in Wellington until yesterday.

I’ve written several times about a tui that comes daily to the abutilon tree (Chinese bells is its common name). But yesterday I looked up and thought that’s a bellbird there. It flew off before I could be certain.

Anne and Amy were making macaroons – memories of their tour in SW France in 2006. Their cakes in the oven, they were having a cup of tea when the bird returned. It was a bellbird, banded.

That’s a good way to end 2010 – a bellbird in the garden.

Rituals

2010-12-15T11:35:00.004+13:00

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There is a time and place for rituals. They lift life above the mundane and the frenetic. Christmas is such a time. Over the years Anne and I’ve built up our own rituals, not original, but personal. For example, when she makes the Christmas pudding I always get to give it a stir.

In our previous home we put up a Christmas tree in the front room unless we were going away. Purchasing the pine was part of the fun. I wanted to keep the leaves as green as long as I could so that meant putting the stump in a large bucket of water with stones and old bricks to stabilise it. And topping up the water. I didn’t want Christmas day to dawn on shedding leaves. To further hold it I tied it up to the mantlepiece. After I’d got it steady – albeit with lots of advice, Anne and Jonathan (her son, if at home) decorated it.

For starters there were lights she’d bought years ago in London. Over the years Jonathan bought white imitation doves, gilded musical instruments and painted other embellishments. Decking the tree became more and more ceremonial. Entering in to the spirit Anne started to put up a wreath on the front door. Holiday or celebration – it was a break from the routine.

Further, and to cap it all off, Jonathan made a crib for us, painted little figurines, Mary, Joseph, three wise men and animals to surround the baby Jesus. Organising that crib became another ritual. Visitors would help Anne arrange the figures.

Since we’ve been in our new place, this is our third Christmas here, Jonathan’s been overseas. He’s teaching English as a second language in China; but coming home for a month in mid-January, an occasion to which Anne is looking greatly forward. That is one reason why we’ve reluctantly given the tree ceremony away. Other reasons include, no place to tie it up, my health, different spaces, logistics, plus a growing realisation of the need to be adaptable. .

Instead Anne has developed new rituals to retain the feel of 'Christmasy'. She places a green garland over the Robin White prints. Through it she’s threaded the doves, musical instruments, bells and other ornamanents that used to grace the tree.

Below it on a sideboard she and Jenn from next door put up this year’s crib last Sunday. The lovely painted box Jonathan made years ago collapsed from extended use in 2008. So for backdrop last and this year Anne recycled the chocolate box that Ulrike and Matthais sent us from Berlin in 2007 to celebrate our new home. Four coloured houses had shutters with a month’s supply of chocolate. It looks like a street scene from Ghent or Lubeck or any other undamaged northern Europe town. A Bethlehem manger in front of a European market town in a Kiwi house. The diversity of Christmas! Reminds me of a black Jesus we saw in a crib in Amsterdam in 1990.

Here’s a photo of last year’s crib. Over the years it’s got additions. Each carries meaning, a gift, a token, a reminder of a location or event. For example, the baby’s cradle sits on a piece of polished greenstone I was given for speaking to the West Coast principals in1997

Jenn had made us a wreath of flax-fibre. Anne has hung that on our front door.

On the bookshelves are our Christmas cards. And dominating the whole area is the large post-card of the altarpiece we saw in Ghent. It is the Mystic Adoration of the Lamb painted by the brothers van Eyck, one the most striking piece of painting I’ve ever seen. Indeed, today's New Yorker describes it as a touchstone piece of art. 24 panels with imposing figures of Adam and Eve on either side! The touch of mysticism seems appropriate on our shelves.

I sat and ate a few cherries as I surveyed the scene this morning. They ripen now and so are another December ritual. And a reminder that in this hemisphere the season is in summer.

Tuesday Poem: Increasingly by Harvey McQueen

2010-12-13T20:38:00.004+13:00

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INCREASINGLY

Despite memory -
‘tiny, native narcissi
midst distant massif
verge & meadows’ -
my cruel malady
spurs me to confess
increasingly, I
long for oblivion

Harvey McQueen

Maybe I’ve compressed too much but this is my final personal poem for the Tuesday blog site for 2010. I finished it this morning.

The poem originated with these lines.
‘Flame & moth
attract, hover, merge.’
Along the way I rejected them as old hat as I did a further two words ‘larks overhead’ after ‘meadows’. 'Midst' and 'verge' kept hovering about. There was an archaic feel about them which I felt summed up memory. Was the French massif really like that. I recall fields glittering with little flowers and inhabited by large cows. The skylarks I also recall but were they in the Loire valley with cuckoos calling from the woodlands - the lure of Europe to a colonial lad.

I try very hard to be positive and cheerful despite my malady, illness, ailment, call it what you will – it’s relentless. But every now and then I crumble. I did so late last week. The result was this poem.

It’s true. Also untrue! I look at it, say it, & then feel its trite, feel its truth, a bite of sensation that existed. A moment, a mood, a measure, a melancholy, moonshine & melody! It’s out there for your reaction and scrutiny. I’ve had a good day today. The poem captures a bad day a few days ago. Such is the nature of poetry.

Franz Josef Chapel

2010-12-13T09:28:00.002+13:00

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On this day in 1642 Abel Tasman sighted the West Coast of New Zealand. On this day in 1959 I was making my first visit to this unique area of New Zealand, Tasman’s words ‘land uplifted high’.

It was at the end of my year at Christchurch’s Secondary Teachers’ College. For a few days the Social Studies group stayed at the Franz Josef camping ground. We spent a Sunday morning climbing up the glacier. The ice was much further down the valley then.

That evening some of the group decided they would like to have a service in the little Anglican church whose altar window then framed the glacier. They got permission and the key and persuaded me to lead it. Reluctantly I agreed. The previous year I'd pulled out of training for the Presbyterian Ministry. I have never preached in a more splendid situation.

Just as I began the sermon a fantail flitted in distracting both preacher and congregation. Don’t 'ad lib' they'd warned me when I'd been training at Knox College. On this occasion I did, successfully. Bede had preached a sermon years ago about a sparrow’s brief flight through the hall of existence. Who could fail speaking about a fantail - one of the delights of creation. I vividly recall the event – but not the words I said.

Grumps

2010-12-12T10:57:00.000+13:00

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It is the season for lists, the best books, movies, shows, events etc of 2010. It is a time for show-offs and pay-backs, for compliments and brickbats. Today I’ll have a list of minor grumps.

I’ve been sitting watching the petals fall off the Leander rose. Several flowers have collapsed in quarter of an hour. Leander’s a climbing rose that was here when we arrived. For a brief spell it’s ablaze with its salmon-coloured bloom. Suddenly, its season’s over and the lawn is littered with the discards – a briefer season than most roses. (A deheading of the hips will see an autumn blooming)

Beside it, the Compassion rose blooms longer and steadier. I’d like to think human compassion has a similar longer life. But two news items give me pause. One’s here at home. The RSA is going to get its poppies made in China and assembled in Australia. The contract which up till now has been with a Christchurch firm has gone off-shore.

That local firm employed handicapped people and war veteran widows. The work gave meaning and hope to its workers. They had a place and a work in which they could take pride. Now in the name of a higher profit the process will be shifted off-shore. We and they will be the poorer.

I have not bought a poppy for the last two Anzac Days for the simple reason I’ve stopped going downtown and out. But if I was capable I would boycott next year’s sale. Those poor Christchurch people. Such news is not in the Christmas spirit.

In the USA I see where the Republican Senators as part of the revised tax package have withdrawn support for compensation for people who helped in the clean-up of the 9/11 attacks. The so-called war on terror continues but the front-line troops who responded to the call of duty have been abandoned. If anybody needs assistance it should be these people.

Kennedy said ask not what you need, ask what America needs. It needs as our RSA does, a sense of compassion for those not as fortunate as ourselves. The unhesitating way the New York fire brigade responded was a good example of the human spirit at its finest.

A news item about poverty in New Zealand yesterday carried the information that many on welfare did not know about benefits to which they were entitled. Have people advising them not done so? Is it to save the tax-payer – the reasons the Republicans are advancing? If people are entitled to a benefit they are entitled to know about it.

There are times I feel sympathy for the politicians. They’ve passed the legislation granting those benefits. They should have the safe assumption that their wishes will be carried out. Apparently, not so.

One of my medications I have to apply for yearly. When I rang up about its renewal I was told the request had been declined. Why? I asked. Apparently the form had not been filled in properly.

The person processing that application did not send the form back to be properly completed. No! It was left to lie upon the table and lapse.

They did not think of the sick person out there in our community who needed that particular prescription for their survival.

And then I think of all the marvellous service I’ve had from the health system this year. It far outweighs my irritation at some paper-pushing erk. And I feel better at having had a public grump.

The Ninth Floor

2010-12-11T11:45:00.002+13:00

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Browsing through the recent copy of 'New Zealand Books' in Brian Easton’s review of ‘Crisis’ Alan Bollard’s account of the reserve Bank’s reaction to the global financial collapse I came across the following paragraph.

‘Another group of specialists who will use the book is the policy studies community, many of whom have little practical experience of how it really is. When teaching the subject, I used to encourage my students to read Harvey McQueen’s ‘The Ninth Floor’, which describes his life as an education adviser to David Lange.’

Unsolicited and unexpected praise. It seems ages since I wrote that book. For 18 months I was a bit player in the Beehive. Looking back it seems unbelievable. An office a few doors away from the Prime Minister. This little flesh and blood boy from Okuti.

I was flattered when Dr Lockwood Smith as Minister of Education later put out a feeler about my working for him. It would have been interesting working for a different administration. But I declined. I’d worked in the Beehive. Been there, done that. My two months working out my education contract in Phil Goff’s office had showed me the hard grind of a ministerial office without the glamour of the Prime Minister’s department.

Here’s a quote from ‘The Ninth Floor’ about my feelings when I left.

‘Two personal symptoms surfaced – a lack of adrenalin surge and information withdrawal. As for the first, although I had complained about the excitement, it was invigorating; one never knew from one moment to the next what might happen. One phone call and the adrenalin would be pumping. The place is addictive; it compares with travel. Afterwards one forgets the hassles in airports, the Italian siesta, French waiters and the grubbiness of London streets. So too the power game exercises its own siren song - one forgets the burn-out, the cruel dashing of hopes, the lack of time for real relationships, the insularity, the emotional brutality. I missed this high voltage. Talking to others who have left before and after my departure, I get, the same reaction, increasing the bad times fade and I find myself recalling the humour and the periods of elation. Second, not only had I read the major dailies, but often I had known what would be in them, and further there was all the insider information, the rumours, the Beehive buzz.'

Mansfield Again

2010-12-10T08:51:00.004+13:00

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Kathleen Jones began her life of Katherine Mansfield with a description of Wellington’s weather. Obvious and sensible! As I re-read the short stories – not read since the early 1980s I’m struck by the sentences about the weather. This is especially true of the stories set in New Zealand but not necessarily always.

‘It was the early afternoon of a sunshiny day with little winds playing hide-and-seek in it.’

‘All that day the heat was terrible. The wind blew close to the ground – it rooted among the tussock grass – slithered along the road, so that the white pumice dust swirled in our faces – settled and sifted over us and was like a dry-skin itching for growth on our bodies.’

‘It was a delicious day, warm and sunny with a little wind that seemed to leap at Kitti like a friendly dog, ruffling and tumbling her.’

‘Over all bulged the grey sky with black web-like clouds streaming.’

‘The sun hung in the faded blue sky like a burning mirror.’

I’m grateful for Jones. Reading her life spurred me to pick up Mansfield’s prose again. I’m loving her stories. Also her poetry. Indeed, late November, early December 2010 can be seen as a Mansfield phase in my reading life. I’ve read Ida Baker’s memoir as well. Normally, I have several books on the go at once. For once I’ve not had beside my chair a separate poetry collection for dipping into for sanity’s sake. At present Mansfield’s adjectival pieces suffice.

As a young man I’d read a few of her stories in a haphazard way. ‘At the Bay’ and ‘Prelude’ stuck in my memory. So I fell with glee upon the collection of her New Zealand stories which Ian Gordon brought out in 1974. It lived up to anticipation.

The big Alpers volume ‘Stories of Katherine Mansfield’ which I’m reading steadily through again I gave to Anne for Christmas in 1984. I read it then. But I recall I got bogged down a bit in the early London, German and Belgian stories.

Since then I’ve been to Germany and Belgium. I will not say I’m wiser but I am more mature. I appreciate pension and spa life in a way I didn’t then. And I have time – time to savour the skill, style and passion of the narrative. I understand the feminist perspective better. Those early stories reflect a woman's lot at the beginning of the 20th century in both Europe and the colony.

Since then I've also read the Letters and Notebooks. Now, I live more in solitude than I did in 1984. I read a story and sit and reflect upon it before beginning the next one. When Anne's around we'll discuss it and its companion pieces.

I’ve long argued (not really, but facetiously) that Jane Austen is too good to be wasted on the young. In a very different way the same could be said about Mansfield. So once again, thank you Kathleen Jones for your re-introduction. In my dotage I’m loving reading her.

A Regret

2010-12-09T15:58:00.000+13:00

I was asked if you have one regret about something you could have altered what would it be.

'Have seen Judi Dench play Cleopatra', I replied.

Beyond the Scene

2010-12-09T09:00:00.002+13:00

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In this month's 'New Zealand Books' I have this review which I wrote last winter.
'Beyond the Scene: Landscape and Identity in Aotearoa New Zealand', edited by Janet Stephenson. Mick Abbott and Jacinta Ruru, Otago University Press, $45, ISBN 978-1-877372-81-0
Harvey McQueen

I’m clear about the origins of my identity. Banks Peninsula is my heartland. My forebears are buried there and it’s where I grew up. For my forthcoming poetry anthology, ‘These I Have Loved’, I hardly hesitated in choosing the cover image - Akaroa Harbour. With its old volcanic plug of Onawe Peninsula in its centre, the place assumed mythic dimensions in my boyhood being. But I can imagine the soul-searching that the three editors of ‘Beyond the Scene’ went through when they considered their cover. They’ve settled for the soar of Taranaki, or Mt Egmont as it was called when I went to school (the names are part of their point). It’s partially cloud obscured, and the design presents it as diminishing in size.

There have been many landscapes in my life, and in themselves they’ve always represented something beyond the eye’s reconnaissance, including what I brought to the view. And it is more than ‘I’, it is ‘we’. So the title of this book made sense before I even opened it, and the sub-title further grounded it – landscape and identity in Aotearoa New Zealand. The distinctive perspectives included here made me more aware of a collective, intergenerational, and, even in conflict, cross-cultural dimension. This collection is based on the notion that the personal is shared, the apparently unique is universal, the specific is part of a whole. Jane Bowring says landscapes “are soaked in memories, personal and collective, and they are a constant point of reference to who we are, our perspectives on place, and how we portray ourselves”.

The first section, “Belonging”, looks at three landscapes. First, Dr Ailsa Smith of Taranaki tuturu, Ngati Haupoto descent, explores how the songs of lament of her great grandfather Te Kahui are a storehouse for the tangata whenua. “No other group of people in New Zealand’s social history will have such an opportunity for developing a oneness with the soil as Maori did in their transition from their East Polynesian origins.” Nevertheless, there is diversity in that oneness, for they reflect the local landscape, seascape and skyscape.

The Te Arawa account of the origins of the Maori universe has Tane the forest god separating the primal parents. Te Kahui’s waiata has the act performed by Tangaroa the sea-god. Taranaki proximity to the sea gave local Maori a different perspective, just as “the looming bulk” of the mountain did. “Landscape is as much emotional as physical” and the landscape features “dump their history upon you at the mention of their names”.

Smith concludes by asking whether “other populations living here” can have the “same human connectedness to the natural environment”. South Waikato farmer Gordon Stephenson says yes, they can: ‘Our landscape, here at Waotu, is one where, for us, every feature carries a meaning, a connection – its own history. Having lived here for forty-five years, I suppose we are now part of the landscape, albeit rather more ephemeral than the hills and valleys. It is somewhere we love. And it has influenced us and changed us as we have changed it, just as is true of any long-lasting and loving human relationship.’

There are people who plunder and pillage the land. There are others who value and cherish it. Farmers come in both camps, and fortunately there are many like Stephenson living here. His contribution illustrates a fulfilling relationship with his environment. It’s a piece deserving a wide readership for its positive common sense. Horrified when, in 1971, a town business group bought an adjacent forested block and milled it, he bought the “devastated forty acres and added it to our farm”. This began the seeds of what became the Queen Elizabeth II Trust. “I can look with pleasure across the paddock to the first registered QEII covenant, secure in the knowledge the bush is safe forever (unless Taupo plays up again).” And like Smith, he stresses that sky is part of the “landscape”.

David Eggleton chooses big country for his location – Canterbury in sixteen poems. ‘Where thousands of moa once stalked, cows now move to stand,/ big bladders on legs, bagpipes of udders in sway.’ First, the physical location: “frost-heave lifts flakes of rock” which “tumble” as stone, ‘till, caught by river rapids, they bank up as shingle,/ and, an eternity later, river-bed dust blown sky-high.’

Upon the pre-colonial landscape, the settlers measured and counted their way. It was “a frontier/ a found blank wasteland they would remake”. The Greek gods wrestled with indigenous heroes for naming rights. Sometimes they won, sometimes they lost. Eggleton’ s series of poems captures the essence of that conflict – rarely is it entirely conquest – and development. And so through colonial struggles and dreams to the present era when “the corporations, the speculators, the anonymous investors … join the primary producers” in “the conversion of farms to dairying land”.

The second section is called “Encounters”. Here Bowring describes Buller’s romantic plans to turn Lake Papaitonga into a picturesque spot, completely ignoring prior Maori use and dependence. Elsewhere she describes the “role of artifice in the suppression of memory” in the brochure settlement of Pegasus (where the plans make no provision for a cemetery) and redevelopment of the Sunnyside site in south-west Christchurch.

Wardlow Friesen and Robin Kearns explore the “politics of difference” in two contrasting South Auckland suburbs, Otara and Dannemora. Their photograph selection assists their analysis of how two migration waves (’50s to ’70s Pasifika and ’90s to ’00s Asian) “have led to different sets of residential, retail and religious landscapes.” Davinia Thornley contemplates films “that record the multiple histories that Central Otago has supported”. She differs from Stephenson when she says there is “a lack of belonging in Pakeha culture”. I’m not sure I buy this argument. It fits some films, but in my view it reflects, in her case and the examples she has chosen, a townie’s attitude, rather than a country dweller’s. It could be that certain types of film are good at portraying unease.

As the camera captures and explains landscape, so does art. Linda Tyler looks at the diversity of the Auckland landscape, as portrayed by artists “imagining the built environment”. The natural landscape has become “a cultural construct”, as illustrated by Robert Ellis’s painting “Motorway/city”. It would, however, be unfair to Tyler and Auckland to describe the city as mere “urban spaghetti”; Auckland is many things to many people, as her selection of artistic representations shows.

In the final section, “Prospect”, anthropologist Lyn Carter tracks the evolving cultural meanings of Ngai Tahu rock drawings. The other three pieces in this section are written by the editors. Jacinta Ruru says that historically, law has been “embedded in monocultural Pakeha colonial constructs”, but recently new directions have.emerged. She describes this change as it affects Pikiraka tahi, Mt Earnshaw in the Mount Aspiring national park. Mick Abbott looks at the heritage walks of the Otago Peninsula. Lichened walls tell a story; where people once settled and lived is now mainly a place to be visited and imagined. Janet Stephenson’s essay on Akaroa has a quote from an inhabitant, “this place gets into your blood”. Her distinction between the ‘surface landscape” and the “embedded landscape” is helpful in that, by asserting “the multiple values on a single site”, it explains how it is “impossible to divide people’s notions of landscape from their interactions with it”.

As they say in their conclusion, the editors consciously set out to avoid the “scenic”: “knowing landscape only as scenery … promotes a limited relationship” and erodes “landscape’s stores of memories, meanings and melancholies”. Their argument is that “over time, landscape shapes culture and culture shapes landscape”, and the contributors “provide many perspectives on how this leads to a gradual shift from non-belonging to belonging”. The argument has an element of faith; “coming to belong involves people rubbing shoulders with place, each adjusting over time, like rocks in a river jostling and smoothing each other to a mutually comfortable shape”.

New Zealanders keep seeking a defining moment of national identity embedded in location – Norm Kirk with a Maori boy at Waitangi, Whina Cooper with a small child on the land-march. But such an identity is more than an event or a place, it’s the sum of all its parts, an ever-changing assemblage. By looking closely at a few selected areas with their particular reverberations, this collection assists that ongoing discussion.

Ginger Beer

2010-12-08T11:49:00.000+13:00

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Summer after summer I used to make ginger beer. I didn’t keep a ‘root’. The recipe involved activating dry yeast and adding it to water along with ginger powder, sugar, a touch of citric acid and cream of tartar, and a few drops of lemon essence.

After the bucket with the mix had stood for a couple of hours I’d stir and pour it into empty plastic tonic and soda bottles. In a week’s time it was ready to drink. The only problem was that it became extremely likely that if the cap was unscrewed too quickly, the resulting fountain lost half the bottle. So to the amusement of visitors, I’d take the unopened bottle outside, stand it in a basin and slowly unscrew it.

The air hissed as it escaped. At the first hiss the cats fled. Primeval memories of snakes – they disappeared from sight, to come back cautiously later. I’d give the cap another slight turn and there’d be another rush of bubbles up the neck.

I’d go away to pull a few weeds or deadhead some flowers, and come back in a couple of minutes to give it a further turn. The whole process could take ages. The result was a satisfying cooling summer drink – ideal with a good book in summer shade.

One summer there was a spell of cold wet weather. We didn’t drink so much ginger beer. One night there was a loud explosion. A bottle had exploded on the laundry floor. The last remaining one followed almost immediately. We tidied up perfunctorily. In the morning there was a trail of ants to the site. They were enjoying the sticky concoction.

Alas, my ginger beer making days are over.

Tuesday Poem: Katherine Mansfield - Study: The Death of a Rose

2010-12-06T21:23:00.005+13:00

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STUDY: THE DEATH OF A ROSE

It is a sensation that can never be forgotten, to sit in solitude, in semi-darkness, and to watch the slow, sweet, shadowful death of a Rose.

Oh, to see the perfection of the perfumed petals being changed ever so slightly, as though a thin flame had kissed each with hot breath, and where the wounds bled the colour is savagely intense . . . I have before me such a Rose, in a thin, clear glass, and behind it a little spray of scarlet leaves. Yesterday it was beautiful with a certain serene, tearful, virginal beautv, it was strong and wholesome, and the scent was fresh and invigorating.

To-day it is heavy and languid with the loves of a thousand strange Things, who, lured by the gold of my candlelight, came in the Purple Hours, and kissed it hotly on the mouth, and sucked it into their beautiful lips with tearing, passionate desire.

. . . So now it dies . . . And I listen . . . for under each petal fold there lies the ghost of a dead melody, as frail and as full a as a ray of light upon a shadowed pool. Oh divine sweet Rose. Oh, exotic and elusive and deliciously vague Death.

From the tedious sobbing and gasping, and hoarse guttural screaming, and uncouth repulsive movements of the body of dying Man, I draw apart, and, smiling, I lean over you, and watch your dainty, delicate Death.

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During Katherine Mansfield’s return visit to New Zealand in the early 20th century she wrote a number of experimental prose poems influenced by the Decadent movement in London. Vincent O’Sullivan in his 1988 foreword to her poems notes the ‘emphasis upon atmosphere and mood rather than sustained sincerity or event.’ He describes them as ‘excursions into that dimly defined territory between the expectations of prose and the freer emotional contours of verse.’ He talks of Mansfield’s ‘adjectivial assault’.

This poem was published in Triad, a Dunedin based magazine, in July 1908. It was a magazine renowned for its avant-garde views.

When I compiled my anthology of New Zealand 19th century verse – my cut-off point was the outbreak of the First World War – I put in two of Mansfield’s vignettes as she called them. I toyed with several others, including this one, but eventually left it out.

I found its strange, Gothic, almost sadistic sense of decay repellant, yet at the same time weirdly appealing. Part of Mansfield’s power, even at this early stage was this double-edged capacity. Futher, it revealed an unusual perception into the nature of the human psyche.

Akaroa Mail

2010-12-06T11:47:00.001+13:00

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I asked poet/novelist Fiona Farrell who lives on Banks Peninsula to present a copy of my latest book to the Akaroa Library. As part of the occasion Fiona interviewed by phone for a piece for the 'Akaroa Mail' the local newspaper. Here’s her piece from the interview. It was published last week.

‘Harvey McQueen has the Peninsula in his bones. Ancestors include a sailor who wisely jumped ship and settled to farming the Peninsula hills. His grandfather managed Kinloch Estate. His father died after a fall from a horse in Pigeon Bay and lies buried in the cemetery in Little River in the company of numerous relations. His four grandparents are also buried there.

Harvey was raised on a farm at the top of Okuti valley where he was a pupil at the local primary school before transferring for three years of secondary education at Akaroa High School. His memories are of climbing to the top of the farm to gaze down on the long harbour of Akaroa below, swimming, playing tennis and going with his mates to the crayfish factory by Daly’s Wharf where they could have as many crayfish bodies as they wanted as an afterschool snack.

So when it came time to choose an image for the cover of his most recent and final anthology, it was no surprise that he chose a photograph of Onawe stretching its arm out into blue water.

This anthology, 'These I Have Loved', is Harvey says, his ‘swansong’, a book in which he says goodbye to the poems, people and places he has loved over a long and productive career.

It’s an idea he has carried with him for decades, ever since his English teacher at Akaroa High School handed him a copy of General Wavell’s 'Other Men’s Flowers'. The famous military commander in old age published a collection of the poems that had meant most to him. The teacher, Miss Greenwood, loved poetry and shared her enthusiasm with her students. Harvey was already intrigued by verse: his grandmother had recited nursery rhymes to him, and at Okuti school, Mrs Bulman had her classes memorize poems.

‘It was all highwaymen and daffodils,’ says Harvey, until the momentous day when Miss Greenwood added to the mix by writing some New Zealand poems on the blackboard. For the young boy from Okuti it was a revelation: poems didn’t have to be about England, and their writers didn’t have to be dead. In fact, one of the poems on the board, 'The Old Place', about a farmer leaving the farm he has built up over fifteen years, was actually by the woman he frequently saw riding her creaking bike round Akaroa: Blanche Baughan.

Poetry has remained central to Harvey’s existence ever since.

He became a teacher, working in high schools in the Waikato, where one day he himself introduced a class of difficult lads to Ruth Dallas’s poem, 'Milking Before Dawn'.

'In the drifting rain the cows in the yard are as black
And wet and shiny as rocks in an ebbing tide…."

The boys were, many of them, from dairy farms. They knew the monotonous ‘heat and hiss’ of early morning milking.
‘It wowed them,’ said Harvey. Such breakthrough moments are rare in a teacher’s career and deeply treasured. It persuaded him that all New Zealand kids deserved to read New Zealand poems.

As a teacher and later as a school inspector, he became a passionate advocate for New Zealand poetry. In 1985, in collaboration with Iain Wedde he compiled 'The Penguin Anthology of New Zealand Verse', an immediate best-seller. He has published other anthologies, including a very popular collection of New Zealand poems about gardening, 'The Earth’s Deep Breathing', as well as seven collections of his own verse.

And now he has written this anthology, a rich collection of familiar and unfamiliar poems, linked by passages of autobiography. They are not necessarily famous poems, or great poems. They are simply the ones he has loved best, a collection of poems by someone who reads very widely and has an excellent ear for good verse. It’s the last collection of an expert. He knows it is his last, because he suffers from a degenerative muscular disorder which will make the time consuming business of creating major anthologies impossible. Instead he lives quietly in Wellington with his wife, historian, Anne Else.

But in this collection he makes a final farewell, saying goodbye to Okuti Valley, Little River, Akaroa amongst other places: places he loves most on his homeland, the Peninsula. He can no longer travel here himself. Even attending his mother’s funeral last year was beyond him.

So the book has come south in his stead.

‘Could you take a copy,’ he said, ‘to the Akaroa Library? I’d like to present one to the collection.’

If you go into the library, you’ll find it there. On a shelf, not far from the place where Miss Greenwood wrote a poem of Blanche Baughan’s on the blackboard, and helped spark a lifetime of reading and taking deep pleasure in poetry.’

The President Has A Choice

2010-12-05T15:09:00.006+13:00

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When America snarls, sneezes, snores or sometimes smiles, the rest of the world takes notice. It’s bit of effrontery before such power and might on my part to offer an opinion. But what happens there affects us here. Elsewhere as well. Two years ago there was a hard-fought race for the Presidency. We have no say in the decision as to the most powerful figure in the world. Not only I cannot vote. Even if I were an American citizen I could not stand for the position for I was born otside the Republic.

There are some good things about that vote. The position is not finite – two terms only at the maximum – that’s the present law. The people do have a say every four years. A failure may leave, or be defeated.

It concerns me – a civics-junky – that so many Americans don’t bother to vote. The choice is made by those who do. And we, as they, have to live with the consequences.

From afar it seemed to me that McCain was a decent guy – good record in the Senate, war-hero. But his choice of Palin as his running mate alarmed me. She was untried, unknown and as the campaign went on obviously uneducatable. Not many votes differently in a few key states and she could have been a heart-beat away from the White House. We forget that Obama did not romp in.

In the build-up to the 2008 campaign I watched with intense interest the struggle between Obama and Hillary Clinton. In my head I felt she was the better candidate – knowledge of the issues, experience, Washington-based now-how.

But I’d read his book, loved his message of hope, believed his career path would give him a different perspective on America. His rhetoric was inspiring. He bettered Clinton. That was no mean feat. My American friends all wrote jubilantly about him. I had high hopes – a fresh breeze through Washington. Maybe the fervency was for real, not just hype.

Obviously others sensed the same feeling. The Nobel Peace Prize reflects that attitude. It was not just this little Kiwi. The dispossessed, the underdog, the battler, the folk with mortgages, all over America. Martin Luther King’s “I had a Dream’ was receiving valediction.

The recession did not begin under his watch. He dealt with it as well as he could. But as he called for bi-partisanship, governance opportunities began to slip past. The battle to past health-care absorbed energies and time. He’s inherited two wars. Growing unemployment weakened confidence and eroded hope.

The Republican opposition sensed weakness. Seeing the possibility of a one-term President they unleashed the hounds of continual opposition and a vitriolic media campaign to destabilise his policies and programmes. Their lack of co-operation smacks to me of anti-patriotism. The pragmatics of power over-rode the needs of the country.

In this they were assisted by the Tea-Party, anti-government and anti-Washington to the core. Palin is one of their symbols. She is not be under-estimated – she is a clever campaigner. She knows her audience and how to work the members of it..

Over the last two years I’ve wondered about the wisdom of Obama making concessions and negotiating over issues with his opponents. I’ve no problem with compromise. It’s the nature of politics. But if your opponents won’t budge and it’s you who continually give way then it’s certainly not a win/win situation.

Now, he’s made a significant yielding even before the next Congress assembles. There’ll be a wage freeze on government worker salaries. Scenting blood where will the opposition head next.

I get a picture of a courteous, thoughtful man trying to cope with brutality and dangerous glamour in an atmosphere of adversarial politics that is alien to him.

My instincts suggest that he is choosing the wrong course.

Pop, my grandfather had two heroes, Mickey Savage and Franklin Roosevelt. Their governments used government spending to help counter the rececession. Cutting it compounds the problems. That’s my eye-tooth learning.

Later, I wrestled with the theories that the Second World War saved both governments. But I recall that Harry Truman took on a Republicn congress when it tried to block his continuation of the New Deal. Everyone said he would lose the 1948 presidential election. Papers even had the banner headlines printed ‘Dewey Wins’. The people supported the President. In the voting booth! In Truman’s words ‘the buck stops here’.

The Republicans made sure next time round. Eisenhower, war-time hero, gentleman above the fray. Never a great President but a steady one. I don’t where but I’ve read somewhere how after the Bay of Pigs debacle (newly elected President Kennedy supported an anti-Castro attack on Cuba) he asked Eisenhower to the White House. Eisenhower made him go step by step through what had happened. When Kennedy had finished, Ike toweled him up, and finished to the effect ‘it’s not the mistakes, it’s the lessons learnt.’

Every yielding that Obama makes will create more consternation amongst his supporters. Unless he draws a line in the sand and sticks to it, he’ll increase his own disadvantage. That would be a pity. He had potential It has yet to be realised. There’s more at stake than who will be the next President of the USA. We are all dependent to an extent upon who that person is. When he was in Afghanistan yesterday there would have been an aide nearby with a briefcase. Every president since Truman has had that case handy.

This is a blog I regret feeling that I had to put it up; I hope my instincts are wrong.

The Truth About Santa Claus

2010-12-04T09:41:00.006+13:00

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Six year olds are not allowed to read this blog.

It’s a true story. Recollected with nostalgia, age and insight. And therefore accurate.

I was six. I sat on Santa’s knee and told him what I wanted for Christmas. ‘What did you ask for?’ my mother asked as we left the large department store. ‘It’s a secret” I replied. It actually was a hammer.

Mum wheedled and cajoled me over the next few days. Looking back it must have been a rough time for her. Her fatherless son being foolishly and stupidly stubborn. Other adults chimed in. Santa knows I kept replying. They had built up the legend so successfully I’d swallowed it hook, line and sinker.

Christmas Eve!. Anticipation! Tomorrow, I would get my hammer. We’d put out the usual glass of sherry for Santa Claus. Mum must have drunk it rather glumly anticipating my disappointment in the morning. I went to sleep with my head full of the things I would make with my hammer. The pillow-cases – we never used socks, always pillow-cases – were empty in front of the sitting-room fireplace chimney.

The great day arrived. I raced through to my pillow-case with glee. Several goodies but no hammer. The hurt still singes in my soul. Especially later in the day when Pop my grandfather asked Mum for a hammer to crack the nuts that Father Christmas had brought him. It was his annual treat. Brazil nuts – the last year we had them for a while, there was a war on. I had proudly imagined using my own hammer to help him.

My adults tried to console me. Santa’s very busy. He’s given my hammer to a poor sick boy who needed it more. Uncle Tom had several. He drove home to pick one up and lend it to me for a year. ‘I’m sure he’ll remember next year. And here’s a little saw to cut the wood for you to use with this temporary hammer.’

Despite all the kindness and concern the seeds of disbelief were sown. A year later I was older, wiser, more cynical and calculating. Probably classmates had dropped hints and clues, though on the whole the community sustained the myth miraculously well.

We went through to Christchurch again. Once more I sat on Santa’s knee. I explained what had happened last year and he assured me it would not happen again. I saw him wink at Mum, who this time hovered in earshot.

A few shops later while Granny took Douglas my younger brother to the toilets I said to Mum ‘which is the real Father Christmas?’ ‘Why’ ‘Each shop has a different one.’ She sighed, ‘I’ll tell you about it when we get home if you promise not to talk to Doug about it now.’

That evening, tired after a day’s pavement-bashing and plethora of goodies we’d seen, she put Doug to bed and allowed me to stay up. She said ‘I’ll tell you a secret but please you’re not to tell Doug or anyone else you know. Promise me that.” I did. So she told me – reindeer, chimney etc, it was all make-believe. The first thing I said was ‘so you drink the sherry and eat the piece of cake we leave out.’ ‘Well, seeing you’re now a young man who knows such things you can help me eat them’. So I had my first alcoholic drink – a sip of sherry – and a crumb of cake.

To my great disappointment she would not let me help pack the pillow-cases. I was put to bed, convinced I wouldn’t sleep. But I did.

Surprise! Christmas day celebrations were no different from other Christmas Days. Roast goose at Pop’s, fresh green peas and spuds from his garden. And a full pillow case – clothes, (Christmas was a time for widowed Mum to stock up for both of us for the next six months), books and a hammer. I hardly used that hammer. It was light and frail, suitable for tacks and small-sized boys, unlike Uncle Tom’s, which was a man-sized hammer. That stayed with us.

I kept my bargain. I never told Doug. I’ve heard people argue it’s cruel to tell kids such untruths. Well, I harbour the heresy that we all have elements of make-believe. Certainly, things have changed since then, now the seasons’s more intensely driven by commercialism. We were poor then in some respects. With a war on there were no oranges or bananas, lead toys were unavailable, there were fewer books. But in the country we were well-off in terms of food.

The shared secret was communal. I felt no anger when I learnt the truth. Indeed, I’ve a hunch my let-down the previous year had nurtured the seeds of doubt in my mind.

It was just after Pearl Harbour. All my adults looked worried. I sensed even at that tender age a feeling of let’s enjoy this Christmas, it might even be our last in this form.

I approach this Christmas – my 76th – with a sense of thankfulness for those far-off childhood family occasions. They had a sense of relaxed celebration. I always enjoy watching children unwrapping presents. Their innocent and eager acceptance of the moment appeals. But there is also disappointment – we do not always get that for which we have asked. It is true of any age.

Trade

2010-12-03T08:06:00.002+13:00

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Twice, directly, conflict in the Korean Peninsula has affected my family. In 1951, my stepfather Dick got a record price for his wool clip. A returned serviceman he’d got a rehabilitation loan to buy the run-down farm he now worked. He was one of the lucky ones.

It changed our lives. Instead of an old creaky truck we now had a new car. Mum had a washing machine – no longer the copper labour on Monday. An indoor toilet was added to the house – I got pocket-money digging the hole for the septic tank. Mum stopped making butter, we bought it from the grocers. She went to town (Christchurch) and bought clothes off the peg – no longer long hours of home dress-making.

I didn’t realise the enormity of paying off early some of the loan. But I did see and use the tracks bulldozed around the farm. That cheque greatly improved our lives. Market forces at work though as a boy I didn’t understand that. The soldiers fighting in the Korean chill needed woollen clothing. Dick was fortunate. His bales came up for sale in the midst of a buying frenzy.

My half-brother Bruce and his wife Margaret have a deer-farm near Methven. I had an email from Margaret the other day. I quote: ‘All is well on the farm. Little fawns running around early morning and late evening. So very cute. Velveting is going well with some big heads being cut off. All buying has ceased at the moment because of what is happening in Korea.’

Quite a while ago I rather scornfully said to Bruce he was making a living off a superstition that deer antler velvet was an aphrodisiac. He countered with scientific arguments. Apparently it is rich in nutrients. He showed me research proving this. There are now natural dietary supplements advertised throughout New Zealand.

I accept that my scorn was misplaced. Certainly, better deer-farming than killing tigers for the organs or rhinos for their horns. And deer provide venison one of the tastiest and fat-free meats available. I’ve always enjoyed visiting Bruce’s place. The animals look so regal. Bruce, like his father, is a farmer who cares for his animals.

Talking of farming, sow crates are to be phased out by 2005. Good! An inhumane practice. But I read Fontera is to have dairy farms in China with cow barns. I don’t like the idea of off-shoring practices we are not prepared to use here.

I know in Europe farm animals are kept in barns over the winter. Indeed in the old days they were housed underneath the house. But these were not factory farms. In season the animals went out to the meadows.

Our reputation as a food source has been based upon our grass economy with animals outside all year. We need to remember that.

Pike River Memorial Service

2010-12-02T16:06:00.005+13:00

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a)

It’s fine weather on the West Coast today. A community’s grief will be shared nationwide. When I heard that consideration was being given to a memorial service in Christchurch I muttered ‘no, it must be Greymouth’. And so it is appropriately. The camaraderie that is the Coast has been respected.

Grief comes in many guises. The unexpected death of a loved one has a numbing effect. Mining is a risky business – the mind knows that but daily safe return after safe return lulls people into a sense of security – both for those going off to work and those who see them off. Suddenly, a heart-wrenching event, fear, horror and the torment of long nights descend.

The Pike River mine explosion shook more than the Greymouth community. A disaster of this scale affects a small country. Nationwide, our thoughts went out to the victims, they were husbands, fathers, sons, brothers, colleagues and friends and of those who lived in their locale. And to all who loved them.

31 men – like all of us, with breakable bodies - went off to work that morning. They went cheerfully, grumpily, carelessly, routinely, anxiously, thoughtfully, resignedly, excitedly (one was a lad on his first day) as people go to work everywhere. All anticipated coming home that evening. But theirs is a dangerous trade. Two near the entrance miraculously survived the first explosion.. For the other 29, their loved ones began a terrible wait. The dread! Rumour! Hope, one of humanity’s grandest emotions lingers long against the odds.

And then to be told finally there was no hope left. The tumult of emotions. Why me? Why us? Why wasn’t more done? The future? Priorities are re-scrambled. Values are re-asserted differently. Plans are discarded. Friends and flowers become the order of the day. Words fail, hugs cannot stop tears but they show concern and care. ‘If onlys’ flit through the mind, align with guilt, pain and regret. What will we do this Christmas? The TV camera showed men in a pub putting aside a jug for their lost mate.

The fireball of last Sunday’s explosion which we saw on yesterday’s computer and television screen was frightening. Humanity has challenged nature down the centuries. It is bigger than us. Puny, we challenge back, even in the midst of catastrophe. This tragedy reminds us of these facts.

Shortly the blame/game will start. But today is a day to honour the lost miners, indeed all who laboured at the coal-face down the years here and overseas, some of whom have suffered a similar fate. To the living the service acts as a focal point, offering support and dignity in distress. and as a ceremony offers comfort of a sort. .The grieving are not alone in their grief and their loss

b)

I wrote the above section this morning. I’ve now watched the service. The individual tables for the 29 miners which were arranged by the family were memorable. One moved me to tears – children’s toys with a picture book ‘The Hungry Frog’. I can imagine the father reading the book to his children. It was a poignant symbol for the community’s loss.

I was struck with the poem written and read for the occasion by Helen Wilson. She described the miners going off to work that morning planning the weekend’s activities in their minds, going fishing, taking the dog for a run, mowing the lawn. The run-of-the-mill things we do which we take for granted. Planned, anticipated.but never done! That's how death often happens.

John Key made an excellent speech. He talked about his own childhood and losing his father. His ability to reveal a common touch has always been one of his political assets. I think he has revealed good leadership over this issue. On the spot frequently but in the background, not taking the limelight but there in the background supporting the local people. The evening after the announcement there was no hope of finding the miners alive he spoke in the Beehive theatre. His speech there was good. But it was in the question and answers that he excelled. As an ex-prime Ministerial speech-writer I watched in admiration. The acid (and asset) test comes after the ‘Boss’ has delivered the prepared speech.

All in all the service was moving. Part of its appeal was it amateurish nature. It was the Coast – heartfelt, gawky, improvised, sincere, sentimental, disjointed but above all well-meaning. I was pleased to be a participant from afar.

Poet Brian Turner wrote a moving elegy on West Coast poet Peter Hooper’s death. He describes attending the funeral. I borrow some lines from the poem as befitting today’s service.
‘There’s scripture, hymns, eulogies and that undeniable
finality that never fails to reduce me to tears.

Time alone will fill the spaces your going’s opened up
like evening shadows stealing into the valleys
of the Grey and Arahura that you knew and loved.’

Shared loss is tribal. All loss takes a long time to heal. Communal memory is long. It assists in the healing and delays the process. In twenty year's time the Coast will be talking about the events of the last two weeks, today, and the weeks ahead as decisions are made about what to do next.

A Comfort of Waxeyes

2010-12-01T12:47:00.005+13:00

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I used the new wet shower this morning for the first time. Much easier work situation for the care-giver and I no longer have a pesky, risky step to be surmounted. But I’ll have to learn new handholds instead of the old shower supports. We’d taken the door off ages ago. I'd learnt to manage. The old dog will have to learn new tricks.

But – a bigger but – the room is not well-cambered. Water pooled in the area behind the toilet seat. That had to be mopped up. Well it’s their problem. But more hassle for me. My health leaves me feeling helpless in such situations. I’m at the mercy of others. I'd assumed a spirit level would have been used to check.

The daily tui comes to the abutilon. As do a waxeye group. In winter there are flocks of them. Then in early spring a pair. Now four! I suspect parents and their chicks. Jen, our neighbour commented about this foursome only the other day.

This group also spend time in the row of cabbage trees at Jen’s place which overhang the fence to us. The creamy flowers are very diminutive but by the length of time the birds spend there they obviously are getting nectar. The other possibility is insects who are fertilising the flowers. I notice the waxeyes seek aphid on the roses. Good on them!

I went googling to check the facts. I learnt a lesson. I’d put the words ‘cabbage tree fertilisation’ on the search engine. Lots of hits about nitrogen phosphorus, etc. So I tried again using ‘reproduction’ instead of ‘fertilisation’. Success! I was right both times. Insects are the main source are fertilisation – moths, bees, flies and wasps. But small birds as well.

In autumn there will be berries where the flowers are now. Tui love them, balancing on the long spikes. Blackbirds have more trouble. I’ve been amused watching them struggling for a toehold. Sparrows and starlings do better.

I watch the little birds going about their business. Cabbage tree to abutilon, sometimes together, sometimes separate, but shuttling back and forth and never still. While I sit and watch somewhere in the system I hope there is a message circulating – the McQueen renovation isn’t complete yet.

Tuesday Poem; Anne Rutledge by Lee Masters

2010-11-29T21:24:00.003+13:00

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There are two poems on this blog today

Anne Rutledge

Out of me unworthy and unknown
The vibrations of deathless music;
'With malice toward none, with charity for all.'
Out of me the forgiveness of millions toward millions,
And the beneficient face of a nation
Shining with justice and truth.
I am Anne Rutledge who sleep beneath these weeds,
Beloved in life of Abraham Lincoln,
Wedded to him, not through union,
But through separation.
Bloom forever, O Republic,
From the dust of my bosom!

Edgar Lee Masters

There is a traditional story that Anne Rutledge was Abraham Lincoln’s first sweetheart. She died young, leaving him so the legend says heart-broken. Historians argue over the facts. But on her Illinois grave this poem of Lee Masters has been engraved on the granite monument.

For years I found it hard to understand the reverence that Americans had for Abe. That is until I read Jan Morris’s life of the great man during the summer of 2000/2001. We were house-sitting in a place with a lovely garden in Ponsonby. Here’s a poem I wrote after reading the book.

Reading Jan Morris' Life Of Lincoln In Anglesea Street, January 2001

The Herald has two pages of world
news and six of sport. Each morning
I dehead Jill & David's Mutabilis
rose & savour the serenity of their
bougainvillaea-shrouded veranda
(Scarlet O'Hara), very distant the city's
hum. Morris toyed with calling the book
Grape Jelly, one of her first two dislikes
in the USA, the other, the extensive
reverence for Abe. Now she too
embraces the Gettysburg greatness.
Mythical might be the log cabin but
that address endures from a man
kind to kittens & his dim-witted son;
a gawky, laconic politician, who took
courage for granted, whose time saw
one of the bloodiest combats ever.
The prose glitters in praise of his prowess.
Their lettuce & parsley have run to seed.
A person rather uncomfortable with himself
but at ease with his mission. Apparently,
at present the Earth rushes away
from the sun at 108,000 kilometres an
hour. An unconvincing fact to someone
at ease in a cane chair in peaceful Ponsonby.
He fastened in the America psyche the idea
that right has might and is therefore invincible.
Historians now reappraise, Viet Nam
napalmed doubt into the nation, but
someone better tell George W. for
Roman heroics still brawl on Capitol Hill.
Midday sun and I'm in the shade with
this gem of a book hurling the brain
out of its neutral summer lassitude
while leaving the body still in a
state of contented disengagement. .

At the Gettysburg opening of the war cemetery the speaker before Lincoln spoke for nearly two hours. When Lincoln got up to speak the cameraman took his time to get organised. Lincoln had finished his 147 words before the man had his mechanism lined up. So no photo exists of the famous occasion.

A moving moment in my life was a visit to the Lincoln memorial in Washington DC on Veteran’s Day. It’s a blot on our education system that our kids leave school knowing about Stalin and Hitler, Gladstone and Disraeli but very little about Lincoln. That combination of ‘might’ and ‘right’ seems to me crucial in understanding modern America.

Gardening

2010-11-29T09:30:00.004+13:00

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It used to grate when people said ‘isn't it nice you have a hobby’. I didn’t see my gardening as a hobby. It was more than a pastime, an amusement, a diversion. It was a way of being involved with life itself. While there were always new possibilities in the garden, ultimately it was shaped by forces beyond my control, natural forces both generous and frightening. I was only a tenant, fortunate enough to dwell upon that particular spot for a while.

And now I can but onlook. And admire other people’s handiwork. Such is life.

A Mixed Bag

2010-11-28T12:29:00.006+13:00

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A bonus of the recent fine mornings has been dew-spangled spider-webs. As the sun warms up the moisture evaporates. But for a spell the garden is draped with the glittering evidence of effort.

Yesterday I watched a sparrow through my bedroom window. It was obviously pecking spiders from under the guttering. I’d seen either it or one of its mates at a similar task a few weeks back. Nature’s checks and balances.

During the Cultural Revolution the Chinese went on an anti-sparrow campaign. They got rid of them in millions. And the insects multiplied. Sparrows are like rats and dogs, the co-existence with humans is built into their societies.

Yesterday, they put in the vinyl for my wet shower. Anne took this "outdoor toilet" photo, the bowl which they'd temporarily removed looking forlorn on the shady side of the garage. The tap looming over it suggests temporary plumbing. Close examination reveals the garden seat facing east, a good spot to sit on a sunny morning.

But yesterday I waited to go outside until later in the day. Anne had been gardening most of the afternoon. Ali had given her some herbs for transplanting, sorrel, lemon balm, lovage and chervil. As well she put in lettuce and rocket seedlings. We're now having a green salad daily as a result of her labour. The smell of crushed coriander leaves dominated the scene. On the table beside me was some mint she'd saved for use after pulling it out. I ate some of the succlent top shoots, a hangover from my gardening days. I was always crushing rosemary or nibbling lemon balm or chives.

I sat with my pre-dinner whisky savouring the scene. The two lavender bushes she'd potted are in full flower - to the delight of bees, bumble and honey. Pansies and petunias are magnificent. Roses everywhere. One of my contributions, foxgloves, add their unique shape to the area. I'd planted their forebears under the two tree-ferns in the NE corner. Self-sown progeny now sway colourfully in that territory. a mixture of white or pink spears.

We dined well. Anne made watercress and potato soup for starters and then lovely lamb cutlets - just the right shade of pink - for mains. A bottle of French bordeaux - a splash out, all the better for being rare - added a touch to a good meal for the last Saturday in November.

I then watched 'Hobson's Choice', a DVD of a David Lean movie from the 1950s. I'd seen it then but didn't appreciate it. The English class system was beyond my ken then as was life in Salford, Manchester. I think too the concept of an offer of a choice when there really is no choice was too complicated for an unphilosophical young man. I can see now why the critics raved about it.

Charles Laughton and John Mills were superb. But it was Hobson's daughter Brenda De Banzie who stole the show. Described by her father 'as a bit on the ripe side' for marriage she sets out to show him how wrong he is. The other delight was to see a young Prunella Scales who later made her name in 'Fawlty Towers'.

It was a good day after a rugged week. I understood Voltaire's desire to work in his own garden while the world goes on its restless way. But welfare reform concerns me - co-inciding with the Pike Creek tragedy occupying the nation's attention, the working group's latest report has slipped under the radar.

Dependency-bashing is easy. I accept a dilemma. Too small a mesh in the safety-net and the lazy, cunning, cheating people get supported. But if the mesh is too wide some who deserve assistance slip through. I would prefer to live in a society that errs on the side of compassion. But these issues are mighty - they need rigorous and careful consideration rather than adversial and pre-judged dogma. I fear the timelines are too tight for any satisfactory resolution.

Also concerning is the Korean Peninsula. I don't take heart from Sarah Palin's comment that the North Koreans are our allies. All politicians make slips of the tongue. She makes them all the time. Gung ho on top of ignorance does not inspire confidence.

But America faces a dilemma. North Korea is acting confrontational. Why? That is my question. But America will have to act. Can it afford another war. Especially one with China waiting in the wings. If the North is not careful it'll find itself on the slippery slope of no return and so heaven help the poor people caught up in the conflagration.

I sat in the restful lawn last evening and considered these things.

The Memories of LM

2010-11-27T10:59:00.001+13:00

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‘I loved Rhodesia and the lazy yet vibrant life of the untouched land with its few people and miles and miles of peace. In the moonlight the plantations of eucalyptus trees shone like still moonstones: in the early dawn the tall grasses swayed in the light breeze, heavy with dewdrops, till suddenly the sun rose and in one half hour the world was once more a hard, dry gold. Then, dotted all over the fields, fine spirals of blue smoke began to curl up from the fires of early workers, while across the wide valley soft, white blankets of cloud rolled up and toppled over the slopes in a hurry to get down to the river before the hot sun licked them up.’

The passage is from LM, as Ida Baker, Katherine Mansfield’s devoted friend and helpmate, was known. The year is 1916. In Europe ‘the ghastly war raged’. LM was returning to Europe from her father’s place in Africa.

In light of what’s happening in present day Zimbabwe it reads sadly. But as I read it in quotation in Kathleen Jones’s biography of Mansfield the thought struck me that Ida Baker was not to be lightly dismissed.

So the life finished I took ‘Katherine Mansfield: The Memories of LM’ off the shelf to reread. I see I gave the book to Anne for her birthday in 1986. Fourteen years ago, two houses back for us. I’d read it at the time. But since then I’ve read a lot more about Mansfield including her journals and letters.

I read it this time with the benefit of just completing the Jones. She has used LM’s memories judiciously and sensitively. I’m no expert but it seems to me as biographer she places this relationship in a fair and accurate context. LM’s account is guarded and cautious. But she was there for Katherine’s two early pregnancies, unwise marriage, and towards the end as the writer’s health deteriorated as menial support.

LM made many perceptive comments about Mansfield. Here’s one which I think is a good description. ‘She was both a creator and an extrovert. She looked at life and saw it; then she took it into herself and created.’

The letters from Katherine to her friend reveal an interesting relationship. It was based on devotion and trust rather than equality. LM knew her place. Her prime loyalty was to her friend. I’m pleased to have read her memories again – this time with much greater understanding – and am grateful for her dedication. It helped Katherine to create and survive as long as she did.

Red Carnations

2010-11-26T12:04:00.003+13:00

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Anne likes flowers in the living room. For over a fortnight we’ve had a bunch of dark pink alstroemeria from our own little garden. I planted them the year we arrived. They were at their end yesterday so Anne bought some bright red carnations (for me, because she knows I like them).

They sit there, jaunty, in a vase beside me. She also picked two red roses, Dublin Bay, from the climber we’d planted. She bruised the stem and placed an aspro in the water, time-honoured customs to preserve shape, scent and longevity. A kind neighbour had brought some little pink carnations of the kind described by Shakespeare. So the room looks colourful.

Part of the appeal of red carnations is that in season when he dressed to go out my grandfather, Pop, always wore one in his button-hole. A keen Labour man, it displayed his conviction and loyalty. He in his turn probably got the habit from his mother whose Sumner garden always had carnations, pink, red and white. I was six when great-granny Barclay died died in 1940, aged 98.

Here is a poem I wrote about her years ago.

'Conscious
how environment has shaped me
protocol, parameter & precedent
I wonder about Mum’s paternal
grandmother. “Lyttelton was like
coming home, laddie, coming home,”
easterly drizzle, ochre hills, or
just the look of land after the
rough charter voyage from Dundee?

Then a clean apron among the burnt
stumps & butter churns at Pigeon
Bay. I am told her husband though
a tartar was good at felling totara
& on the County Council. When they
shifted to Okuti her many children
walked over the hill to the native
school; from their studybooks she
taught herself to read.

I recall lavender
& camphor clothes, thick glasses,
carnations along her fence, lapses
into Gaelic, tram rides into town,
& the time her son a cabinet minister
brought Peter Fraser home, I watched
her pour tea from a pot I had never
seen before & to the nodding great
man describe me as a future politician.

She would not have understood
the theologian’s ”politics is the sad
business of dispensing justice in a
sinful world,” everything except John
A Lee or her shortbread could be perfect.

How I have failed her.

Once apparently
they asked,”did you never want to go
back? & she replied, “such a long way.”

When I had a sore throat, she mixed
aspro, honey, told me to stop crying &
sat up all the night to share the pain.

A devout Presbyterian she went to church every Sunday. A devout teetotaller she had a strong conviction that a hot toddy was good for colds. She seemed to have a lot of colds. Pop’s brother, Jim Barclay, a Cabinet Minister in the first Labour Government, brought Peter Fraser to see her when she was dying. Of course I did not know that, such things were not talked about in those days. Mum was nursing her. Great-Granny called out from the bed-room for me to come and meet the great man. He was quietly spoken, this was not the booming voice Pop listened to on the radio. Gravely, he shook my hand and told me to be kind to my mother.

Apparently the comment about ‘such a long way’ is a family mythology. Cousin Sally’s research unearthed the information that Great-Granny and her husband had gone back to Dundee in the late 1920s. They were not impressed, the town had shrunk and was grimy. (The Depression was beginning to bite). When I taxed Mum about it she told me that the remark was in response to her question about them going back again. I know Great-Granny hated the sea, despite living by it. She did tell me about the crowded conditions of the first voyage out. Children died of a measles epidemic on board.

With the wet shower being installed, Susanna my caregiver is washing and dressing me in the lounge. ‘Lovely carnations’ she said this morning. They were her parent’s favourite flower. Susanna hails from Germany. Something satisfying about a shared connection over a flower.

Finality

2010-11-25T08:54:00.001+13:00

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29 men dead. The news, families, a community and a nation feared announced at last. The first blast looked horrendous. The second was devastating. Hope, that great human characteristic, finally had to be relinquished. At such times other things seem trivial. The rivetting power of TV brought a nation to mourning.

My Take On A Fantail

2010-11-24T11:42:00.002+13:00

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Several years ago I wrote this piece.

A Saturday morning routine is cleaning my electric razor in the courtyard. I tamp it down on the arm of the bench. On Wednesday the fluff is still there, mist-spangled, so for four days there has not been enough breeze to shift it. I remember reading somewhere that hair clippings can be added to compost.

As I drop this tiny contribution into the bin, a fantail appears, flitting and jerking about. I freeze, and suddenly it lands on my old garden sweat-stained hat. It hardly stays a second, then takes off, snaps an insect or two, and lands back on the hat. When it flies off again, it seems so tame I decide to help it.

Gently I shake an akeake bough. The fantail goes frantic as it chases insects loosened by my movement a few inches from my face wheeling and turning, twittering all the time. Its body is so small, it appears to be just a fluff of feathers with a very smart tail. It’s so close I can see the white strip above its eyes, another round its throat, and the chestnut brown of its undercarriage.

Postscript 1 Now I lack the motor skills to clean the razor. It's now one of Anne's chores.

Postscript 2 On the subject of birds, the nearby Karori Wildlife Sanctuary has a problem. A morepork family have nested in a kaka box. Clever birds, a built-to-measure residence.

Tuesday Poem: Piwakaka

2010-11-22T20:36:00.001+13:00

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Piwakaka

Waka jumper, feather box of tricks on
springs, tree-hopper, handbrake-turn show-stopper,
fantastic tail-spreader, full-house tree-clown
two flits short of coming a bad cropper.
Pathetic fallacy! For one moment
my heart jumped out and into you: beyond
the window’s glass you snatch up joy. Insects
actually: heaven sent by the fat
season’s purblind hand smack
into your squeaky trap’s sweet reflex.

Jeffrey Paparoa Holman

It seems to me appropriate to put up a Tuesday poem by a Tuesday poet. Holman’s collection of poems ‘Fly Boy’ was recently released. (I reviewed it in ‘Stoatspring’ on 2 November). There were many powerful poems about planes. There is also a delightful section about birds and their flight capability. One that particularly caught my attention was ‘Piwakaka’, the Maori word for the bird the colonists called fantail. It is an enchanting jaunty little insect-eater. The poem sums up very well my reaction also to this little jewel/clown of a bird.

Out of Action?2

2010-11-22T14:16:00.002+13:00

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Workmen began this morning to put a wet shower in my bathroom. When finished it will make my life less complicated. But the process of renovation will be noisy, dusty, smelly and time-consuming. It'll also mean limited access to my computer. So for a few days there may be few blogs. I'll put tomorrow's Tuesday Poem up this evening. So over and out.

Cheers to all

Harvey

Tetsuya

2010-11-21T12:29:00.004+13:00

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The first Australian city I visited and stayed in was Perth. We stayed with my first wife’s cousin. It was a stepping stone to a round the world jaunt – Bangkok, Teheran, Istanbul, Rome, Athens, Paris, London, New York and Los Angeles and places in between.

Many of my acquaintances did their overseas experience when they finished their varsity courses. I didn’t. I caught the travel bug later. I visited many places, but the one I felt most at home and comfortable in was Sydney. Several visits confirmed its charm. I was lucky, always sunny weather, a sparkling harbour.

The sails of the Opera House and the strength of the Harbour Bridge were eye-catching. The history of the Rocks area was appealing. The zoo was fascinating. The ferries were adventure. The Blue Mountains were different from our mountains. The city was containable, walkaround was easy and the bookshops were treasure troves. Shows at the Opera House were exciting.

Patrick, Anne’s youngest son, shifted to Sydney. We visited him. He planned a career in the hospitality industry. Later, I on an education visit, took him to Doyle’s famous fish restaurant for a midday meal. It was the last time I saw him for he died in an accident a few months later.

Sydney suddenly became a no-go area. And then Anne won a raffle – a thing she rarely does – a trip to Sydney to hear Pavarotti sing. It was almost as if we were meant to go back.

Pavorotti was superb. It was a glamour evening.

The other thing about that trip was I’d been given a year’s subscription to Gourmet Traveller magazine. It was at the beginning of my cooking phase. Just before we went to Sydney there was a cover article about the restaurants of Sydney. We did our research.

There was an article about Tetsuya’s, a new restaurant in the suburb of Rozelle. Tetsuya was Japanese. He’d arrived in Sydney at the age of 22 years and started work as a café dishwasher. He'd progressed to his own place. The day we arrived in Sydney we rang up. We were lucky, there’d been a cancellation so we fluked a booking.

The place was so obscure the taxi-driver got lost. I map-read him to the place. I wish I’d kept a diary. It was the nicest meal I’ve ever had. My main was ox-tail wrapped in won-tons. Dessert was a mango and gorgonzola mascarpone tart. It was BYO. I’d bought a bottle of good Australian red. The waiter treated it deferentially. I’m sure he thought ‘cheapskate’.

Anne forgets what she had. But she recalls scrumptious flavours. There was a mouthwatering sorbet between courses. It was a meal to remember. We did not realise it at the time. But we had dined at the establishment of one of the great chefs of our era.

Later, Tetsuya bought the Suntory resturant in Kent Street in the heart of the city. There are now huge waiting lists.

We dined well for the rest of that short visit. I am pleased we made it. My lasting memories of Sydney now include the finest singing I’ve been privileged to hear and the finest meal it's been my joy to eat. After that visit we had no desire to go back.

Katherine Mansfield

2010-11-20T11:42:00.003+13:00

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I’ve finished reading Kathleen Jones’ life of Katherine Mansfield. It’s a big book. The subject deserves that size. It’s a very readable book. Jones’ sub-title is ‘the story-teller. She herself is a story teller. Her ample selection of quotations, illustrations and anecdotes fill in the picture of an age, a set as well as a life..

Katherine casts a long shadow. Her husband Middleton Murry tried to shape that shadow. From childhood’s windy Wellington to the lonely last few days in a French chateau Jones led me to think more widely about their relationship. Murry was with her when she died. She’d been talking about a life together. She loved him despite his selfishness and stupidity. So did other women. Maybe that was his appeal – the need to be loved. His hopelessness, helplessness and clumsiness called for protection. He obviously had charm. She adored him even as she was frustrated by him. I find his meanness unforgivable.

This is an example of what the book has done for me. I find myself emotionally involved. I want to say to Katherine ‘for goodness sake stop moving around all the time. Look after yourself. Settle somewhere and write.’ She was not the cautious Kiwi that I am. And her ill-health was different. She was young and talented with a whole world still ahead. The comparison with Keats is apt.

She expressed the world so vividly. Ida Baker complained that Alpers, one of her first serious biographers missed the laughter and the joy. But the word I use to describe her is ‘sadness’. The cover photo has a sad downcast look in the eyes. In almost all her stories there is a sense of unfulfilment, of glimpses of a better world. Of unobtainable hopes and longings! There might have been mirth. But beneath it there is an abyss.

‘The Fly’ was a story that had a huge emotional impact upon me. When I first read it I was willing that little insect to struggle on. When it gave up the struggle I felt cheated.

I finish the biography with the same huge sense of regret – what could have been. In a world full of bluff and bluster Mansfield portrays an immediate and intimate reality that is moving and perceptive. This is the stuff of everyday existence – elusive, mysterious, gorgeous; and it doesn’t last.

I can see in her conversation the same capacity meant she could be cruel in a impish and/or malicious sort of way. Katherine was no saint. Murry’s mistake was to attempt to deify her. It wrecked his life. It wrecked his four children’s lives. And it distorted our picture of her. Virginia Woolf described her as a ‘civet cat’. Jones presents her warts and all and I find myself loving her more than I did before I read this account. Indeed, I’m bowled over – an unusual admission from a 77 year-old. If she’d lived what would she have produced? As it is, there is heaps to relish.

When I compiled my anthology of 19th century New Zealand poetry I put in a couple of Mansfield’s prose poems. But I was struck with a strange Gothic one called ‘Study: The Death Of A Rose’ which I left out. It begins ‘It is a sensation that can never be forgotten, to sit in solitude, in semi-darkness, and to watch the slow, sweet, shadowful death of a Rose.’ I’ll put the whole poem up on a later blog. I remember thinking at the time, this person is more complicated than I realised. .

Jones quotes William Orton who in 1910 said all her writing ‘was a kind of poetry, not so much in respect to form or context as in its extreme intensity and accuracy of realisation.’ Rightly so! I realise I’ve not been reading any poetry while reading the life. There was not need for that nutrient.

I wonder if that sadness and sense of loss, reflects in some sense a colonial upbringing. Home is always somewhere else. Curnow’s poetry and much of our film-making carries the same ethos. I suspect that colonial origin also gave her an edge in Edwardian England. Her peers didn’t quite know how to place her.

In Europe she felt the tug of her childhood birthplace. When she was here she felt the lure of Home.

Auden’s poem about the fall of Icarus begins
‘About suffering they were never wrong,
The Old Masters; how well, they understood
Its human position; how it takes place
While someone else is eating or opening a window or just walking dully along.’
These lines came to mind as I reflected on the luxury of writing about a book while West Coasters anxiously await news of their loved ones. But such is life.

And I face a further quandry. What to read next. I’m tempted to read LM’s account of life with Mansfield. There’s Mansfield's own stories. There’s a life of Emily Dickinson. There’s Franzen’s large new novel Freedom and I should re-read Coal Flat. The one good thing. I’m a winner which ever way I go. And verifying the Auden quote has meant a happy half hour reading that master’s poems. ‘As I Walked Out One Evening’ is a gem.

Pike River

2010-11-20T10:43:00.000+13:00

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I know enough of the Greymouth community to appreciate the alarm and consternation caused by the Pike River coal mine explosion. My thoughts and hopes go out to them.

Questionnaire

2010-11-19T09:47:00.005+13:00

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The letter looked official – from Capital and Coast District Health Board. A new appointment or suggestion? No! It was a questionnaire, to be filled in and forwarded to an Auckland company for processing.

It was a yes/no five point scale ranking questionnaire. About visiting outpatients at the public hospital. Easily filled in. And a waste of time.

The last visit was great. Anne and I knew the ropes. The specialist was on time. She dealt with me well and quickly. We departed happy.

Other visits have been rugged. Sometimes through no fault of the staff or the system. Other times because someone has fluffed an appointment time or an emergency has arisen. At all times staff have been courteous, even though in some instances harassed.

It’s impossible – well maybe incredibly difficult – to generalise.

In some visits I see several people. Some are helpful, some go out of their way to assist, others appear to be going through the motions. Again, it’s hard to generalise.

I found offensive the question ‘degree to which your condition has improved as much as expected’. My disease they tell me is incurable. So how the hell can it improve? Indeed, the question borders on the obscene.

This visit I saw the neurology specialist and no one else. The previous visit was to see cardiology. A technician checked my pacemaker, competently. Whereas in respiratory visits I see radiology, (for an X-ray), a nurse (for a blood test), technicians for my machine and the specialist who is excellent at explanation and advice. Indeed I look forward to meeting him twice a year

There is a question about my confidence in the skill of the provider. I might have feelings but I have no capacity to make a judgement. I rely upon the system to keep charlatans out.

There is a question about comfort. Waiting rooms are waiting rooms. The larger they are the more impersonal they are. They’re clean and respectable and all I ask is a chair with arms that I can lever myself up from. I dislike commercial radio burbling in the background. When I've complained I've been told others like it.

I understand the desire for feedback. But the design and processing of this questionnaire has a cost. I wonder how many hip operations to take an example at random could be met by that same expenditure.

And to what purpose? To enable the Miniser of Health to rise to his/her feet in Parliament and ponderously tell the nation that the level of satisfaction is such and such? Which really tells you little.

Bantams

2010-11-18T10:43:00.005+13:00

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My youngest brother Bruce and his wife Margaret visited me yesterday. He’s a keen duck-shooter. We now have three wild ducks in our freezer. Years ago another brother Rick gave our widowed mother several wild duck – more than she wanted. She gave one to a friend who put it in the microwave to cook. The lead shot exploded, destroying duck and machine.

Bruce and I got reminiscing about Mum who died last year’s winter aged 97. Mum had a country contempt for those she called ‘Townies’. He told me a story I’d never heard before.

Mum’s next door neighbour was given some bantams. They got clucky as bantams do. After six weeks or so the neighbour commented to Mum their eggs weren't hatching. Mum said, ‘well, you don’t have a rooster’. “What difference does that make?’ asked the neighbour.

I remember Mum scornfully telling me another story about the same lady. Her husband had a good garden. Mum found her buying carrots at the local greengrocer’s. She asked why, (Mum was a busybody), to be told the lady in question did not like to get her hands dirty. ‘What do you think of that?’ Mum’s statement had a triumphant ring to it.

For a long time Mum kept a few chooks in her Christchurch backyard. They ate the kitchen scraps, gave her company and purpose, and supplied her with eggs. She grew silver beet for them and spread the ‘poo’ from their roosting area back on to the garden. To grow more silver beet.

On my boyhood farm, Dick, my stepfather, built a small concrete dam across the small creek that ran past the house to provide a pool for our ducks and geese to swim in. Princess Grace, our sow (so christened by Dick because of her outstanding beauty - she was the ugliest pig ever seen), used to wallow in it.

She developed a game of lying still, only snout and eyes showing, while the ducks or geese settled. With a snort she'd jump up, sending the birds flying in panic, her pig-eyes gleaming in triumph. She'd settle down, they'd return, the whole performance repeated. Ducks are slow learners.

There were turkeys and bantams as well as chooks. As the ducks didn't brood their young well, Mum put their eggs under the bantams. The little hens strutted round followed by a gaggle of awkward looking youngsters tangling over their feet chasing flies. Sooner or later the ducklings would discover the pond and paddle away, leaving their mother frantic on the bank.

Once Princess Grace startled the ducklings. The mother bantam stormed across into the water right into the pig's face. Astounded, the sow gave ground. We had to rescue the bedraggled hen.

Wake-Up Meanderings

2010-11-17T09:04:00.002+13:00

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An uninterrupted night’s sleep – no 2 a.m.cup of tea and back to bed. Instead, I woke up at 6 a.m., pulled back the curtain I could reach and lay there looking at the oak tree outside. It’s old and battered but covered in fresh lime-green leaves. I toyed with metaphor. A deciduous tree goes through an annual cycle - catkins, new leaves, acorn, browning leaves. But the leafless stage is not death. It’s dormancy.

Although I like our native evergreens I’ve always appreciated the winter shape of the imported deciduous – gaunt skeletons against the sky, the bare shape of its being. Summer leaves give life and bulk, and hide the outline. Such trees lead a double life.

On the window sill I could see photos of Mum, Anne, my niece Janine and her daughter Taylor. Four generations. The oak tree was once young and now is aged, rather shattered by last March’s storm. The cycles of the tree occur around a more basic rhythm, youth, growth, maturity and decay. It is the rhythm of all living things.

The tree ferns on the other side of the apartment follow a different cycle of renewal. Fresh fronds uncurl and spread graceful. They provide a dappled shade that’s great to sit under. Over time, having shed their spores, they droop and die. In my gardening days I used to pull them off and take them to the tip. I now get Bruce our lawn mower man to do this The fern’s trunk shows from where each frond once swayed though other plants now sprout parasitical up it.

As I lay there my mind chased another thought. During the night I’d had a dream, I was back relief teaching. The irritating thing about these dreams is that often I’m in full health, the strong and agile young man I once was. In the school library unpacking new books I was blissfully happy – excited pupil librarians and fresh books, a great combination. Ichabod!

It was with reluctance that I got out of bed and turned off my two machines. Another day. Drat! I've dropped my medicines into my porridge plate. The reality of washing them restored other rhythms. And when I'd done that I was off with Mansfield on her second stay in Bandol. I find my self wishing the poor lass had had better health. Am I a born romantic or are we all. I still want to amend the world. Just as well I can't. I'd have made a lousy dictator.

Today I read the Tuesday Blog

2010-11-16T21:40:00.001+13:00

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Someone recently asked what was a typical day for me. That’s a hard one. Most days are atypical. Take today. I was up early for an appointment at neurology in the public hospital for my six-monthly check-up. The taxi-ride over was under a grey sky as we scudded past cabbage tree and rhododendron in full flower and pohutakawa budding everywhere – a typical November day.

For once, there was no waiting, instead questions and tests, a relatively cheerful interview. The verdict – as I anticipated, muscular degeneration continues but slowly – more strength in shoulders and arms than legs and feet, I knew that. While I waited in the foyer with my walker while Anne went to get a taxi to come home a lady going past said ‘be careful out there; the wind gusts are getting stronger. It was a Wellington gale.

Home in time for Anne to go shopping. The result a delicious lunch – duck and walnut terrine on fresh bread and fresh water-cress leaves. And the inevitable fortisip, my nutritional food supplement. In my youth we used to harvest water-cress from the back-waters of the creek that ran past our house. My memory of that freshly gathered green was its strong flavour. Apparently the sugar in vegetables is turned to starch the longer they are harvested and stored.

In the afternoon I explored this week’s The Tuesday Poem. I enjoy being a member of this community. It is always a stimulating selection, but this time it was one of the best. There is a editor who choses the first-up poem. This week’s guest was Jennifer Compton who put forward Australian poet Chris Mansell ‘Cow Poem’. She is a poet whom I‘ve never read. I must try to obtain more of her work. A delight in being part of the group is the introduction to poems and poets I did not know.

A highlight this week was Alicia Ponder’s choice of the Kipling poem ‘The Smuggler’s Song’. “Watch the wall my darling while the Gentlemen go by.’ I’d learnt that poem in primary school. But Ponder’s unearthed a video of Kipling reading it. The visual video is not too hot but Kipling’s voice is strong and unique. And he reads with a Devonshire accent and slang that presents the poem a fresh light. It’s a real treat.

Two other listings have American poets William Carlos Williams and Billy Collins reading the selected poems. There’s an Emily Dickinson poem I’d never come across. And a surprise, a poem by Margaret Cavendish born in 1623 about atoms – science fiction in the 17th century. Apparently she became a member of the Royal Society.

Mary Mc Callum, the mastermind behind the Tuesday Poem, re-discovered a poem of hers on an old hard-drive. How many masterpieces languish in discarded technology.
"A poem strings
the heart beats together
and is a small throat
to let out the sighs’

There’s a poem by Tim Jones that speaks of the ‘indefinite promise of summer’. Jeffrey Paparoa Holman describes the impact of a kamikaze plane ‘a burning comet’ on the deck of an aircraft carrier a few days before the war ended. His father survived. Hence Holman’s existence.

And another highlight - the selection includes a favourite poem of mine, Roma Potiki’s ‘And My Heart Goes Swimming’ - one of New Zealand’s loveliest love poems. There’s lot’s more. The site’s well worth exploring. Just hit the quill on the left hand side of my blog.

I read and commented on the selections while my computer audio played a disk of Nat King Cole. “It was just one of those things’. My vintage shows – nostalgia as background. A stimulating afternoon! I’ll let Cavendish have the last word on the poems. ’So Atomes, as they dance, finde places fit’. We know more about atoms than that good lady. But we remain human on the same planet,

That activity finished I cuddled down again with the life of Katherine Mansfield. Tomorrow’s biographers will not have the luxury of the written word that is available for her vintage. Email, facebook and text will not leave the detail of anguish and the glory that is obtainable from that generation.

TV News – the big wide world increasing remote. Dinner, tarakihi –Anne discovered a tempura recipe for the batter, white wine instead of sake – and watercress. I am tired, the morning was stressful, the afternoon was full. TV sog, the Canadian Arctic – lovely polar bear cubs, Nigella cooking, River Cottage self-sufficency – a man kind to mice but willing to kill a deer for food is a puzzling beast - and so I am ready for bed and the oxygen machine.

Tuesday Poem: Life Sentence

2010-11-15T21:23:00.001+13:00

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Life Sentence

Eden, created for our expulsion
We inhabit its garden for such a short spell.

The brevity of pleasure
I survive in the kingdom of the frail

Personality simplified to enjoyment
of foxgloves under tree fern

And a tui’s daily interview
At the abutilon, swaying under its weight

In the past there was delight
In outwitting expected defeat

Now, the wait for the next appointment
‘’You’ve gone down hill, you know’

As if I didn’t, we’re all speechless
About the obvious, formulaic words prevail

Hard to be premature about the inevitable end
The dread, the fear, the foolish hope, they survive

Harvey McQueen

This poem rattled about and out over last weekend. Normally I leave them for a while. This one I decided could be released from the holding pen straight away.

A Stroll in Familiar Terrain

2010-11-14T12:13:00.002+13:00

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‘When I have fears that I may cease to be’. Keats. The mind is its own territory. In it, while we're alive, we move and landscape our existence. My sources of stimulation are now of necessity limited. The flow of nutrients has to be cultivated, otherwise nostalgia and old anecdote rampage like ragwort across the scene.

Where do I go from here?

In the computer I hold a ragbag of jottings as possible blogs. This paragraph has lurked there for some time. Maybe the metaphor’s impossible? Maybe I lack the skills to cope with it? Maybe it’s the right idea in the wrong time? Or is that vice versa? Maybe the whole concept is old hat? Maybe the thought’s a waste of time? Anyway, as an idea it keeps going nowhere.

Fortunate are those who can work at what their mind is inclined to do. For most adults in our society mental skills are for hire. That is why we admire the young – the shades of the workplace are not full-blown.

At the moment there is a fuss over the length of a school-girl’s dress. Ever since I started teaching this issue has waxed and waned. It’s partly an age-old issue – the growing one bucking the system. As she grows older she’ll either accept the rules (most do) or become a rebel and a drop-out. It's an age-old conflict.

Following the career of Katherine Mansfield I see that tension. She’s on the verge of the ‘Blooms Berries’ set. She’ll never make full acceptance. The British class system is not resilient.

Writers seek freedom to do their own thing. But they need some sort of security. Precariously scratching a subsistence existence may be the stuff of Hollywood dreams. But it's pretty rugged and assumes good health and energy. Economic independence is a bonus.

And there’s enough of a puritan in me to say discipline is needed.

I realise I’m chasing a growl at myself. Lately, I’ve been mooning mentally around. For several months I’ve hardly written a poem. It’s time to get cracking. It’s time not just to meander haphazardly around that mental terrain but to seek some structures and create some forms that give verbal shape to those vague longings. I think reading about Mansfield is shaping this sense. Gardens just do not happen. Meals have to be prepared. Poems need to be written.

The Biographer's Dilemma

2010-11-13T11:50:00.005+13:00

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A colonial – and therefore unusual - amidst the Edwardian intelligentsia, or should it be artistic circles – such was Katherine Mansfield’s lot.

Here’s a paragraph from Jones’s biography. ‘There seems no way out of it. John is determined to go to Lawrence though he has misgivings about whether Katherine will be able to endure it. She reluctantly agrees to spend the summer in Cornwall, leaving Bandol at the end of April. She tells a friend that her book "won’t be old enough to travel until then." ‘The Aloe’ seems doomed to be stunted by transplantation, just as it began to grow and flourish.’

I admire that last sentence. It carries a novelist’s assurance. It puts a template upon that particular period of Katherine’s life. It reflects the great strength of this account of her life. And yet; it reflects the biographer’s dilemma.

Anyone’s life is a narrative in itself. Only the inhabitant of that particular assortment of cells and atoms can know the ins and outs of that life and even then there are forces over which the ‘I’ has little understanding or knowledge.

Any autobiography is a selection. I’ve recently read reviews of Bush and Blair’s memoirs. Both men present the best picture possible of their actions. Even doubts are winnowed for audience reaction.

Any biography is a selection. Further though, the biographer is one removed. She or he has to make do from letters, diaries, recollections if available, contemporary material in whatever form it is available.

Jones is fortunate. Not only was Mansfield in the chattering class of her era she was also a member of a scribbling class. They wrote all the time, to one another, for posterity, for the record, for themselves, for fame and recognition.

How to present this material is any biographer’s problem. Too much speculation annoys the reader. On the one hand, on the other hand, slows the narrative. But often the biographer can only present the facts and offer a hypothesis. How that thesis is delivered is the issue. Jones’s narrative is clear – this is what happened.

Jones’ strength is she goes squarely for the positive. I get a clear picture. Mansfield, in reasonable shape health-wise for a while is happy writing in Bandol on the French Mediterranean coast. She has discovered a rich gold vein to excavate, childhood memories. It is a chance to exorcise some of the ghosts and doubts that have pursued her for ages. And now Murry wants her to up sticks and take her to the Lawrence’s in Cornwall. I as onlooker want to shout ‘don’t go’. But this is biography and she went.

I give this illustration because it reveals the enthusiasm and delight I’m having in reading the book. It’s really engaging me. Some might say too much detail but I’m reveling in the description. But Jones's very strength as a biographer is also a handicap sometimes. Have I read too many accounts of Mansfield? Possibly! But for example, almost universally Murry is called ‘Jack’

Up till now Jones has not I think ever mentioned the word ‘gonorrhea’. [I'm about two-thirds through the book]. Most accounts discuss this as one of the probable reasons for Katherine’s ill-health. Jones states categorically that the illness is ‘rheumatism’. No argument! No discussion!. Maybe that’s fair enough. But it leaves me with a niggle of doubt about the rest of the account.

Having expressed this reservation I’ll return to the book. Apart from ‘Sons and Lovers’ and his poetry I’ve never been a Lawrence fan. I’ve always regarded him as a bully. So I accept Jones’s account of his relationship with Katherine and Murry. What I’m probably trying to say is that I’ve read too much about Mansfield to approach any book about her without prior prejudices. But it drove me to reread ‘The Prelude’. And to give thanks to the writer who could create such a gem. The novel ‘The Aloe’ never appeared. Instead it was turned into this masterpiece of interlocking pieces that resonate with an emotional intensity rarely equaled

‘Pooh! She [Kezia] didn’t care! A tear rolled down her cheek, but she wasn’t crying. She couldn’t have cried in front of those awful Samuel Josephs. She sat with her head bent, and as the tear dripped slowly down, she caught it with a neat little whisk of her tongue and ate it before any of them had seen.’

Magnificent!

And again! Linda this time.

‘Yes, everything had come alive to the minutest, tiniest particle, and she did not feel her bed, she floated, held up in the air. Only she seemed to be listening with her wide open watchful eyes, waiting for someone to come who just did not come, watching for something to happen that just did not happen.’

So thanks Kathleen Jones. Your biography gives me two-fold pleasure. In itself. (The cut and paste approach reminds me of ‘The Prelude’). And in re-reading Katherine.

Katherine Mansfield

2010-11-12T10:29:00.002+13:00

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Katherine Mansfield is elusive. In her best stories there lingers this sense of yearning for something unattainable even in moments of great happiness and bliss. 'The story-teller' – to use Kathleen Jones’s subtitle – is secretive. Reading Jones’s account I’m up to the period of her life where she and Middleton Murry are with the Lawrences. DH and Frieda are extremely frank about their life, especially sexual. Murry can’t see what there is discuss. Katherine according to Jones is not very revealing.

A master craftsman as coy – no, that’s not a contradiction in terms. Mansfield was both. One trouble was that on her death Murry tried to develop a picture of her by a controlled publication of selected writings. Almost the sanctified victim, dying like Keats, young with unrecognised genius.

I’m confident that’s the woman Alpers began to write his biography about; but as he learnt more and more about her life the puritan that he was became repelled at her passionate randiness and in his terms loose living. Meyers wrote a pedestrian biography. Tomalin weighed in with a feminist perspective – timely and useful. Gil Body’s shorter, photographic essay is a good overview, particularly so of the Wellington years.

We have quite a large Mansfield section on our book shelves. I’ve enjoyed reading the Scott/O’Sullivan editions of her letters. Jones has dwelt amongst this memorabilia much more than I have. The result is a richer account of Mansfield’s life than the previous attempts. But I still feel the actual woman remains fugitive. That may appear a critical remark, it is rather a comment about Mansfield’s nature.

Ida Baker gets a better press. That’s good. And deserved it seems to me. Murry doesn’t emerge well. That’s also deserved. If it hadn’t been for Mansfield we’d hardly remember him. It’s an egg and chicken argument. If he hadn’t pushed her into the foreground we may not have noticed her.

I was intrigued to read of his treatment of his second wife, Violet. Jones’s account rings true. He was attempting to recreate Katherine. The fact Violet also died of TB is chilling. The descriptions of their desolate life on Chesil Beach are equally chilling, history repeating itself.

Yet Murry must have had some attractive features. Obviously Katherine adored him but I get the sense she found him exasperating and selfish. I, as Kiwi, of course, male chivalry as well, am on Katherine’s side. He didn’t know how to look after her. But then he didn’t know how to look after himself. To have aspirations and to be poor in Edwardian England and Europe couldn’t have been much fun.

I even feel sympathy for Katherine’s parents. By their standards they’d done well. This exasperating daughter seemed nothing but trouble. Interior life should remain just that, not exposed to the scorn and pity of the outside world.

You’ve not writing about Jones’s account I can hear you saying. I will. But I wanted to share with you at this stage - I'm half-way through - some of the myriad of thoughts her biography have aroused. They alone illustrate how much I’m enjoying the read.

Change of Plan

2010-11-11T13:16:00.001+13:00

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A phone call late this morning changed next week’s plans. The reconstruction of my bathroom has been delayed a week. Fingers crossed for that date. So normal blogging services next week. Cheers!

Out of Action?

2010-11-11T07:18:00.004+13:00

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Everything seems to be happening at once. Anne goes off to Tauranga today for five days. Jo is coming to house-sit – or more accurately Harvey-sit. Jo will take me to the doctor’s this afternoon for my three-monthly check-up.

On Monday workmen will arrive to transform the present enclosed shower in my en-suite into a wet shower. That means clearing everything out of my bathroom. The room will be out of action for about a fortnight. So no showers in that time – just washes in the drawing room. Susanna, my usual care-giver has been on leave for a fortnight. She resumes on Monday.

During the day these renovations will mean limited access to my study-cum-bedroom, indeed possibly not available. So there may be no or few blogs for a fortnight. I find my energy flags during the day and in the evenings I‘m only good for being soggy in front of the TV. It will also probably mean no Tuesday Poem for a couple of weeks.

Most of my exercise consists in wheeling the walker from study to lounge and vice versa. I’ll have to make sure I do some exercises over the period though now the weather is more settled I may be able to walk more down the lane to the shops.

It’ll be good to have the shower fixed. It has been awkward for my care-givers and extra bars near the loo will also be of assistance.

Dorothy the cat hates workmen. It’s going to be more disruption in her life. I can accept it as a little addition of excitement in my life, her little cat-brain sees it as a pain. She’s in for a rough time. Noise and strange smells!

I’m half-way through reading Kathleen Jones’s life of Katherine Mansfield. It’s a big book. It’s a very readable book. I’m enjoying it. So with little access to the computer I see myself settling in to read it in larger chunks. That and watching DVD’s.

Jo is an artist. I have out at present to watch with her two art DVDs from the Palette Collection: 'The Age of the Titans' and 'The Golden Age of the Netherlands'. I should add Jo is of Dutch origin. Also in the queue is the Attenborough series 'The Life of Mammals'. That’ll be good viewing to take my mind off the banging and biffing through the wall.

Anne gets back mid-afternoon on Monday to the chaos. Then on Tuesday she takes me to hospital for a neurology check-up. Routine carries on regardless.

National Political Standards

2010-11-10T10:06:00.004+13:00

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As I listened to Parliamentary Questions yesterday on TV the thought struck me – if the Government is so keen on national standards in education why doesn’t it apply the same criteria to politics. Let’s measure the efficiency and effectiveness of the Government of the day against agreed criteria.

I suppose John Key’s comparison with Australia is a crude attempt at that but politicians of any party always leave themselves wriggle-room. The Reserve Bank has to operate within certain prescribed conditions. But on the whole the Government has little ultimate measurement or assessment except the ballot box which is a crude form. [Necessary though].

But if kids are expected to measure up to certain standards, why not politicians. If one begins to think about measurement of such standards the pitfalls of a too simplistic approach become increasingly clear.

Certain measurements are obvious. GDP is one. Longevity? Income? Taxes? Economic criteria and averages are relatively clear-cut.

But what about Freedom? Happiness? Security? Fresh Air? Clean Water? Access to Medical Services? Mobility? Living Conditions? Civilised Debate? Equality? Rule of Law?

Maths, writing and reading are specific tasks the critics will respond. They narrow education down if they argue so. Can, and should, government be similarly narrowed down? If not, why not? As a citizen I want answers to the questions in the paragraph above.

I don’t want to live in a country with a few gated mansions and miles of slums. But let’s not define national standards in politics in terms of negatives. I would like to live in a country that’s fair, compassionate, prosperous and exciting. I’m well aware that means compromise. Can one measure selfishness as one can measure reading ability?

The more I get into the thought the more complicated it becomes. Hence, my sympathy for teachers having to implement a half-baked standards scheme. Not that I approve of teachers comparing the policy with Hitler's regime. That's counter-productive, indeed downright stupid, if not verging on the dangerous.

Tuesday Poem: Elsa Wertman

2010-11-08T20:49:00.002+13:00

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Elsa Wertman

I was a peasant girl from Germany,
Blue-eyed, rosy, happy and strong.
And the first place I worked was at Thomas Greene's.
On a summer's day when she was away
He stole into the kitchen and took me
Right in his arms and kissed me on my throat,
I turning my head. Then neither of us
Seemed to know what happened.
And I cried for what would become of me.
And cried and cried as my secret began to show.
One day Mrs. Greene said she understood,
And would make no trouble for me,
And, being childless, would adopt it.
(He had given her a farm to be still. )
So she hid in the house and sent out rumors,
As if it were going to happen to her.
And all went well and the child was born --
They were so kind to me.
Later I married Gus Wertman, and years passed.
But -- at political rallies when sitters-by thought I was crying
At the eloquence of Hamilton Greene --
That was not it.
No! I wanted to say:
That's my son!
That's my son!

Edgar Lee Masters

I harbour a heresy that poems that tell a story have a place in the canon. Just a place, they are not the be-all and end-all. Mid-Western American poet Lee Masters (1869-1950) is one of those unsung poets who worked at the craft, did it well, were accepted in their time and are now under-estimated. .

The story it tells was I’m sure a common frontier experience. The wife and the mother, both have their unhappiness and longings . And it’s very American – the power of the orator on the hustings. That simple eloquence is shadowed in the poem.

Marathon

2010-11-08T14:17:00.004+13:00

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The battle at Marathon took place in 490 BC. A Persian invasion of Greece, led by the mighty king Darius was repulsed by a small Athenian army. Legend has it that at the successful conclusion of the battle a runner called Philippides ran back to Athens to spread news of the victory. The approaching larger Spartan army would not be needed to oppose the invaders. Apparently Philippides dropped dead of exhaustion at the end of his run.

There is confusion over the legends for there is another account that a runner with the same name was despatched to Sparta with a call for help when it was realised the Persians were approaching. Hence, the march of the Spartans to the rescue.

Whatever the story the fact remains that the Persians suffered a great loss. Greek civilisation entered into a flowering cultural period which formed the basis of what we call Western civilisation. It was one of history’s great turning points.

Now in the modern Olympics the distance that Philippides apparently ran has become the classic event.

We had a jubilant email recently from Kathrine who had just run in the Athens classic marathon. In her words, ‘to finish in the great Panathenaic Stadium on the 2,500th anniversary of the Battle of Marathon was an ultimate running experience. For me, it was my first road marathon in 34 years (I did an off-road marathon in March in New Zealand) and was extremely validating from the point of view of being able to just finish a marathon at the age of 63 on an unforgiving road surface after 50 years of running.’ Her time was 4 hours 48 minutes.

Kathrine is world-renowned for being the first woman to run a marathon. She crashed the Boston marathon to do this. She describes this and a life devoted to running in her autobiography 'Marathon Woman'. (I’ve always had a scholarly interest in athletics, a highlight was to see the Commonwealth Games in Edinburgh 40 years ago but Anne is one of the least sports-intersted people I’ve ever met. Kathrine’s book gripped her). Katherine's blog is www.katherineswitzer.com. She and her husband, Roger Robinson have written another excellent book ’26.2 Marathon Stories’ about that distance race. His blog is www.roger-robinson.com

I’ve got a different take on Marathon. I wrote this poem when I worked as an aide to David Lange. It was the height of the feud between him and Roger Douglas There had been a stormy press conference, even disrespectful I thought in that the media had on the whole swallowed the Douglas line. [It was partisan times] In my bitterness I penned the outline of this poem. History is about the lessons of the past and the present.

BEFORE MARATHON

Before Marathon
Darius would have summoned a press conference
cameras pan entrance, egress
recorders click on & off.
disrespectful like this lot
quoting unreliable sources & the spin-doctor’s latest handout.

Afterwards
the disintegrating army streaming back to the departing ships
laptop copy to be faxed back to Sardis
hacked corpses videoed for deadline viewing
they’d have questioned more robustly.

In the end the other side did little better
Miltiades prosecuted because the polls went down
those who fall by the sword have one advantage
they remain courageous – those left behind
linger, fodder for pen, pulpit & processor.

In time bleached bones reveal the arrowheads.

Harvey McQueen

Lemon Tree

2010-11-07T09:27:00.005+13:00

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Last night Anne and I watched the movie ‘Lemon Tree’ on DVD. I’ve seen some cracker movies recently. This was one of the best. Absorbing! Strong emotions, not the vague desires of ordinary lives, not the happy Disney ending, but an ideological clash, convincing personalities, subtle plot sensitively portrayed, all combined with clever camera work left me at its ending both satisfied and dissatisfied. But moved! It was a film that involved me emotionally.

A Palestinian widow tries to stop her neighbour the Israeli Defence Minister cutting down her lemon tree orchard, a family inheritance. He claims it is necessary for security reasons. Despite going all the way to the Israeli Supreme Court she is unsuccessful. But along the way she gains an unlikely ally – the Minister’s wife. Not that the two women speak, they acknowledge one another but that’s all. The wife leaves her husband. The widow’s left with her stumps.

Both women are subject to the patriarchy. The widow’s elders advise her to give in and accept the offered compensation. The wife is expected to go along with her husband’s wishes. It sounds simple. But the film portrayed it with more complexity. There are subtle hints of sexuality on both sides, the wife has suspicions about her husband’s relationship with his secretary, the widow has thoughts about the handsome lawyer assisting her.

The film is not a polemic. It is more about character. But the geopolitical background cannot be ignored. The power structure is one-sided. And the symbolism of the wall is powerful. What an ugly thing. In the long run walls don’t work. Hadrian’s wall and the Great Wall of China are now tourist attractions. I recall the excitement around the world when the Berlin Wall came down.

What I found most thought-provoking is that the situation looks so insolvable. Both sides are locked into world-views that are hard to budge and appear almost irreconcilable. ‘An eye for an eye’ is embedded in both cultures. The film showed the consequences of such attitudes. The weakening of Obama in the recent American elections will not help the intransigence of both sides. The poor people caught up in events. Ultimately, there are only losers in such situations.

Pacemaker

2010-11-06T10:33:00.001+13:00

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Yesterday I had my nine-monthly pacemaker check up. It’s working fine. It was a shame to spend a glorious warm sunny day in the cardiology waiting room but at least one aspect of my health care is functioning well.

I received the pacemaker in 2005. Earlier that year I began to have an occasional dizzy spell. After routine checks my doctor decided he was over-medicating me for my blood pressure so he lowered the dosage. But the spells continued. He gave me new medication and made arrangements for me to have a check-up at Wellington hospital.

I got an appointment, centuries ahead. After a particularly bad turn, I went to the doctor again – his surgery was just around the corner – and very quickly I found myself on a stretcher in the emergency ward. But even as I lay there I felt the spell passing. By the time they’d wheeled me through to see the doctor all systems were back to normal. So I was sent home.

But by being admitted temporarily I was now on the administrative conveyor belt. The cardiac unit strapped a 24 hours monitor on to my chest. It revealed a problem that had not been picked up before - my heart was having slow-down periods and for that I needed a pacemaker. The operation would not fix the dizzy spells, originating from the electical circuitry. The medication I needed could not be prescribed until a pacemaker was in place.

While I waited for the operation I had increasingly more and more dizzy spells. The hospital advised me not to drive. I felt grounded and frustrated and my productive life seemed to be grinding to a halt. I smiled wryly at an email from Roger in New York with an attached cutting about a gorilla in an American zoo, being given a pacemaker.

To my surprise I enjoyed the experience of the operation. I never dreamt I’d ever say that but it proved an interesting event. Up early, feeling hungry, we were at the hospital by 7 30 but I had a wait for I was the second up that morning. A nurse prepared me, blood pressure check, ECG, a rapid shave of the left side of my chest - (“you’re not very hairy are you?” Was that criticism or merely factual. The mind is an amazing thing. To consider being affronted not long before the surgeon takes a knife to you.) - and then the insertion of a needle in the left arm. It was comforting to have Anne sitting beside me reading the paper. I developed cramp in my right foot so I had to hobble around the corridor to restore circulation.

I was wheeled to the theatre at 10. Anne went home. Careful explanations and information were given from all concerned. I was very definite that I didn’t want to watch on closed circuit TV. The first injection was a mild sedative. Then antibiotic. Then local anasthetic. Then theatre - soothing music, banter of the team, further explanation (“you’ll feel me pushing”), a further sedative, (“you’re too chirpy”). While we waited for that to kick in we discussed Labour Day holiday arrangements. Most of the team were going away. Obviously I wouldn’t be.

I liked the way the surgeon explained every step as he did it. When the two wires were inserted through the veins into the heart he put the battery in. I was back at the ward at 12 20. After a while they brought me lunch, two sandwiches and a cup of tea. My room-mate hadn’t liked the surgeon telling him what was happening. “Rather not know”, he muttered. I didn’t argue but I felt pleased – at least I knew what was happening and why.

I rang Anne to her surprise at 1 30. They wheeled me down to have an. X-ray. Anne arrived at 4 30. I got home in time to watch the TV news. The day before we’d discussed what I wanted to eat on such a night. I asked for simple, comfort food, tarakahi, asparagus and mashed potato, followed by raspberry jelly and ice-cream. No wine. Nothing like hunger to sharpen the taste buds. The next day the pain kicked in, but not as bad as I’d anticipated.

As anticipated the dizzy turns continued even though I was pleased how quickly my body bounced back from surgery. When the pacemaker was checked it was working well, indeed even recording the time when I had my dizzy spells. In consultation with the surgeon they decided I should go on to betablocker tablets straight away. When I complained to the young doctor prescribing them that I felt I was a walking pharmacy he said if he got to my age and was only taking five tablets a day he would count himself lucky. The medication worked. Thanks to the wonders of modern science I was able continue my life productively again. What I didn’t know was my muscular degenerative illness was already lurking in the shadows.

Cairo & Other Things

2010-11-05T09:36:00.003+13:00

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Nice! I’ve had a comment on my cherry blog from London. Cyberspace continues to amaze. It still seems incredible.

Part of the same miracle, niece Jenny, also living in London has sent photos of her recent Egyptian visit by email. I envy her the opportunity to go further south than Cairo. My time there was brief.

In 1994 I was a member of an education mission to Kuwait. The cheapest way to get there was via Cairo. The Singapore Airways plane landed early in the morning. We were met by a burly bodyguard at the airport and whisked away, via picking up our guide, a lady lecturer from the university, to see the pyramids.

Awesome? The labour that went into them. The size of the blocks. I rode a camel as part of the tourist attraction. It’s a long way up to that height.

On to the Sphinx. Equally magnificent but the city’s encroachment removed the Ozymandias feeling.

Via the customary tourist retail venues, I did buy two papyrus painted scrolls and a bottle of perfume, after lunch we went to the museum with main attention to the treasures of the Pharaoh Tutunkhamen. That was mind-boggling.

My other memory of the visit was the traffic. And I thought Bangkok was chaotic.

The business in Kuwait finished we returned to Cairo for a night. As we flew with Egypt Airlines we landed at the domestic airport. There, the entry fee could only be paid in American dollars. I had a strap around my stomach with a hidden hoard of that currency, it’s been my established insurance policy when travelling. So off to the loo and partial disrobe to enable me to pay for the rest of the party as well as myself.

At the hotel, in the lift up eleven floors, the bell boy offered me a woman, a boy or a shoe shine – in that order.

But my room had a balcony overlooking the Nile. Tourist dhows were out in the evening light. I sat nursing a whiskey savouring the scene. [Kuwait had been dry]. Rarely has a whiskey been more appreciated.

Guy Fawkes Day today. I covered the issues on 4 and 5 November last year so I leave them alone this year.

And I see New Zealand is rated third best country in the world in which to live, Norway and Australia are ahead. When I saw the headline I thought no wonder John Key is sitting pretty but then I read the USA is fourth so that theory does not hold up. Political gridlock looms there. The Republicans want to cut expenditure and taxes at the same time. A contradiction.

Barbecues & Elections

2010-11-04T11:37:00.003+13:00

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Hillary Clinton has arrived in windy Wellington. It’s a cloudy day. There’s to be a barbecue for her this evening at Premier House. Wild boar sausages, whitebait fritters, pavlova, catered for by Logan Brown the city’s premier restaurant. Fit food for a Secretary of State and the most powerful woman in the world.

A barbecue in Wellington is always an iffy thing. In Auckland one can usually plan and count on warm weather. Likewise in Canterbury, the large sky gives ample warning of an approaching gale. But Wellington? In my salad days I got tired of standing around on chill evenings, dodging smoke, pretending to enjoy charred steak and sausages with uncooked central entrails. Once in a blue moon the host strikes it lucky. Successful barbecues in the capital city are usually impromptu affairs.

At Farm Rd we had the best of both worlds, large French doors opening onto the patio – the steak could be cooked inside and consumed outside. I make a confession. I’ve never been at ease standing up and eating – it seems an unnatural pose. And now, it is no longer an issue.

John Key got a photo opportunity earlier this year worth thousands of votes. Prince William, aproned, cooking sausages on the barbie, while the PM had a can of beer in his hand as he oversaw proceedings. I’m sure something similar will be attempted this evening.

Two and half years ago Mrs Clinton was locked in a huge struggle with Obama. For what it is worth I was backing Hillary. More experience I believed. Obama won that titanic struggle. At the time I believed that having bested the Clintons he’d hold his own against McCain. And so it proved. America had its first Black president.

I suspect many Americans have had trouble coming to terms with that. As I suspect many Americans would have had trouble accepting the first woman president. And Hillary did carry some baggage of her own as well as her husband’s.

But I wonder if she ever says to Bill ‘I could’ve done a better job’. We are not privy to such pillow talk. She is a pro – she knows what to say and what not to say. She has been loyal. And she is on the other side of the world while Obama has taken an electoral whipping.

He inherited a financial crisis and two wars. He has carried through into law a far-reaching health reform. He is stuck with a constitution that is unique and in many ways cuts across its own first principles plus he’s been subject to an ideological campaign of vitriolic proportions. The next two years will measure his calibre. I do not doubt his idealism. I still have reservations about his ability.

If he should stumble badly I wonder what Bill’s wife will do. I’ve always had a hunch that she’s a better politician than her husband. And ironically, his charm and charisma are her biggest assets.

I’m sure she’ll smile a lot at tonight’s barbecue. Indeed, I’d bet on it. And I'm sure John Key will also have a grin. The tide that turned against Obama almost from day one has not happened here. His opposition is huff and puff compared with that across the Pacific.

But a lot can happen in a year, let alone two years. Mayor Wade-Brown greeted Clinton this morning. Who'd have dreamnt that happening a few months ago.

Chairs and Cherries

2010-11-03T12:33:00.004+13:00

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Sitting has become a problem. A too low seat or sofa gives me great difficulty in getting up. In some instances I just cannot make it. Having to be manhandled to my feet is not an enjoyable experience. Especially when it is a strange loo – one of the several reasons why I’ve stopped going out and calling on friends.

Years ago a young friend had bought a new sleek sports car, very low-slung. I carefully manoeuvred myself down into it. I confess I did not enjoy the drive – I felt too low on the road and therefore vulnerable. Unlike being cox of a rowing four when the craft glides over the water with its thin shell – a lovely sensation – I felt unease and was pleased when we stopped. But even then I couldn’t make it (my illnes in its early stages). I recall the embarrassment of admitting that I needed assistance.

So I’m careful where I sit. I have a favourite chair in the apartment. It faces the N/E garden with its potted plants, roses, abutilon (the tui still calls daily) and camellias. Beyond cabbage trees and a copper beech. This morning after breakfast from that chair I watched several honey bee working over the lavender bush.

Baxter’s line about ‘passionless industry’ sprang to mind. It’s from his poem ‘Wild Bees’. He wrote many poems about mankind’s fall from grace. Rarely better than in this poem which is why I selected it as one of my choices for ‘These I Have Loved’. The word ‘purposeful’ might be more accurate than ‘passionless’ But I understand what he means, ‘blind instinct’ whereas the marauders raiding the nest did it by choice. We ‘fall’ by choice.

Of course I could argue if we were set up to ‘fall’ is that a choice. Don’t go down this side-alley, Harvey.

I turn the chair around to watch TV. Visitors express concern at seeing me labour at this task and rush to help. I wave them away. It’s good for me to have a little exercise and if I’m puffed too much I can always collapse into the chair and until I get my breath back. Yesterday I watched the DVD ‘The Last Station’ – Tolstoy’s last days. [That murky Russian consciousness with dramatics]

This afternoon I’ll watch or should I say listen to Verdi’s opera Don Carlos at Milan’s La Scala, produced by Zeffirelli with Pavarotti singing. I look forward to that.

The neighbour’s crabapple tree has a splendid blossom crop this year. I presume the bees fertilise the flowers. It has hardly borne fruit the last two years. Maybe this year.

I also included another Baxter poem about a peach tree, so laden it broke.

A bonus in my childhood was Aitken's orchard which in summer and autumn was full of ripe fruit trees. In the early days the peach trees there were covered, Pop Aitken used to prop up the boughs. But then leaf curl arrived and the peach trees stopped flourishing. As he didn’t spray, suddenly the annual peach crop was greatly curtailed.

Between Aitken’s place and widowed Mum’s cottage was this orchard. - the second best in Little River. Coops who'd early established the mill to cut the local totara had the best. As well as peaches it had large apricot and plum trees and apples and pears galore,

It was the perfect place for children - lush grass to burrow through, well-established trees to climb, make-believe tigers to stalk or be stalked by; furthermore Pop Aitken didn't mind our playing in it or picking the fruit. “Help yourself,” he’d say. There was more fruit than his household or ours could eat, all summer the aroma of decaying fruit wafted from the orchard through our house.

Several large plum trees grew close to our fence. In the fork of most gigantic, one could sit and gorge, the fresh juice sticky as it ran down one's chin. The quinces we left for the adults to deal with. Mum’s brother Charlie lived across the road with his wife Thora and their three daughters. Mum and Thora would bottle and bottle, while us five kids {my younger brother Douglas brought up the number) would play, climb and gorge and assist in the harvesting.

The only place we had to ask permission and get the key for was the cherry cage - about twenty trees surrounded by wire-mesh. Balancing near the top of a cherry tree, my face streaked with red, marvelling at the miracle that could turn sap and sunshine into such a delicacy, the ripe fruit all around me, is a grand childhood memory. We could eat our fill and take away buckets full. We did both. It’s the nearest thing to heaven I’ve experienced.

Part of the joy of cherries is their brief season. The fruit from wild cherries was eaten in the Middle East and Europe right from the beginning of civilisation. Turkey is at present the world’s biggest producer. I recall buying a bunch in a market in central Greece. The old Latin tag ‘Et in Arcadia est’ [I am in Arcadia] rang true as we ate cherries and the bus bounced on towards Olympia.

I used to time visits to see Mum prior to Christmas in time to buy cherries at Marlborough as I passed through. My drive south could be traced by the cherry stones thrown through the open window as I went. A big box for Mum. And on the return trip a big box for us – a pre-festive treat.

Fly Boy

2010-11-02T14:30:00.003+13:00

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Before the blog – the first rose of summer in our garden has burst into bloom from its bud. One sole Leander flower proclaims summer’s almost here.

Being in the Tuesday Poets group is sort of belonging to a new family. I say partially, the very voluntary nature of the participation gives an extra spin. But one learns foibles, hopes and habits, grumps and dislikes of a number of people brought together by a common purpose. Often the dislikes are shown by silence rather than dissent. Of course, we each apply our own template as we look at other’s poems.

I’ve enjoyed the poems posted on the site by Jeffrey Paparoa Holman. There’s a working class twist to his verse that appeals, but it is more than that, he has a way with words that shows a poet’s reflection and consideration. He’s established his own burrow.

I’d probably have bought ‘Fly Boy’ the latest volume of his poems anyway without the incentive of belonging to the group. The striking cover shows a Sunderland flying boat over a dimpled ocean. That appealed. The British symbols on the warplane aroused nostalgia.

But before I began to read the heresy flashed across my mind, ‘what do I say if I don’t like them.’ ‘Nothing!’ said Jiminy Cricket the ever-present observer of my actions, conscience is too strong a word. I need not have worried. I like them and have no hesitation in commending them.

The reason for my doubt was my technological illiteracy. As a boy I was interested in what things did – not how they worked. Cars and cameras have their enthusiasts. I use them, enjoy them but don’t worry or think about their ‘innards’. Planes are the same. But there’s a difference, which Holman has exposed.

As hinted above, the Second World War was formative in my development. It was there in my childhood larger than an elephant in the room. Words like radar lurked on the airwaves. And prominent on and in radio, film, newspaper and comic were terms like Spitfire, Messersschmitt and Flying Fortress. I didn’t know or heed the make of tanks. The royal navy had lost its glamour. Planes had not.- they were the future They were the winning of the conflict. That was my war.

The war concluded, ‘the fangs/ of battle shone in film and books.’ Flight dominated the newsreels. Words like Vulcan and Fokkers Friendship entered our vocabulary. Words like Tiger Moth had already been well-established.

Holman’s war-time love of books about planes struck an unexpected chord. The Icarus dream of soaring high about the earth is planted deep in our psyche. I found myself responding and understanding. ‘I kicked the chooks and clambered in.’ ‘Brownings blazing, black iron crosses, smoke and murder.’ Holman’s humanity appeals. He can be victor. He can also be victim as enemy fire rakes his craft. This was how it was presented, black and white and simple. Kill and be killed. The odds are on both. I live now in a contradictory world – in the 1940s it was more simple.

From his books he knew ‘the shape and the shadow/ cast on my heart by everything in there that flew.’ The excitement of the boy shows in the verse of a man. ‘off by heart I was flying solo/ through all those worlds of sheer excitement.’. Doodle-bugs spooked Nanny, ‘she talked bombs to me till the day she died.’ The intimacy is contagious.

That was only the first part of the collection. The second called ‘Fly Past’ has a photo of a Sunderland over an uncompleted Auckland Harbour Bridge. ‘The white weight/ of the bird-boat dropping on Hobsonville.’ The fly boy’s growing up. The aerial combat over Germany he realised was ‘skyways of slaughter’. ‘Heaven/ is tumbling as hell to earth.’ These two lines are from a very effective poem called ‘Nightfighter’. The whole section ends ‘We/ need to ask them but never do, what/ it was like to hover above the earth – and die?’

The third section is flight of a different sort. Birds! There is a poem to ‘Piwakawaka’ which I would have loved to have included in “These I Have Loved’ had it been available. It captures the essence of fantail ‘feather box of tricks on/ springs’. The joy of the bird and its antics. Indeed, this whole section is jam-packed with goodies, ending in the powerful last poem ‘Call me Icarus’.

It’s in the final section ‘Flight Path’ that the collection soars to fresh heights. Holman has taken possession of a poetic form that allows him full range to his voice and interests. It’s very difficult, indeed almost impossible to summarise. The photo shows a Sunderland over a Pacific island, bits of coconut studded earth scattered across miles of ocean. It’s over this route that the godwits fly, ‘burning fat fresh from the estuary/ down to the bone.’

Holman shuttles between California and New Zealand, newscaster Wendy Petrie and Executed German theologian Dietrich Bonhoffer, ‘all of knowledge/ resides in light’. Each reading reveals extra complexities. And the godwits carry the sense of a return to Aotearoa; and grounding. And yet – they do not stay, they’ll fly away again, earth-bound humanity reaching for the stars. I put down the volume and look at our new lovely little rose. I’m at home again, enriched by Holman’s enthusiasm, rapture, questioning, explanation. His volume is an example of why I like poetry and poets who make it. .

Tuesday Poem: The Pensioner

2010-11-01T21:02:00.001+13:00

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The Pensioner

A whiff of treachery, the body’s reluctance
to get out of bed in the morning. There is
reason to feel nervous about the outcome.

Not death, that is certain, but the trip to it.
Even cautious encouragement, the promise of
bacon and creamed mushroom on toast,

takes time to override its resistance. Recall
misty autumn mornings out early with bucket
& knife, picking field mushrooms, & the awe

at rings, fairies don’t exist they said, … but still…
the sun a pale corona through the fog. The jaunt
through the asphalt world has had its moments,

exotic brilliances & conspiracy corridors, but.
finally, feet, recognising the opportunity while
the mind’s woolgathering, swing over & out.

Lights, camera, we have action. Trousers etc.
It’s the loss of poise that irritates. Against that,
all that bother about face is of much less concern.

Harvey McQueen

I wrote this poem several years ago. My illness was already progressing but it had not been diagnosed – I thought this was merely the onset of old age. So I sought comfort in what positives I could find in the circumstances.

Why ‘asphalt’ people have asked. Derived from oil the symbol of mobility of my generation. Roads, runways, tennis courts, school grounds, it’s defined my life. Film has also assisted that process. Hence the true comedy of trousers. It merged on slapstick. Plus, ‘asphalt’ is a harsh word, a contrast to the fantasies of childhood – mushrooms, nothing in the paddock yesterday, suddenly in the morning March mist there are dozens. My stepfather, Dick, insisted we leave a few to spore for another season.

Romeo and Juliet

2010-10-31T10:49:00.009+13:00

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Earlier this week I watched on DVD the 1968 Zeffirelli famous film of Romeo and Juliet. It’s a sumptuous sensual treat, language and scenery, narrative and romance, and fatal love.

Romeo’s cry “I am fortune’s fool” wrenches the heart. Like a Hardy novel the odds are stacked against the young lovers. Zeffirelli is at his best when he presents the placid bearer of Friar Lawrence’s message wending his slow way with a donkey while Romeo’s servant gallops past on his horse having watched Juliet's apparent corpse laid to rest in the family tomb. With horror the audience anticipates the approaching tragic ending.

Zeffirelli does three things superbly – First, those bored Veronese young bucks with their swords. Today’s under-engaged hoons swoon round in souped-up cars, just as lethal as swords. In either case a risk to life and limb, not only to themselves but to the citizenry at large. Zeffirelli's riot scene illustrated the potential - water melons and chickens at risk.

Second, the ball scene. The Renaissance splendour, the colour, the pageantry and the breathless enchantment of the young lovers. It is a scene to savour. Most historical film smacks of the modern contemporary. This scene didn't.

Third, the balcony scene. Rarely has romance been more erotically portrayed. It makes the audience believe in that ‘enchanted evening’. ‘I ne’er saw true beauty till this night’. ‘It is the east and Juliet is the sun’. Enchanting words.

The nurse is superb – bawdy, worldly, in love with her charge, protective of her interests.

Once I produced an abridged version of the play at school. I used a girl as Romeo. We badly bruised her legs during a rehearsal when she forgot to jump during the sword fight. [Large flat wooden swords] The boy playing Tybalt was mortified. His comforting embrace of a wounded classmate was worthy of the balcony scene. I mused about my casting.

Then during dress rehearsal one of the girls in charge of props arrived along with a lot of candles. She wanted to dot them around Juliet's tomb. I was aware of Juliet’s gown and the hall curtains. The last thing I wanted was a charred heroine. So I vetoed the candles. Tears, tantrums, a producer’s nightmare. A compromise - a lone candle burning on the other side of the stage. The only thing, Paris knocked it over during his sword fight. No candles! The whole production was a glorious experience. I cherish it. Kids, enthusiasm, a timeless great story, Shakespeare's language, what more could you want.

Back to the film. I’d forgotten and was disappointed at how Zeffirelli glossed over Juliet’s agonising before she took the friar’s lotion. It seems to me one of the most human moments of the play. It wasn’t Hamlet’s doubts but it dabbled in the same field.

Paris does not appear in the final scene of the film. As Zeffirelli portrays it the emphasis is upon the two star-crossed lovers. Fair enough. But I think Paris is a portrayal of another aspect of love. Romeo’s despatch of him not only adds to the body-count, it tells of desperation overcoming common-sense.

I’ll let Mercutio have the last word: ‘A plague on both your houses! They’ve made worm’s meat of me.’ All the world’s a stage – Verona’s a mere model for that larger theatre.

Comments

2010-10-30T11:37:00.002+13:00

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a)
Twice a week my caregiver walks me – I using my walker - to the shops at the end of our lane. I sit on a seat outside the grocers and watch cars, trucks and pedestrians pass by. Girls from Marsden school come down in their lunch hour.

This week as I teetered back across the pedestrian crossing I heard a girl say ‘that poor old man’. I could have turned and wheeled back to say ‘thank you’. One is not supposed to hug school girls. I didn’t. I ploughed on.

Every now and then I indulge in the grumping of the aged down the ages. There is less compassion in the young than there used to be. What that unsolicited expression of sympathy did was to restore my faith that certain human attributes are timeless. Probably the sociologist would scoff but allow me my remnants of dignity.

I hope that lass has a long and happy life. Little will she know how her casual comment gave comfort to an old fool.

b)
Off on a completely different track. Gary Harris, artistic director of the New Zealand Ballet Company returns to Britain at the end of this year. One of my regrets is giving up going to the ballet. Harris’s choreography of ‘The Nutcracker Suite’ placing it in a hospital setting was superb. I recall seeing it with great pleasure. They are dancing it this month as his swansong. (See blog 20th November 2009) I’m pleased to have seen so many of his productions.

c)
An afterword for yesterday’s blog. I forgot to mention the mock orange blossom hedge, which is on our north side of the house. It’s in full bloom, a burst of striking white running the length of the section.

d)
There's a review of Antonia Fraser's memoir about her husband Harold Pinter's death 'Must You Go' in the New York Times today. About a month before Pinter died he said 'Life is beatitful but the world is hell'.

Dull Is Not The Right Word

2010-10-29T14:30:00.005+13:00

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Someone said on the phone yesterday ‘your life must be dull’.

Next door’s crabapple is ablaze with blossom. The southerly wind is blowing it like confetti across our lawn. A splendid sight.

The antique pansies that Anne planted over Labour Day weekend has its first bloom, a striking purple.

The large copper beech over the fence is in full glory – that sheen that is part of a deciduous cycle. It stands superb against a dull, grey sky.

Dorothy our cat is licking a clean-up of her stomach – such a fastidious process.

Last evening I shouted Anne and a friend Amy to a special Provencal meal at La Cloche. I would loved to have gone but it is so difficult. So they were my proxies. Anne has a very descriptive turn of phrase. When she got in I savoured the goat’s cheese tart entrée and the hare for the main. Mental taste-buds worked overtime.

I watched while they were out a DVD ‘Mr Smith Goes to Washington’. Made in 1939 it has a youthful James Stewart, the gangly, naive idealist plucked from obscurity to represent his state in the Senate. Capra directed. It’s dated but I enjoyed it for what it was – especially in the light of the Congressional elections very soon – the American dream.

The excellent black and white camera effects of the Lincoln memorial reminded me of our visit there. It was Veteran’s Day – the Viet Nam memorial wall was bedecked with wreaths and floral tributes. Lincoln’s statue and words were awe-inspiring – the American ideal at its best – while the Viet Nam one was sobering and saddening.

On that same trip I spent a day in Philadelphia. I was toured round the famous Independence Hall but what really struck me was the cracked Liberty Bell. A young Black woman national guide introduced it – I was one of a few adults in a large crowd of school kids. ‘Did the bell ring?’ she asked. A boy volunteered it couldn’t, it was cracked. Not so, she argued listing the occasions it had rung – when Lincoln freed the slaves, when Pearl Harbour happened, when Nelson Mandela visited. The crowd took up her refrain. I experienced the American dream first hand. It was very moving. To move on from there to negotiate over teacher exchanges was an emotional let-down. It remains a red-letter event in my memory-banks.

Wordsworth's right. Memory can provide satisfaction

Anne was out today. Oliver brought whitebait. Under my supervision he made the batter and then cooked them, only the second time he has done that. It was a challenge to both of us. He did a great job. We had a lovely lunch.

I finished ‘No Fretful Sleeper’. I’m still waiting to be convinced of Pearson’s overall importance but I’m pleased to have read the life. The last half involves people I know or have heard about. [Noeline Chapman was my first wife’s half-sister. I met Pearson once or twice at their house].

After dithering and in light of the biography I’ve decided to re-read Pearson's novel 'Coal Flat'. It’ll be interesting to see what I make of it at this removed stage of my life. It was a hard choice, the life of Katherine Mansfield waits impatient on the shelf.

‘Dull’ is not the right word.

Admission

2010-10-28T10:43:00.000+13:00

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Anne cracked with laughter this morning when I asked her how to spell dyslexia. ‘Why?’ she asked. ‘Well, you always say I suffer from a sort of’. I do. A mild form.

I suspect it goes back to being left-handed. Or am I? I naturally picked up axe, hammer and cricket bat in the right hand. But I picked up pencil and pen in the left. It’s not so much a question of being ambidextrous as being clumsy and untidy.

Until my illness set in I had more power in my left leg and arm than my right. When rock-hopping at the beach I always led with the left. But when dressing I put my right leg through my trousers first.

Anyway when I began school they tried to make me write right-handed. I began to stutter – quite badly Mum said. Eventually common sense prevailed and I was allowed to continue. The world is built around the needs of right-handed people.

Anne learnt long ago to avoid using the terms left and right. They confuse me. In the car she’d point, ‘turn here’. When I went to Christchurch Boys’ in the sixth form I encountered cadets for the first time. I stood out taller than the third formers around me in the squad. At the command ‘left turn’ I was busy trying to work out which was left while the group wheeled. The result was confusion. The masters did not believe I was not doing it deliberately. To them it was sabotage. I did a lot of square-bashing. I did not like cadets.

I had no trouble driving – indeed I’ll say it, I was a good driver. And I have only ever been completely lost once in my life. Ravenna. I foolishly made the assumption that the railway station was at the south end of the city. Once I got that sorted out everything was OK. I had a good bump of direction. I never ceased to amaze Anne how I would arrive at the correct destination.

This background is an entry to an increasing concern – an irritating habit of compounding an initial silly error. Yesterday was an example. I wrote a blog about Bill Pearson and his biographer. Just before I wrote it I’d been talking about the writer Jan Morris. When I drafted the blog I wrote Paul Morris instead of Paul Millar. Right through – several times. I did not pick up my mistake.

Last night over dinner I made a comment about Paul Morris. Editor Anne picked up the error straight away. As soon as the meal was over I made a beeline to the computer cursing my carelessness. Alas, my machine was down, for two (censored) hours. Frustration! Back on line I discovered Paparoa had discovered my mistake and gently made a comment. Thanks! I corrected my text.

So gentle reader if you find similar errors be compassionate. I found myself writing Graham Henry when I meant Paul Henry several blogs back. My filters saved me that time. Let’s hope they continue to operate well. I’d hate to give up the blog because of continuing carelessness

After giving me the correct spelling Anne reminded me of the old joke about the dyslexic agnostic who lay awake all night worrying about the existence of ‘dog’.

Bill Pearson

2010-10-27T15:24:00.010+13:00

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I read Bill Pearson’s novel ‘Coal Flat’ when it was first published in the 1960s. I found it a strange book - brilliant observation and perception, with ideas galore but they did not intertwine always well with the character or scene. Somehow it all seemed rather pointless. I sensed unease but couldn’t put my finger on it.

I knew that Blackball area where the novel is set on the West Coast relatively well. My first wife’s married sister lived in Greymouth. We’d explored the coal and gold mining hinterland pretty thoroughly, even attending the opening of Shantytown the local tourist attraction. So I felt Pearson’s descriptions of place were accurate.

It must be recalled it was an era in which we were waiting for the great New Zealand novel. A foolish thought now. But at the time a pressing issue. Hilliard’s ‘Maori Girl’ was good but it wasn’t gold medal class. Neither was ‘Coal Flat’.

On a weekend visit to Auckland shortly after I’d read the novel I found myself at a party with a group of Auckland academics. I learnt that Pearson was a homosexual and had greatly altered the novel to remove traces of that sexual orientation. The debate about the merits of the novel raged and ranged over me as I sat thinking about this missing piece of the jig-saw, re-assessing the evidence. I was a rather naïve young man.

In today’s more tolerant society it’s hard to recall the intolerance and homophobia of those far-away days. I’m reading at present Paul Millar’s ‘No Fretful Sleeper’ a life of Pearson. I’ve just read a chilling piece. Pearson saw a psychiatrist in London who told him to accept his homosexuality and get on with his life. The reply, he was on the verge of returning to a very puritan society. I’ve learnt of the great pains Pearson took not to reveal his sexual orientation. What a hell of a strain that must have been.

I’m only half-way through. It is one of those biographical reads that leaves me ambivalent. The plough has been put in very deeply. The facts need winnowing. For example, at the beginning I felt I did not need to know all the detail about the numerous uncles and aunts – family traits and origins yes, but this bewildering array caused confusion. The opening chapter was definitely not a prologue to grab my attention.

Why would I want to read about Pearson? The conflict between the individual and the society in which he found himself is in itself an enthralling narrative. I felt Millar could have spent less time on the detail – there is huge amount of it – of the life and present a wider perspective.

For a younger reader the nature of that puritan society needs spelling out. Even to me it seems an alien society and I took part in the six-o-clock swill. It was an era of double standards. [The historian in me asks was there ever an era which didn’t have them]. Culturally it might have been dour but I recollect we laughed a lot. But then I saw the fear beneath the veneer with the Parker/Hulme murder case. I can understand Pearson’s paranoia.

Having had my gripe about the book I enjoyed reading about Pearson’s boyhood and education in Greymouth. It’s a vanished era. The Protestant/Catholic rivalry on the time was a huge force to be reckoned with. Then his army experiences, J force after the Pacific and the Middle East with its strange soldier camaraderie. I’m left with the feeling Millar finds this hard to understand. I suspect it’s an experience that’s hard to grasp unless you are actually been there.

Millar's descriptions of the Canterbury University English department in the late 1940s - a decade before I studied there – ring true; as does his account of the same department in Auckland a decade later. He captures well the feeling of that bunch of academic prima donnas. It was a time when academics prided themselves on being idiosyncratic.

I sense happiness of a sort ahead – I’m just up to Pearson joining the Maori club where I understand his acceptance gave him a community. But up till now the loneliness of the man is the thing that strikes this reader. I think that needs more teasing out but I accept I could be wrong.

Most people seem to like this life. I still wait to be persuaded of Pearson’s importance. But maybe I’m committing the criticism I've complained about in the past – of reviewing the book that I wanted, not the book that is. And I go back to an old argument, which I use to justify my periodic biographical binges. Any life has its own interest.

Tuesday Poem: To Autumn by Ian Wedde

2010-10-25T20:56:00.002+13:00

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TO AUTUMN

How to prepare stuffed green peppers:
In plenty of green olive oil, cook
Garlic and onions, with a couple of red chilies.
Add the arborio rice and give it a stir.
Some cans of cheap Italian tomatoes are good.

A glass of red wine, and a huge handful
Of chopped parsley. Stuff the partly cooked
Rice into capped green peppers, and let
The rest stew slowly in the pot with the dolma.
When you life the lid praise the commonplace world

Where everything ends and then starts again –
Where are the songs of spring? I heard them at the end
Of last winter, they were starting to struggle out
Of the wet paddocks, they were choking on unpruned trellises.
And now a year later, like a good bourgeois,

Like the Sabine farm’s wry proprietor, turning
My back on landscape, I approach with sharp secateurs
The yellowed vine that runs round the verandah
Above the deck stained with summer’s libations.
Smoke from the house-fire blows away

Into the rainy mist on Mount Victoria, the place
I take my bursting heart on autumn mornings
So gorgeous I almost believe that beauty’s
All I need to know on earth, that my song
Can be without weariness, fever and fret.

Ian Wedde from The Commonplace Odes

Ian’s poem can stand in its own right. Or it can be placed in a larger context. Poets, like musicians and artists, weave strands from their predecessors into their current works. This poem pays particular homage to Horace and Keats, but it contains echos and associations to other poets. I love it for its own integrity and for its reverberations.

Ian’s ‘The Commonplace Odes’ was published in 2001. The whole series is based on a Horace collection with the same title. Horace was a Roman poet who lived from 65 to 8 BC. During his lifetime he bragged that his poetry would live as long as there were Vestal Virgins in Rome. Those ladies are long gone, but his poems, including 103 odes, are still read.

They cover a great number of themes, agriculture, dinner invitations, wine, woman, song, holiday celebrations, and patriotic hymns. Many are about his beloved farm in the Sabine hills not far from Rome.

One of English poet Keats famous odes is ‘To Autumn’. Ian borrows the title. Further, he even borrows a line “where are the songs of spring.” In his poem he talks of ‘the vines that round the thatch-eves run’. And in the last few lines there are generous genuflection to Keats’ other great odes, ‘To a Nightingale’ and “To a Grecian Urn.’

Such rapture about food. I’m sure Ovid and Keats would be at ease. Sensuous men both. Such a good Italian dish too. Rome and Hampstead Heath at home in Mount Victoria. Poetry can span the centuries as well as the senses.

In my previous blog I told how Tennyson adapted an old narrative poem. Ian has adapted old moods, modifying, codifying and modernising them. All part of the rich feast that is poetry.

The poem is published with the author's permission.

Tennyson's honeysuckle

2010-10-25T11:26:00.000+13:00

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A regret that I have in living here is that in our last place we had a little sheltered nook I called ‘honeysuckle corner’. Facing north-west it had walls behind it to the south and east. There was several stands of sweet-scented honeysuckle. It was our favourite spot all summer and autumn, a lovely place to sit and read on a lazy sun-lit day under the filtered shade of the judas tree, the buzz of bees browsing the borage and chive flowers as background. .

On a still evening we would go out at night to sit and savour the honeysuckle’s fragrance in the moonlight. Some lines from Tennyson spring to mind.

‘Good Lord, how sweetly smells the honeysuckle
In the hush of night, as if the world were one
Of utter peace and love and gentleness.’

The lines come from ‘Gareth and Lynette’ which is a scene from the lengthy series ‘Idylls of the King’. Gareth’s mother, a noble’s widow doesn’t want him to leave home to serve as a knight at the court of King Arthur. She says she’ll release him only if he works as a kitchen hand at the court. He calls her bluff and goes off.

His mother sends a message to Arthur who immediately, but anonymously, makes Gareth a knight. A beautiful maiden - Tennyson’s maidens are either very beautiful or very ugly – Lynette, comes with a tale of distress. Her sister, Lady Lyonors is being besieged by four bad knights, the last of whom seems likely as the model for Tolkein’s Black Riders.

‘A huge man beast of boundless savagery.
He names himself the Night and oftener Death,
And wears a helmet mounted with a skull’.

Despite her request for Lancelot, when Gareth volunteers, Arthur accepts. Lynette refuses to accept this kitchen servant as a knight which takes up quite a length of verse.

Despite Gareth killing the first two villains, Lynette still refuses to accept his knightly status. Eventually Lancelot appears and gives Gareth his horse, his armour and his sword for the third encounter. Gareth is successful. Whereupon Lynette has a change of heart – hence the lines I quote. He successfully goes on to defeat the fourth and most dangerous rogue.

I’ve always admired Tennyson’s word music. Indeed, he is without peer. And I find myself forgiving him much for his conclusion to this episode. It's bang-on.

'And he that told the tale in older times
Says that Sir Gareth wedded Lynors
But he, that told it later, says Lynette.’

In terms of the story as Tennyson tells it had to be so. Well done the Bard.

Sage Butter

2010-10-24T11:02:00.006+13:00

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There is an old Scotch proverb that if the sage bush flourishes than the woman rules the roost. Sexist yes! But there is probably a climatic basis. Sage doesn’t like wet feet. My own experience of Scotland is that it rains a lot. (Hence the lovely rhododendrons of the west coast) Therefore the sage is unlikely to be happy.

I also question the veracity of the proverb. We had three houses before we shifted here. In two the sage did well. In the other it struggled. Same aspect, same care, different microclimate. As far as I could tell there was no change in our relationship. Here, Anne is now the gardener. The bush grows well. That’s all I can say.

The herb sage is of Mediterranean origin used from the beginning for culinary and medical purposes. The Ancient Egyptians applied it as a fertility drug. Now with its light peppery flavour it is mainly used in the kitchen though I think it adds colour and character to the garden. Certainly it is one the first essentials I’d plant in a new herb garden. It needs replacing every four or five years.

Its main use is in stuffing but while accepting its strong flavour I think its too good to be used only for that purpose. I used to marinade chicken breasts in a mixture of lemon juice, garlic and sage before cooking. Quick-fried whole sage leaves go well with sausage and fried potato.

A recipe that Anne and I have used for a long time now is sage butter on steak or lamb. It is simple to make. To butter add finely chopped fresh sage leaves and a little onion oil. (We get this by placing a few pieces of onion in a garlic press and squeezing). Mix throughly. The recipe can be adapted to use parsley and garlic instead.

Earlier this week Anne bought four little fillet steaks. On Friday night she cooked two which we had with a lavish spread of freshly made sage butter, asparagus (what a lovely seasonal treat), mashed potato and fried mushrooms. I cut my steak in half to have space to allow the addition of more of the special butter.

Last night she cooked the other two. The little sliced mushrooms again, a few potato slices baked in the oven and a fresh vegetable salsa (cucumber, onion, yellow pepper and parsley). Yum again!

She asked what I would like tonight. ‘Old-fashioned mince on toast’ I said. From the superb to the comfortable. That’s not a bad switch.

I add for the benefit of any new reader we used to take cooking week and week about. Now with my ill-health I’ve had to give that away.

Sydney

2010-10-23T11:53:00.003+13:00

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I see there is going to be a funeral service for Joan Sutherland in the Sydney Opera House. I saw and heard her sing Aida in that Opera House – one of those highlights of my life, spectacle and sound combining into glamorous glory.

The Opera House is situated on Bennelong Point. The next point to the east is Mrs Macquaries Chair. The view from there to the Opera House and the Sydney Harbour Bridge beyond is one of the most attractive sights on the planet. The striking structure of the theatre contrasts with the bare steel bones of the bridge – beauty and power. Ships and ferries on sparkling Sydney Harbour add to the scene.

I’ve seen other shows in that building. The first time I took Anne – Mozart’s Cosi Fan Tutte – I gave her a glass of champagne in the interval on the balcony overlooking the harbour. Boats with their lights glided past on the reflective water. It was magic – I’ll never forget the gleam in her eyes.

We also saw a production of Hamlet during that visit. A conducted tour backstage preceeded a meal at the Bennelong restaurant. And then the play. We were stuck behind a group of elderly Americans, obviously a package tour. They grumbled ‘what’s this all about’, complained about the lack of action. After interval most of them had disappeared. We had a great view of the stage and settled down to watch the remainder of the play in peace. It is the only time I’ve seen a live production.

Anne and I had another visit. Her son Patrick was now living there so we caught up. During both visits we explored Sydney’s restaurants and enjoyed gourmet meals. I loved the bookshops and the zoo while a ferry trip to Manly was always fun. I saw Patrick in a later visit. But then he was killed in an accident. Sydney lost its appeal.

Anne won a raffle years later – a trip to Sydney to hear Pavarotti sing. That was stupendous. And we did our homework food-wise. A highlight was a visit to Tetsuya’s restaurant in an outer suburb. Even then he had a great reputation. I remember I had ox-tail. Now Tetsuya runs a large restaurant in the centre of the city – it used to be run by Suntory, I’d taken Anne there for her first Japanese meal during the early visit. We enjoyed the two events. But our overall mood was one of sadness, of promise unfulfilled. I'm pleased we had the opportunity - it gave a sense of the closing of a chapter.

The Twilight Within

2010-10-22T15:09:00.007+13:00

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The tui comes daily to the abutilon outside our French doors. I take him for granted but visitors are entranced. One said the other evening ‘I’ve never been so close’. The delicacy of such a large bird has to be seen to be believed. It makes the blackbird look clumsy.

Beside the abutilon the camellia, still a blaze of flower, has new shoots galore. We had it pruned last year after flowering. Judging by the new growth it looks like an even better display next year. I wonder will I be here to see it?

I am enjoying the community of the Tuesday poem group. I follow the individual blogs and comments, disparate lives with one common interest. One member wrote asking me if if a knew the poem which contained the line ‘I was nine at the time and a coward by fate’. I didn’t and a search failed to find it. So I confessed failure. But the miracle of the internet. Someone else knew and blogged the information. Here is the poem. :

Twilight

I was driving the cows and the frogs were soothsaying,
‘Woe, land and water! All, all is lost!’
It was winter full-grown and my bones were black in me.
The tussocks were brittling from dew into frost.

The earth looked at me, ears up in stillness.
I was nine at the time and a coward by fate:
The willow-trees humping into cringing old swaggers,
And the cows lunged up unicorns, passing the gate.

A sudden wind clouted the nose of our chimney,
It rumbled and bellowed its sparks in a spray;
I took to my heels in the terrible twilight,
For I thought the sky was blowing away.

Eileen Duggan

Shades of Walter de la Mare! The fears of a nine-year old! Thanks Alexia. Well done.

I sit in my chair and look out to the garden – green, lush, fecund, the promise of summer. I go into my study and sit at the computer and a miraculous world of information and communication opens. Ali has lent Anne a recipe book, Nigel Slater’s 'The Kitchen Diaries'. I dipped into it as I ate my lunch. His theory is that food should be seasonal. He’s correct. Asparagus started, whitebait ending, gooseberries soon, then peaches, plums and cherries, water-cress, Bluff oysters ahead. The supermarket coddles us from the reality of existence.

Trivial? No! The nature of existence - life, communication, food, and fear.

I often count my good fortune. I was born into a land lucky – was it luck? - enough not to know famine or to have war rage over the land. Reading a book review this morning I learnt that 14 million non-combatants were killed in Eastern Europe in the middle of the 20th century. What a tragic waste! The mind boggles at the enormity of the murderous totalitarian regimes led by Hitler and Stalin. Hang on to our human rights – they are a bulwark against fear and intimidation and slaughter.

The contrast between my quiet haven and the Warsaw ghetto beggars belief. When I was teaching and attempting to explain the size of the number ‘one million’ I used to say ‘Jesus Christ walked, lived and preached in Palestine less than a million days ago’. Some kids would try mental arithmetic, others surreptitiously scribbled the multiplication on a scrap of paper, one or two would brazenly pull out pocket calculators. Sooner or later someone would say ‘you’re right, sir’. The enormity of the number! 14 million souls destroyed, it’s inconceivable..

I would like to think I live in a kinder, gentler land. I’m afraid the jury’s out. The bogeyman that scared that young girl is still there. But it’s within us – not out there.

Paula Green

2010-10-21T10:58:00.002+13:00

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I’ve been reading Paula Green’s latest poetry collection, ‘Slip Stream’. It’s a very moving collection. Diagnosed with breast cancer – ‘nothing feels solid enough to walk upon’ - the poet goes through the various stages of treatment – mammogram, biopsy, operation and radiation treatment. Each poem is untitled but describes a step along the experience of living with the illness. Hope jostles with anxiety - 'she never likes the way people/ say I know you’ll be fine when/ the future is unpredictable, as random as love.’

I had enjoyed Green’s previous collection, ‘Making Lists for Frances Hodgkins.’ As art was the unifying factor in that collection, music is in this one. Indeed there is a list of ‘Songs for the Treatment Room’ at the end of the poems. What I particularly enjoyed was the craftsmanship of the poems - the writer at work. ‘As random as love’ – what an accurate phrase.

The succeeding line is equally superb – ‘or the way birds shit on her car roof.’ True! The randomness of people in a waiting room – the convergerce of a few lifetimes for a brief moment of sharing unarticulated fears. Paula has done this well. I commend the book.

Secondary Teacher Strikes

2010-10-20T14:16:00.006+13:00

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I’ll approach the subject of the secondary teachers’ strike obliquely. A while ago some bright spark in Treasury had an idea. Why should Government Departments be housed in Government property? Especially as they were on prime real estate sites. (That is, close to their political masters). Why not lease or sell them off and let the departments rent the required office space.

So the powers-that-be went ahead with gusto to implement that idea. Offices and officers were uprooted. New premises were modified to meet the department’s requirements. But over time market rentals were seen as another drain on government expenditure. So offices were again relocated.

Often to more rundown areas of the capital. Often to areas with few bus routes nearby and limited parking. Old, frail, ill, poor people have difficulty accessing these places. Government saved some money. But it has been at the expense of service and accessibility. Each upheaval has its one-off cost. It is symptomatic of change in the nature of the public service. And politicians still rail about the bureaucracy. I notice they have not cut parliamentary services.

I know the ‘Yes Minister’ arguments. I’ve seen them in action. I have seen the various departments acting like baronial kingdoms, conflict without the armour and therefore less lethal. But present day suits still have the capacity to engage in civil warfare. It’s a question of common sense and balance.

I can’t enter the secondary pay argument. I’m not up with present salaries. But I suspect what really bugs the teachers has been the gradual erosion of their professional status.

The New Zealand school system is unique. About 97% of our children attend state schools (this figure includes integrated schools). Unlike the medical profession where many doctors work in both the private and the state sector teachers are entirely dependent upon the state for their income. As governments down the years have tried to balance the books teacher incomes remain an issue. Not just pay, conditions of service.

Muldoon asked his ministers for an overall cut of 3% from their departments. I watched Merv Wellington wiggle and squirm to avoid making those cuts. To his credit he never reached the magic figure. Unpopular with teachers I understand he got a rocket from his Boss.

A popular Minister of Education is an oxymoron. Successive ministers have been at the receiving end of teacher anger. Each education minister has to relearn a lesson which their predecessors have already learnt the hard way. You can make education policy in offices in the Capital, but you cannot implement it without the cooperation of teachers.

It seems fair comment to say teaching as a profession has been steadily devalued. Everyone has been through school. Not only is there nostalgia, things are different now, but everyone has ideas about what must be taught and how. It’s hard work encouraging learning with so many distractions out there. It’s always been stressful. It’s more so now. Changes like NCEA have increased the workload. Respect is now something to be gained.

Which is why I come back to conditions of service. Class size, resources, support, all the myriad of things that assist and improve the teacher’s task. I get very angry when I hear people arguing class size doesn’t matter. I know from experience it does.

Last night’s poll showed 49% supported the strikes, 51% didn’t. In other words the country’s very divided on this issue. And when that happens there is no clear winner. Which is why Government and teachers shouldn’t retreat to trench warfare. Sooner or later they will have to sit around the negotiating table. Teachers need to beware that they do not lose any more popular support. The government needs to be aware that turmoil in the sector will undermine it’s own credibility. An all-out attempt to smash PPTA will do the nation great harm.

What’s the link to Government property. Cost reduction does not necessarily improve service. To tell teachers that class size is a matter for the local school trustees and staff is a cop-out. It’s Government’s baby. There's the National interest at stake.

A Fool and Grateful

2010-10-19T21:15:00.004+13:00

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The fecundity of late spring has always brought a sense of joy to me. Anne drove me to the doctor’s place last week. The wildflowers that litter Wellington’s roadside banks and verges come into their own at this time. One forgets how green and colourful Wellington is. As a city it has lots of trees. They add to the character of the place.

But they are undisciplined in contrast with Christchurch. Poor Christchurch, another massive aftershock this morning. My memory is of willows strikingly weeping into the Avon River, a guarantee to its reputation as the Garden City. I loved my time at varsity there in the ‘50s. But its gardens are less English now than they were then.

For three years I lived in Rolleston House, (RH) the student hostel just across Worcester Street from the main university entrance now damaged in the quake. Across the road were the magnificent botanic gardens where I strolled, swotted and courted. The exotic splendours of the hothouse and the formality of the rose garden were overshadowed each spring when they look their best - as does the whole city - cherry blossom, daffodils along the river, and rhododendrons. Indeed, one spot near the azaleas brings back memories of my first real kiss.

Shortly after the destruction of the Twin Towers in New York I had time between meetings to walk through these gardens. There on that bench where that kiss took place a young mother sat breast-feeding her baby, her toddler at her feet throwing clumsy bread to a duck and her ducklings. The scene was idyllic. I suddenly realised she might think I was being voyeuristic but she looked up and smiled and I said something to the effect of what a beautiful scene. She asked her daughter to give the nice man some bread to feed the ducks. Tears sprung to my eyes, for my youth, for the dead in New York, for humanity. I felt a fool and grateful.

Tears are near now as I remember the city I loved living in shudders yet again. One feels so helpless. We are such foolish creatures.

Tuesday Poem: Reading Janet Frame

2010-10-18T20:53:00.004+13:00

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READING JANET FRAME

Where the first pear slug hasn’t won,
the first frost has. Gaunt
the hawthorn’s lichened boughs
rise to cloudless skies and
for once no mower clamours loud.
Day? It’s a cracker. Just right
for worship, celebration, carousel
and the planting of jonquils.

Reading Janet’s poems…
the pocket mirror shows jaw
and bone under a Sunday stubble.
Next spring the bare hedge will bloom again;
but at present all too clear is its gaunt frame.

Harvey McQueen

Sunday week back Fiona Kidman launched my new poetry anthology ‘These I Have Loved’. During her speech she said she’d thought of reading ‘this poem’, it was her favourite Harvey McQueen poem. It was a bit bleak for the occasion she decided. So she read another. I was chuffed. To have someone say they had a favourite out of my canon gave a sense of acceptance.

It’s an old poem, written in the late 1960s. I was teaching in Hamilton. My home there was in a new sub-division. Across the road behind the bulldozed sections was this neglected old hawthorn hedge, a remnant of a vanished dairy farm. On a winter weekend I read my newly-purchased Janet Frame’s poetry collection ‘The Pocket Mirror’. I was blown away. Such power. Such word magic.

I sat down and wrote this poem. I think I can truthfully say it is the only poem I’ve written that required no revision. My hunch is that it’s unity appeals to Fiona as much as the subject matter.

At the time I was working on 'Ten Modern New Zealand Poets', my first poetry anthology, I included a selection from Janet Frame all taken from her 'The Pocket Mirror'. A teacher caustically said he supposed I’d included her to make up the women’s numbers. He didn’t believe my reply that she was amongst the first I selected for I believed her to be our wordsmith par excellence.

I knew that she had been writing poems ever since 'The Pocket Mirror' and hoped they would see the light of day sometime. The posthumous collection 'The Goose Bath Poems' which appeared in 2007 has some of them. I hope there will be many more for they’re great. It also should be said, they are more celebratory than the first collection.

Snails

2010-10-17T10:53:00.004+13:00

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We each see life through different lens.

Anne says ‘it’s war out there’. She’s speaking of the garden. Last week she planted out some petunia seedlings in a pot, interspersed with white alyssum. The following day I pointed out that snails had had a field day on the petunias and suggested she put out some snail bait. She did so. Next morning when she pulled back the curtains there were sluggish, dying snails galore in or around the pot. Even I was surprised by how many. Winter hibernation over they were on the prowl for tasty titbits.

It’s part of the process. It is in the nature of snails to eat certain plants and ignore others. It’s in the nature of a gardener to either not plant those that will be eaten or engage in combat with the enemy. Anne bewails the fact that the gardener must be constantly vigilant. It was an aspect I revelled in. Because I have done it for most of our time together she’s a late comer to the trade as my health has declined. It takes time to adjust. She’s made leaps and bounds. She’s now hopefully nursing the frail petunias. And turning into a snail-disliker.

In my gardening prime I used to set out beer traps in the garden, especially near lettuces, to snare the molluscs. At least they died happy I consoled myself. I prefer not to use bait but in this instance it was either petunias or snails. Sometimes other animals, dogs or more rarely cats will eat the bait and a sad sight is to see thrushes consuming snails killed by bait. I also always liked hedgehogs around the garden- they eat snails.

Last summer Helen my school-girl gardener uncovered a nest of snails. What do I do with them she asked? Crush them, I replied. She shuddered. She couldn’t. So I sent her away and tottering over to the pile brought my foot down on the heap. Satisfaction! For me! I could tell Helen did not approve.

In years ago school biology l learnt that snails are hemaphrodite – that is each snail has both male and female reproductive organs. But despite this interesting fact I must say of all creation they are to me one of the least appealing 'critters'.

I have never looked on snails as a source of food. I did try them once in France. I love garlic so I ate them enjoying the strong garlic flavour of the sauce they were cooked in. But as a taste sensation, forget it. Unlike frog’s legs, Yum! Apparently, the ancient Romans relished them as a delicacy. I also understand that their flavour depends upon what they have been eating. That makes sense. Well, to each his own.

Why Blog?

2010-10-16T08:29:00.001+13:00

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Why Blog?

It’a question I quite frequently ask myself. It’s a form of social networking. Gossip to put it crudely. I can’t get out and about so I interrelate by blogging. People can comment or ignore. I get emails from strangers and friends commenting upon what I’ve written.

There is another level. Speaking of poetry Auden once said he didn’t know what he was going to write until he’d written it. A blog is an ordering of thoughts, ideas, scraps of information. It can be a heat-seeking missile homing in on a target or a thistledown wafting where the breezes take it. It’s me. And it’s not me. There is considerable self-censorship. I try not to be hurtful. I try not to be bitter. I try not to be indecent. I try to be fair. That in itself is a form of discipline. Or is it self-indulgence?. Either way it’s creative.

I’m having these thoughts because Howard Jacobson in an interview in Time magazine talks about novels and the blogs about them. ‘I wasn’t brought up to intepret literature such as ‘Pride and Prejudice’ or ‘Great Expectations’ as something I should agree with.’Of course he’s right. ‘Sons and Lovers” for another example is an entity in itself, an opinion about it is merely that, an opinion.

I have a neighbour who considers Alison Wong’s novel ‘As the Earth Turns Silver’, which I blogged about yesterday, is spoilt by too much historical research. I disagree. It’s one of the strengths of the book. I consider her material well-digested and the Chinese background is obviously familial. So my friend and I disagree. That’s life. Our dialogue, discussion, chinwag, is an age-old human custom.

When I was cooking I found I wanted to share recipes, share triumphs and swap anecdotes over disasters. It’s part of a learning process. If I see a film I want to talk about it, to share experiences and discover how others perceived the story-line, camera work, music etc. Why we liked it or didn’t like it. Part of the reason I enjoyed teaching was this sense of sharing Curiosity is a very human characteristic.

So my blog meets a personal need. At random, on 10 May 2009 I put up a blog called ‘Rididulous Rhinos’. That morning there had been an item about rhino on the radio. It aroused my curiosity and I went on to the internet. A few hours later I emerged having been down all sorts of byways and highways about rhinos, hippos, elephants and ancient Rome. I switched to Microsoft and typed out the blog.

Friends ask does it become a chore. Not yet! The day it does maybe I’ll consider giving it away. But I value it as a lifeline to the world, and to sanity. Though once or twice when I’ve missed a day I’ve had emails asking me if I’m all right. The lack of a blog could be caused by many factors. One lurking dread is a computer crash. I’d be bereft without it.

To put it bluntly ‘I’m a contented blogger.

AS THE EARTH TURNS SILVER

2010-10-15T14:30:00.002+13:00

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I have just finished a splendid book, Alison Wong’s novel ‘As The Earth Turns Silver’

‘lovers are light
on the earth
they do not understand
gravity’

These lovely lines are from a poem in Wong’s ‘Cup’ her first book of poems published in 2006. Three years later her first novel ‘was published to considerable applause. Indeed in the recent awards it was declared the best Kiwi novel of that year.

To my regret, indeed shame, I did not get round to reading it until recently. I always intended to. I had read and greatly enjoyed the novels of Maxine Hong Kingston. Born in California she’d written a series about the experiences of Chinese immigrants to the States. Those books helped me understand the opening sentence of Wong’s novel. ‘It is a lonely place where the Jesus-ghosts preach.’

There’s a powerful haunting sadness about the novel. Part of that sadness is the radiance of the central love affair, a cross-cultural relationship. From its beginning the reader knows it will end in tragedy. The Jesus-ghosts ‘preach about love … yet in the street the people sneer and call out and spit.’

Is this the lot of the immigrant? Curnow’s lines spring to mind
'Bloodily or tenderly striven
To rearrange the given,
It was something different, something
Nobody counted on.'

There are books I read and books I burn through in which I want to know what happens. The trouble with the race through approach is that it leaves less time to appreciate in this instance the liquid prose. I kept telling myself to slow down and savour the language.

There is a brief chapter called ‘The Cable Car’. It is one of the crux chapters of the novel. There is quite a lengthy setting for the chapter. The actual ride up and down and what happened at the top is not described. But in the sudden concluding paragraph there is a major resolution. The author’s understatement leaves it to the reader’s imagination to understand the events of that eventful journey.

I particularly enjoyed the descriptions of old Wellington. That had that ring of fictional truth that is convincing. Yes, that was the way it was. I felt the same about relationship of the immigrants with their counterparts back in China – bonds and ties under strain - but maybe that was fascination at glimpses into another culture, another way of perceiving existence.

I felt Wong got the flavour of the period – the anti Chinese sentiment, the suffragettes, Truby King, the approach to the First World War. This authenticity gives the book strength. But I return to the centrality of the clandestine love affair. The strains of such a relationship! The effects of such a relationship! Gentleness finds it hard to survive in a world of hate and bitterness. The world can turn silver. But not always!

When I finished the book I realised there were some flaws. ‘War and Peace’ has more and my favourite note Hardy’s ‘Tess’ has dozens. But I intend to read Wong’s novel again soon and more slowly. It’s a good read.

I Take It Back

2010-10-14T17:44:00.001+13:00

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I take back my earlier comment about the Commonwealth Games. This afternoon I watched on TV the two marathons, won by Kenyans, though Australia got a silver in the men’s and a bronze in the women’s.

The marathon has always intrigued me. From its Greek origins to its present day ascendancy. Close friends Roger Robinson and Kathrine Switzer have written a marvelous history of the event.It has often been the highlight of the Olympic Games.

Today’s two races were as usual mixtures of skill and stamina, fortune and preparation. The jockeying for position, the judgement of pace, the cat and mouse tactics and the decision as to when to make the decisive burst, it was all there. I sat riveted as watched the race proceed.

But I had one disappointment. The race did not finish in front of the packed athletic stadium. I am a ritual person. That is customary. I accept Delhi’s heat warrants early starts but somehow it took away the glamour of the event.

I realise that has been my problem all week. Because of my own needs I’ve only been watching preliminary heats and events. These have taken place before empty stadiums. The crowd’s hype is part of the occasion. I’ve missed the rest of the athletics. That’s my loss.

I also watched live on my computer the last miner loaded into the capsule to arrive safely on the surface. What a feat. But the BBC commentator kept talking about the last person. There were three rescue people still down in the mine. Not till they came out was the task finalised it seemed to me. How did the last man lcok himself into the capsule? It worried me. The worries we have that are wasted energy. Someone had obviously worked it out. But I would like the media to acknowledge it. Those three men who went down to assist the trapped miners were brave. They deserve praise. The headlinees talk of 33 heroes. I say 36.

Postscript. two hours later. I also take back the last paragraph. TV3 tonight did talk about the rescuers left behind. And there were six of them.The last one entered the capsule and shut it internally.

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Yesterday

2010-10-14T10:45:00.003+13:00

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Yesterday I saw the first honey bees of the season. They were enjoying the lavender. More disappointing I also saw my first white butterfly.

So Wellington has a new mayor. I thought the specials would tend to go to the incumbent. But it did not happen that way.

Anne took me to the optician. I need new computer glasses rather than the old heavy ones I am using. (A relic from the days when I first needed reading glasses). After the battery of tests we selected a frame for a new pair. Except for needing them for reading my eyes are in good shape. Pleased something’s working reasonably well.

In Chile they’ve begun rescuing the miners one by one from deep underground. While the world watches. It is a feel good news story for a change.

Somehow I cannot get involved in the Commonwealth Games. It’s partly time zones and my need to have oxygen every night. But somehow there’s a lack of excitement. But then I’d missed the sevens finals and will the netball tonight. And the athletics are also out of kilter for my needs.

Anne bought and cooked turbot for our dinner. I enjoy fish and turbot is one of the tastiest flavours. I put up these comments because I'm grateful for Anne's care and attention to my needs and wants. My worry is her needs and wants for which I can do so little.

Anne also planted petunias in one of the pots in front of our French doors. Of all the things I miss, gardening is one of the highest. Writing this sentence aroused a long dormant memory of an embarrassing moment.

I had welcomed a visiting Chinese education delegation. In return they hosted us for a meal. There was a floral misunderstanding.. Through the interpreter, the Chinese minister asked about my hobbies. When I said I loved gardening, the minister looked baffled. So I added ‘growing flowers”, and then indeed he looked surprised. When they had gone, the Chinese language adviser gave me some advice: ‘Don’t ever say that. Flowers mean “pretty women.’’ He tapped his nose knowingly.

Early Childhood

2010-10-13T12:00:00.001+13:00

It is very satisfying watching a young child learning to walk and talk. The development is so rapid and so miraculous. Both skills involve trial and error. We learn by making mistakes. Teachers know you dwell on the positive, not the failure.

Infant teachers know, however, the wide division that exists in their new infant classes between those who have extensive stimulation and those whose development has been left to chance and nature. That gap is very hard to close.

Which is why I am so critical of the Key Government’s early childhood policy. During David Lange’s stint as Minister of Education the report 'Before Five' charted a course for early childhood care and education. Those in the sector were enthusiastic. The Cinderella of the education sector was at last getting recognition.

Under the succeeding regime, however, much of that programme was not implemented. Helen Clark’s Government returned to it, improving it and setting definite goals. One of those was to have qualified teachers in the various centres.

Now that goal has been abandoned. Last night, I watched Minister Anne Tolley being interviewed by John Campbell. She is the best non-answerer I’ve seen for a long time. She puts her head down like a rhinoceros and charges with her prepared answer. Her mind is made up.

One of her statements was that you don’t need qualifications to take care of young children. That's the point. The word education goes alongside care. Taking care of is more than wiping noses and bums. It involves encouraging curiosity, seeking language development, improving motor skills.

A qualified teacher is more apt to meet those needs. I am not knocking the hundreds of dedicated people who’ve worked in the early childhood sector. I speak from experience. When I was teaching I took part in an experiment. To cope with an acute shortage of secondary teachers a ‘pressure-cooker’ scheme was devised. Local people with degrees were engaged to work in schools under a master-teacher to learn the trade.

The scheme was enlarged to include graduates from England. I enjoyed the task of training these people as teachers. But when I became an inspector of schools I saw many of them in action. They had learnt a trade but they lacked the theory to underpin their programmes. They taught my style rather than develop their own to meet the needs of the actual students in front of them. They had been trained rather than educated. It was a chastening lesson.

The sad thing about the pulling out of the resource rug from the early childhood sector is that it is an essential component of the knowledge society. Our pre-schoolers need the best opportunity they can get. Not only for their own sake, but for the nation’s.

Tuesday Poem: Worth A Chance

2010-10-11T20:55:00.004+13:00

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WORTH A CHANCE

When I planted Iceland poppies
in the clay
                               of the new section
exposed to the autumn winds
                               it seemed unlikely
they’d survive
                              but they have.

Now another calyx
                              is burst by petals
which
           if left
                             will quickly fall
but if gathered will be replaced
                             by others.

And if the stems are burnt
                            the blooms will last
a little longer
                            in time, new commitments
involvements, but at present
                           a flourish of colour.

Harvey McQueen

A the launch of my anthology of favourite New Zealand poems on Suinday Fiona Kidman chose this early poem of mine to read – it is not in the collection I hasten to add. I only chose one of mine,in the dedication to Anne my wife.

What Fiona did not realise is that it was one of the earliest poems I ever gave to Anne. It arouses memories in both of us. The only problem is that Anne swears that the original I gave her had in the last line ‘a flourish of orange’. .From this vantage I cannot adjudicate. What Fiona read is what is printed in my first collection of poems. All I can say ‘is good choice Fiona’. And thanks

Tingling Catch

2010-10-11T15:54:00.003+13:00

Today's Tingling Catch blog (11/10/2010) from Mark Pirie has comment about 'These I Have Loved'. It also has an old poem of mine that Mark considered for his cricket book but did not use. See my bloglist

Thanks Mark

Harvey

Fiona Kidman on 'These I Have Loved'

2010-10-11T13:30:00.002+13:00

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Yesterday, Fiona Kidman launched my latest anthology. 'These I Have Loved'. Here is her address.

'For Harvey
There’s something marvelous and exhilarating and absolutely special about gathering with friends for the 10th day of the 10th month of the 10th year of the century. It feels like a unique moment in time. The Greek philosopher Pythagoras saw 10 as the symbol of the universe and of expressing the whole of human knowledge.

As it happens I’ve got a passion for the synchronicity of numbers. I’m a failed mathematician, who might have been better but for a change of schools when I was growing up. And I don’t have any deep hindsight into what numbers might or might not signify in our lives. But it does seem to me that this idea of the whole of human knowledge rings one or two bells here as, on this 10th day,, we launch a collection of one man’s poetic human knowledge, distilled into those poems he loves the best.

‘These I Have Loved’ are poems loved by the poet and educator, our friend Harvey McQueen, 100 New Zealand poems that have caught his attention, lingered in his memory, and stayed there as lasting sentinels, totem poles if you like, to his life long love of language and poetry. Or to put it another way, as a beacon to the wider life of the mind, a way into learning and understanding that which is important.

It’s no real surprise to those of us who love poetry that, although poetry falls on hard times, it never dies. The voice of the poet is always with us, the singing words that resonate in our heads, are carried like emblems of grief and happiness, there to sustain us in good times and bad. The music pf poetry embedded in our subconscious simply never leaves us, or not the best of it, those which we love the most.

Indeed, in his introduction to this book, Harvey writes “These are poems which, down the years or in some cases only recently, have settled in my mental household, comfortable and available, a satisfying source of reflection and contemplation. To a considerable extent they represent who I am, or maybe, the person I would hope to be. They reflect my temperament and my interests. There are long poems and short poems, some simple, others difficult, some well-known, others not. I, that is Harvey still speaking here, used to tell my students, you don’t need to understand a poem to fully like it. Love has the capacity to astonish. Like relationships, you think you’ve grasped the essence, only to find there are previously unplumbed depths and surprises.’

Well, I get all of that, because the kind of poems that Harvey loves are often the ones I love too and I guess that that shared delight, as well as our long friendship, something I will return to, is the reason Harvey asked me to launch this book today. Like Harvey, I love Ruth Dallas’s poem ‘Milking Before Dawn’ which is one of the great pastoral poems of New Zealand’s or any, poetry. It has a great resonance for me, who milked many a cow before dawn, with chilblains on my fingers. Then there’s the countryside of poets like Brian Turner, Denis Glover, the different landscapes of Mark Pirie, Pat White and Janet Frame, and of course the poetry of his own beloved Little River territory on Banks Peninsula where he grew up. So landscape, and family and childhood, love and loss, food and its preparation- witness Ian Wedde’s lovely poem ‘To Autumn’ – for instance, and gardening, are some of the great themes that Harvey explores.

How does he put it all together? Well, he has divided his loves into several sections” Love the World, I’m in Love with you, You know the place , Books and paddocks endure, This much I have learned, are just some of them. In so arranging the poems, Harvey does indeed create symbols of the universe. Each section includes a generous introductory note that creates an order and context for the poems.

The book includes a wide ranging, eclectic mix of poets. But I think it no random act that has brought James K. Baxter into the center of his mix. This centrality signals a particular kind of voice, and again I return to a musicality of language, a yearning beyond the obvious things of life, to those of the spirit. We know, because the voice of Baxter at the heart of Harvey’s choices, mean that the poems he has chosen will reflect a certain quality of music and rhythm, plus expressions of social comment and concern. You could say here, perhaps, that for Harvey Baxter represents a centrifugal force from the past 50 or 60 odd years, similar to that of that Dylan Thomas in Welsh poetry, or Seamus Heaney does for in Ireland, or, if one dare mention him in the same breath, Leonard Cohen does for Canada. Baxter, then, is an indicator, of what we might expect from Harvey’s choices of poem, his view of what constitutes new Zealand poetry.

There are several recent poems by newly emerging poets, and also many who spring from a group of their time, people who were seriously writing poetry in the 1960s and 1970s, a time where my own modest poetic history began. Vincent O’Sullivan, Lauris Edmond, Alistair Campbell, Louis Johnson, Sam Hunt, Elizabeth Smither, Rachel McAlpine, Tony Beyer, Bill Manhire, to name just a few. In many ways it’s a meeting of minds amongst friends. Vincent O’Sullivan said to me the other day, and I hope he’ll forgive me for quoting him, that this book is significant in the wide range, the broad and generous tone of this selection. I echo that, the selection doesn’t live by any rule book about what’s good and what’s not. Harvey has simply chosen what he wants without fear or favour.

We do, it seems to me, have a wide poetic mainstream in New Zealand today, but we also have individual voices and events, fringes and movements which wax and wane, and may not last forever, but leave in their wake memorable poems. Several of Harvey’s books have been published by Mark Pirie’s Headworx Press, just one example of a publisher and poet working at the edges of the mainstream, not altogether recognized by it, yet made the richer by its contribution. Michael O’Leary at the Earl of Seaclyff Press is another.

And I should of course place Roger Steele, publisher of this book in this context, -if that causes Roger a ripple of unease, I’m saying here that these are risk takers, and risk in poetry publication is something to be hailed and celebrated. Sometimes, as we saw with Roger’s publication of the poet Glen Colquhoun, there are results beyond all expectations. I should add too Roger, that this is a delightful production of Harvey’s book and you’ve done it proud. Bravo.

I mentioned my friendship with Harvey. I don’t really remember when it began, but I’ve been aware of him as a poet since his first book ‘Against the Maelstrom’ appeared in 1981. He moved to Wellington in 1977, and it was somewhere in the space of those years, when he was moving amongst my friends, those several poets of the 70s, I’ve mentioned as appearing in this book, that we got to know each other. He’s been a school teacher, a school inspector and an education aide to former Prime Minister David Lange, and most of all a poet of whom it has been written that his poems often contain a very simple action that becomes a symbol for a universal human truth. He is above all a constant friend to many, and a mentor of other poets. And to Anne Else to whom he dedicates a poem of his own at the beginning of the book,he is a loving companion, friend and husband. Many thanks are owed to Anne for her help in arranging today’s gathering.

All in all, and almost the last thing I have to say is that this is a generous, energetic, imaginative and very enjoyable anthology, full of unexpected surprises which I hope many will own (That means buy the book) But there is just one more thing : Harvey asked me if I would like to read a poem of my own from the book, but on reflection I decided that I would like to read one of Harvey’s because, apart from the opening poem for Anne, in typically modest fashion, there are none of his own in the book. I was torn between two, one is ‘Reading Janet Frame’, which is perhaps my favourite of Harvey’s poems, and ‘Worth a Chance’. The first ends on a slightly bleak note, and as today is a day of celebration of Harvey and of this book, ‘Worth a Chance’ won out.'

PS I will post 'Worth A Chance' as my Tuesday Poem for this week

Waiting for a Launch

2010-10-10T12:06:00.004+13:00

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It’s a strange day. So many things to write about.

Last night about 2 am the doorbell rang. Anne didn’t hear it upstairs so I pushed my walker to the door. It was a policewoman. There had been a fracas down the lane she said. Had I heard anything? Sorry to disturb you sir.

Book launch .this afternoon. I’m trying to husband my energy prior to the event. It’s hard to keep excitement corralled.

I haven’t mentioned this on my blog before but during the adventuresome night when I slept with a different and temporary mask I broke the skin on the bridge of my nose. Despite dressing with anti-bacteria ointment and manuka honey (my caregiver swears by this remedy) it hasn’t healed.so we took it to the doctor’s on Friday. So anti-biotics.

I finished the Holman book. It has not been the best of times to be reading such a densely packed account. It’s a book demanding reflection and consideration. The history of pre-Pakeha New Zealand that I was fed in my school-days and indeed taught in my early teaching career has long been superseded by new research and fresh understandings. ‘Our Nation’s Story’ needed considerable modification. Holman’s done a good job pulling together so many different strands. I am pleased to have read it.

What to read next? I dithered between Alison Wong’s novel ‘As the Earth Turns Silver’ and the new biography of Katherine Mansfield. Mary McCallum’s blog expressed delight in the novel and expressed regret at not reading it earlier. The comment tipped the scale so I’ll read the Wong. Getting lost in a good novel is probably the best way to forget about the launch.

The local body elections held a few surprises. When the super-city Auckland was created I thought John Banks would continue on his merry way. I was wrong. I thought Kerry Prendergast was a shoo-in as our mayor. I was nearly wrong. Lower Hutt, Hamilton and Dunedin replaced existing mayors, though Tim Shadbolt continued on smiles and all, though Southland lost the Ranfurly Shiled, In New Plymouth Harry Duynhoven ex Labour MP swept in. It’s hard to pick trends but I suspect the overall trend is a left swing.

Last night we watched a DVD ‘Home By Christmas’. When I shifted to Wellington and the Head Office of the old department of Education there was a younger officer Ted Preston. He introduced me to his sister Gaylene the film producer. Gaylene has made this film about her father Edward and mother Tui. Young man goes off to war, captured, in an Italian POW camp, escaped to Switzerland. Meanwhile his wife having had their child, Ted, falls in love with someone else.

It’s a moving memoir. Old Ted played by Martin Barry has that laconic Kiwi language that I associate with my stepfather and the other returned servicemen of that era. The restraint of the movie is part of its appeal. The painful adjustment of the soldier and his wife on his return four years late for Christmas is left to our imagination. We know there are two more children. Preston's camera captured a slice of Kiwi life very well.

In Chile, the miners trapped deep in the mine, have had a rescue shaft reach them. It'll still take a few days before the actual rescue attempt will be made. It's a story of courage and technology. As I say often, the human spirit is amazing. Or maybe that is the life force, the blasted oak I wrote about last week is budding up.

Beattie's Book Blog

2010-10-08T13:18:00.000+13:00

I was absolutely thrilled to open Beattie's Book Blog and find Graham Beattie's wonderful long post on my new anthology. Graham writes:

"Harvey McQueen spent his adult lifetime in education. I had known of him for a long while before I finally met him back in the mid-1980's when I had the great joy and privilege of publishing The Penguin Book of New Zealand Verse which he and Ian Wedde edited. That was but one of the books he anthologised in a long and illustrious career.'

"Now he has another anthology, published just this week by enterprising Wellington publisher Steele Roberts, a company which provides great support to poetry publishing in this country. In fact outside of AUP and VUP Steele Roberts is probably our leading poetry publisher."

"Harvey's new book, and he tells me it will probably be his last, is These I Have Loved - my favourite New Zealand poems, and it is an absolute gem. It is a marvellous, eclectic collection as you would expect of course from one whom I suspect has poetry running in his veins.Then there is his eight pages of Introduction where he talks of life and explains just how poetry got to be in those veins in the first place, then scattered throughout the book there are his thoughtful comments on the poems he has selected.... Thanks Harvey, These I Have Loved is a must-have for all who love poetry or would like to love poetry.A wonderful addition to my poetry bookshelf. Thanks too for all you have done for NZ poets and NZ poetry over your life. I salute you."

Thank you too, Graham. You can read the whole post here.

Contentment

2010-10-08T09:47:00.004+13:00

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Contentment is not a word I use much for it is rarely a state of being that I now inhabit. It is getting harder and harder to put on my dressing gown each morning, somehow shoulders seem reluctant to engage with sleeves.

Earlier this week Anne’s niece called with her two month old baby. Childhood helplessness. In the cycle that is existence I can see the approach of my second childhood. It’s not a pleasing prospect.

But yesterday I felt contentment. I had spent some time signing books for my launch this weekend. I browsed happily as I signed. Poetry books are immensely dippable.

It was lovely and sunny so I suggested afternoon tea out on the lawn. With the recently-bought second-hand walker I went out the front door and around the house to the east side to sit in garden chair. I sat facing the house, sun-hat protecting my face and soaking up the warmth. Bruce had mowed the lawn the day before. Life felt good.

From that vantage I could see the two oaks side by side on the west side of the house. One is a burst of fresh green leaves. The other, shattered by last March’s storm has hardly a promise of buds.

The storm merely winnowed what was already happening. Last Spring the healthy one had the same green canopy of splendour, the other a few leaves as it struggled for survival. It was sick and frail before the gale did its damage. I imagine it had little sap flow. When I was young I reveled in challenging the storm. Now, I feel at its mercy.

The two oaks are a metaphor for my life – the green one my mind, alert and active, (albeit frustrated), whereas the ailing one is my body.

Strange to have that thought while in a state of contentment. The sight of new leaves on the lovely weeping elm to the north helped. As did the snowdrops, they’ve been flowering for ages. (A search on the internet reveals that deer do not eat them). The lavender’s looking majestic, the roses are vigorous in growth and Anne had planted out lettuce seedlings for summer salads.

Don't catalogue Harvey. Like all such moods it vanished. Musing about contenment destroyed the moment. It's lesson Keats taught us. It's a lesson we never learn. Though we yearn for its return that instance is over and life flows on.
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Helen of Troy

2010-10-07T07:11:00.000+13:00

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Last night we watched a DVD ‘Helen of Troy’. Historian Bettany Hughes toured the viewer around the historic sites of the Greek World in 1,300 BC in search of the facts behind ‘the face that launched a thousand ships.

The legends of the Trojan war are fascinating. Ever since I studied Greek History, Art and Culture it has been a source of interest to me. Homer immortalised what was probably a minor skirmish into a masterpiece with interplay between gods and humans.

I’ve been to Mycanae twice. The Lion Gate, two lions rampant carved into a massive stone, is an imposing entrance to the ruins of what is claimed to be Agamemnon’s citadel. I’ve seen the gold and other treasures in Athens museum taken from the site indicating the wealth and power of the military fortress.

It was not only Homer. The ancient playwrights highlighted the passions and actions of the ruling family at Mycanae. I drew upon them when I wrote this poem about Helen. I have never been to the ruins of Sparta and the nearest I got to Troy was in a plane aloft over the Dardanelles enroute from Istanbul to Athens. Hughes stresses the Hittite influence. Subsequent reading has widened my picture of the influences shaping that ancient Greek society but at the time I wrote the poem I was very much in full flight of pan-Hellenic glory. I should further add the poem was written during an idyllic week’s summer holiday in Paihia.

HELEN

I can’t sleep. Spartan
nights are warm in August.
Illustrious Menelaus roisters
again with his cronies; clattering
around in harsh armour they boast
of burnt and blackened Troy.

It’s my fate to share this unheroic age.
The gods alone know when some
tall singer of tales will blindly
celebrate that savage raid: Hector’s
corpse mutilated by vain Achilles..
He’ll ignore my beloved Paris,
already the butt, the blamed,

the cause; boot-licking Odysseus
saw to that before he vanished
into the tempestuous sea and
that’s the last we’ll hear of him.
I remember my father Tyndareus
once saying as we collected honey

from smoke-dazed bees, ‘likely lass
they’ll not remember us: fame
is mainly chance.’ My husband
spreads nursery stories, ravishing
great swans, my real self spirited
away for ten years, deep-bosomed
goddesses offering gifts – a futile

attempt to save his sweat-stained
reputation. My rustic maidenhood,
olive harvest frolics, sufficed
the fox-souled son of Atreus,
I could milk ewes, churn soft-white
cheeses, render lard, was comely,

of fertile stock, (he wanted sons
so overlooked my meagre dowry).
It was so long ago, grey flecks
now in my raven locks. His family
was always quarrelling –witness
the massacre at Mycanae. Those
who malign me forget his cruelty.

He was mean also, counting
quinces for our guests. Those
same ill-tongues claim that Paris
was effeminate. They are wrong.
He was cedar-wood and stone, a royal
city, battle-furious when aroused.

When desire (that uninvited stranger)
struck I resisted, in fact we both
resisted for some while, until
Menelaus left us (for boar-hunting
so he claimed). The rest you know.
Such passion demands obedience.
Now beside the weeping Scamander

fallen masonry beds the fugitive
cyclamen and scarlet poppy;
badgers burrow in the ruins
where we once loved so tightly.
Women curse me; I am the whore
who led their men, sons, lovers,

husbands, direct to that
nonsensical cavern of dark and
lonely Hades. It was not my intent.
Nothing is what it once was.
Released, I am captive in my
own country. Even the rain
is different, it falls with much

less force: little affection
or tenderness here. My critics
forget that I also have reason
to weep over my embroidery.
Let it all be said, but also
recall our sturdy ship

cresting the rollers of
the wind-swept Aegean, for
royal escort diving gannets,
leaping dolphins; the strength
and delight of oak-hearted Paris.
Remembering that brief joy
I do not regret what I have done.

A New Zealander

2010-10-06T14:49:00.004+13:00

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Today, in 1769 Captain Cook sighted New Zealand. A lot has happened on our shores since that sighting.

Which is why the racist remark of Paul Henry’s in incredible. In prime time on our television he chose to criticise the Governor-General for not looking like a New Zealander. Hells bells! What does a New Zealander look like? The statement was worse than poor taste. There are steps on the path to the final solution. This was one..

He insulted the Queen’s representative in front of the Prime Minister. I can only go on replays and therefore the producer’s selection. But John Key didn’t seem to be that affronted, indeed he seemed to joke about the matter. It was a leadership opportunity missed. There are MPs from both major parties who do not fit Henry’s category of looking like a New Zealander. Should they be excluded? TVNZ authorities tried to stare the issue down by saying Henry's comments reflected what others were thinking and saying. They do not reflect my thoughts.

I was delighted to see a SouthAfrican born athlete carry our flag at the Commonwealth Games. Should she be precluded from such an honour because of her birth-place? Or does she look and sound like a New Zealander? Maybe Henry’s prejudice is about pigmentation. If so he’ll exclude thoudands of peoople I’d call New Zealanders

I draw attention to Renee Liang’s blog on the subject in the Tuesday Poem site. We have too few political poems in Kiwiland.

Tuesday Poem: Patrick

2010-10-04T21:39:00.002+13:00

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Patrick

Nine years have passed
since that telephone call.

This afternoon we walk past
the tree we planted over your ashes.

Your mother admires
a chaffinch landing cheekily
beside us on the duck pond rail.

We stroll up to the swings
where she says if you were alive now
she wouldn’t remember you playing there

nor would I describe a chaffinch,
chestnut, confident, elegant, commanding
attention by its very presence alongside us.

In October 1987, Patrick, my 18 year-old stepson was killed in an accident in Sydney. I put this poem on the Tuesday Poem site twenty-three years later in his memory.

Book Launch

2010-10-03T12:10:00.006+13:00

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I have with pleasure been following fellow Tuesday poet Helen Lowe’s blog as she radiates excitement at the launch of her science fantasy novel The Heir of Night [fantastic title]. I understand her feeling. It doesn’t matter whether it’s your first launch or twenty-first. Each brings its own mixture of delight and apprehension. All those months of labour resulting in a book which you now hold in your hands – your words, ideas, thoughts, images in print, the feel of the book, its weight, its smell, its appearance, its cover. What will friends think? And strangers? It’s no longer solely yours. It’s out in the marketplace.

Tomorrow I am receiving advance copies of my new poetry anthology These I Have Loved: My Favourite New Zealand Poems. It will be launched next Sunday by Fiona Kidman here in Wellington. Kate Camp and Vince O’Sullivan will read a poem apiece. I am excited, indeed thrilled. It represents over five years' work. In some respects it represents a lifetime of teaching and reading poetry.

The book has 100 New Zealand poems that I have loved - a selection of poems which (as I say in the Introduction), 'down the years or in some cases only recently, have settled in my mental household, comfortable and available, a satisfactory source of reflection and contemplation. To a considerable extent they represent who I am, or maybe, more honestly, the person I would like to be. They represent my upbringing, my temperament, my interests, and my hopes.’

As well as the poems I have linking descriptions as to why I’ve chosen them. For example, Ruth Dallas’s ‘Milking Before Dawn’ represents an early school lesson from 1960, a success that shaped my career. As a school-boy myself I had three idyllic years at Akaroa District High School. So for the cover I helped select an aerial photograph of Akaroa Harbour with Onawe peninsula. The volcanic plug on the old weathered crater was the subject of the first New Zealand poem I was ever introduced to. And so on. With my ill-health it is likely to be my swan-song collection. I am delighted to have compiled it.

At one stage Helen expressed thoughts about reviews – every author has such hopes and fears; though many deny it. I was going to comment on her blog and then I decided to wait and write about reviews on my own. Reviews can make or break a book. They can have immense power. I’ve had bad reviews and good reviews. When my first collection of my own poetry, Against the Maelstrom, came out, one reviewer said ‘I should stick to school inspectoring’. That stung. It was advice I ignored. Had I accepted it the rest of my life would have been different. Had I been more diffident and followed it would I have had such a good life? Such questions are unanswerable. But just raising them shows the power of a review.
John Weir, reviewing the same volume, wrote something wise. Which is the best poem in a first collection? Seek it out, praise it, for it represents the poet’s potential - a sentiment I have tried to follow in my own reviewing. (He chose my poem 'Helen' as illustrating that potential. It's on my blog 17 Nov 2009).

I have one main request of any reviewer. Please review the book that is – not the book that you wanted it to have been or thought it should have been. Apart from that, in your judgement remember the author is also human, a creature of flesh and blood. It is easier to destroy than create. Criticism can be positive as well as negative.

These I Have Loved will be available after 10 October, published by Steele Roberts. For more information email info@steeleroberts.co.nz

Tony Curtis et al

2010-10-02T11:22:00.002+13:00

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Wellington’s September saw double the rainfall on the monthly average. At the same time there was slightly more sunshine than usual. It was a topsy-turvy month. October’s beginning with fine sunny weather.

I’ve mentioned the IBM group, the twenty-odd people who suffer from our particular form of muscular degeration. Two have had bad falls this week, one requiring five stiches in his head and the other two breaks in her leg. Their accidents put my concerns in perspective.

Anne made the same comment last night. We were eating our dinner when there was an almighty crash in the kitchen. The large wall clock had fallen off the wall, obviously not secured when taken down to alter for daylight saving. Its glass face was smashed on the tile floor. On the way down it broke the porcelain salt tub that has always sat on the kitchen bench. Anne bought the clock at Auckland farmer’s closing down sale and the salt piece when she was first newly married. Compared with the losses in the Canterbury earthquake these two were mere trivia, but the human capacity to invest meaning to possessions is very strong.

I’ve bought a second-hand walker for use outside. With summer coming on I want to be able to go out and enjoy the sunshine. But I didn’t want to use the good one on the lawn – moisture and mud. Helen, our school-girl gardener, is coming this afternoon, so I’ll supervise her weeding and planting from the garden chairs, decamping with the walker between sites.

I was ashamed to be a New Zealander when I read this morning that one of our TV reporters smeared mud on the wall of the athlete’s quarters at the Commonwealth Games village. I wouldn’t be surprised if the same reporter made a big hue and cry about drug cheating if there is a case. Talk of double standards.

There was a surprising comment on my blog site this morning. Someone had goggled the last line of the short poem ‘Last Run’ – ‘he thought it was fun/ when I lifted the gun.’ He was directed to my Stoatspring site 6/6/09. He commented on that long ago site.

Tony Curtis the heart-throb Hollywood actor died yesterday. ‘Some Like It Hot’ is in my opinion the best comedy film ever made. Curtis and Lemmon’s acting and delivery of lines are superb. ‘City Lights’ runs second but is streets behind. Curtis apparently complained that the director took Marilyn Monroe’s best takes ahead of his. That man knew his audience. I can recollect a group of young men enviously talking about the opportunity that Curtis had in kissing Monroe. ‘I wonder how many rehearsals they had’ one of the group mused. Years later I read Curtis had said it was like kissing Adolf Hitler.

Curtis was at the time married to Janet Leigh. ‘Psycho’ came out the following year. Again, I would rank it high in the list of films I’ve seen. I was teaching at Morrinsville College. Carless, I was negotiating to buy my own wheels. Jack Archibald, the head of the primary section, asked what I would do when I got the car. Go to Hamilton to see ‘Psycho’ I said.

Jack’s wife had just had their first baby in Hamilton hospital. Jack was going across to see her and had planned to go on and take in the movie. So I went with him that night. We had a fish and chips meal beside Hamilton Lake. He went and saw his wife and child while I read in the car. And we saw the movie. W drove home silently, two loquacious men shaken by what they’d just seen. Fifty years on ' Psycho' has spawned thousands of horror films. It’s pioneering impact was great. It has a thousand imitators but none reach its level.

Only once again did I see an audience completely silenced. It was ‘Bonnie and Clyde’ which I saw in Christchurch. The audience spilled out into the Square without a word. From the film’s beginning with Faye Dunnaway’s Bonnie boredly hitting her pillow with her hand until its end when her lifeless arm collapses out of the bullet-ridden car it was a gripping ride. Arthur Penn, its director also died yesterday.

Waikaremoana

2010-10-01T15:04:00.003+13:00

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‘The era of written history for all Maori, including Tuhoe, was well under way in the years immediately prior to Best’s arrival in the Urewera in 1895. While oral records of both the distant and recent past were still powerful, a new form of literary consciousness had been transforming their world and was about to be laid over the Urewera; the surveyor’s map. Ever since Cook had touched these shores with his phenomenal ability to chart the uncharted and map the unmapped –and later the treaty of Waitangi had laid out the assumption of the sovereign power to purchase the new lands thus presented – Maori found themselves facing not just the new technology of the book and the gun, but the intellectual universe out of which had emerged the theodolite.’

I have read on much further from this striking opening to the seventh chapter of Holman’s ‘Best of Both Worlds’. Best and Tutakangahau have crossed Lake Waikaremoana and Best is recording the elder man’s chants and accounts.

I have been to Waikaremoana four times. The first was for a week before I began teaching at Morrinsville College. I attended a wedding in Hamilton and had over a week to kill before I began work. Hearing of this one of my fellow students at Teachers’ College suggested I visit her at Tuai. Her father was in charge of the hydroelectricity plant at Waikaremoana. I was pleased to accept.

The bus trip was fascinating – the never-ending pine forests suddenly gave way to miles and miles of native bush. To my eye it looked unlogged. The drive around the lake was breath-taking. Judith’s mother saw me as a suitor. She insisted we take the family car for the day. To her surprise Judith took along her younger siblings. We had a great time exploring the shores of the Lake. I knew nothing of its history. But I sensed history and glimpsed the romanticism that 19th Europeans would have felt.

The second time was my honeymoon. We camped on the shores of the lake. Kiwi called at night. It was so quiet and peaceful. Civilization had ceased to exist. Before we went I’d read Best. That added meaning to the visit.

The third we stayed in the Tourist Hotel. A day rambling in the bush followed by French cuisine – a perfect combination.

On the fourth visit I took Anne and her two sons to see such beauty. The hotel had burnt down and had not been replaced. We stayed in the cabins that had been built down by the lakeside.

Each trip I tramped to Waikareiti – each time tranquility personified.

But apart from the Best I knew little about the area. I wish I knew what I know now when I inspected Ruatoki school.

What Holman is doing is bringing together all sorts of intellectual strands in my mind and linking them. I’m up to Seddon and Carroll trying to cajole Tuhoe into opening up their land. The information adds a whole fresh dimension to the foreshore debate. I have never regarded myself as a scholar but I enjoy thinking about the fruits of scholarship. And realising though it was not written then I wish I’d read this book a long time ago.

Dingo and Dog

2010-09-30T14:21:00.003+13:00

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Last evening’s TV news ended with a delightful shot of Wellington zoo’s new dingo pup and a labrador cross slightly older pup from the SPCA romping in their pen. The idea is to socialise the young dingo into canine ways. The young of most animals are cute. Pup’s playfulness is especially charming. But play is learning.

The theory is that the Australian dingo evolved from dogs brought across from Indonesia. They filled a niche and have flourished. Unlike their marsupial brethren they are an introduced species, however.

It has been said the past is elusive. The ‘Harvey that once was’ is so. But the ‘Harvey that is’ retains clear memories of what was There were always pups in my childhood. My grandfather, Pop, would give those he intended to keep – he was a dog-trial enthusiast – to widowed Mum to raise. My brother and I played with them. One was called Rag, we spent hours with an old blankets tug-a-warring him. Hence his name. Being a huntaway he made a lot of noise.

But my favourite was Sandy. A half-grown pup we were raising was run over by a neighbour. I saw the accident. I was told the following morning he had died in the night. I knew better. I’d heard the sound of the shot-gun. The charades that adults and children play. The neighbour had a new litter. He gave me this male huntaway pup. Pop wasn’t keen, he was not of good stock. But he’d taken Rag away now he was a mature dog; he was earning his keep as a working dog. So I was left with Sandy as we called the new addition..

When Mum married my stepfather Dick Sandy transferred his affections to him. Dick was obviously leader of the pack. Sandy adored Dick. Pop on his death-bed divided up his dogs, he gave Rag and a young heading pup called Meg. to Dick. Meg honed her sheep-dog skills on the chooks – eyeing and heading them. To my delight Sandy turned out to be a successful dog – Dick won many a trial with him and he was a godsend out in the farm.

Sandy was in heaven when Dick bought a small Dodge triuck, a car converted for farm use. When let loose from their chains the dogs would go for a run to the woolshed and back. Having done that several times they’d make a beeline for the truck. Quick leaps and they were all there on the back,.tails thumping waiting hopefully and expectantly for Dick to appear. If he walked towards the truck Sandy would bark his pleasure. Dick would growl ‘shaddup’ but Sandy knew the depths of emotion. This was an affectionate admonition. Even better when Dick was on his own. Sandy could sit in the other front seat of the cab, obviously 2i/c of the pack. The other dogs never challenged this position.

Dick and Mum by their labour turned a broken-down old farm into a good production unit. Sandy, Rag, Meg and their cohorts helped greatly in that process. The farm house had clear spheres of interest. The house and vegetable garden proper had a netting fence. Woe-betide the person who left the gate open.

Out the back gate was the yard, a place for dogs and chooks. The ducks couldn’t get through the next fence and gate. In season there were pet lambs there. At the north end there was a big macrocapa hedge gone to trees. Under this there was a line of dog kennels. On most days the dogs were loose all the time. If necessary they were tied up. There was a further fence and gate. Beyond it was the fowl-house, duck pond, cow bail and pig sty. The dogs had free range. The duck-pond meant fresh water was available.

Once or twice there were piglets. When little they had the run of pond area and the yard. The dogs tolerated chooks, piglets, lambs surprising well. I think they saw them as lesser animals in the pecking order. When Mum had twin boys I was surprised to see Rag when his ear was pulled mercilessly, gently take the child’s hand in his jaw and disengage it. I sensed the dogs realised the young humans were not yet fully responsible.for their actions.

I’ve read the claim that the early domestication of dogs, (almost certainly from wolf pups) meant that humanity lost its sense of hearing and smell to a considerable extent. The tribe could rely upon the dogs for warning in those spheres. What did the dogs give up in return? Protection and a guaranteed supply of food! There is another aspect of the partnership abhorent to the Anglo-Saxon mind, dog as food. Amundsen knew the value. My memory of Sandy does not permit the possibility. He and his peers laid down the memory-banks that go all ga-ga at the sight of two young pups cavorting around.

Revisionism

2010-09-29T15:29:00.001+13:00

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Last night while Anne went to WOW (Wearable Arts in Wellington) Jenn from next door elder-sat with me. She grew up in the Caitlins. On a beach there after a big storm had washed away a large totara log she and her sister discovered a cache of Maori adzes and flints on the beach where the log would have been. The find was given to the Otago museum.
The early intermarriage of the southern Maori to the best of my knowledge has meant we no longer have large amounts of knowledge of their way of life and world view before the Pakeha arrived. Obviously seals and mutton birds in season would have provided protein but it must have been a hard existence compared say with those living in the Bay of Plenty or Bay of Islands.

That thought arises from my reading about Elsdon Best. Most people look bewildered whern I say I’m reading about him. Jenn didn’t. She’d had studied his works when she did anthropology at Otago university.. I was fascinated when she told me about anthropological digs during the summer vacation.

As a young man I sought truth in books. History in which I majored was supposed to instill a sense of critical thinking. It didn’t work that way. Books were still the guru, they would provide the answer Just as in poetry Baxter provided meaning in his observations so Best seemed the best source for information about early Maori.

With my Canterbury background I found myself teaching in the Waikato. There was a big deficiency about Maori history in my background so in my way I set out to remedy it. Michael King in the same situation went and talked to the elders. I didn’t have his common sense. I was regional president of PPTA, he was education reporter for the Waikato Times. We met several times a year over a beer to chew the fat. I noticed we quickly diverted off education, he enthusiastic about his research into the life of Te Puea, I into my delight in teaching New Zealand writing.

At that stage I didn't make the obvious connection from Michael’s interest. As far as I was concerned. Sinclair and Oliver had delivered the sermon on the mount on New Zealand history. Over time Michael’s work along with others would erode that edifice. Just as Bellich showed the complexity of the New Zealand wars. Since then I’ve read accounts of Te Kooti, Te Whiti and Ratana and have become aware of the spiritual underpinning of their movements.

Holman talks about ‘the spread of an indigenous Christianity, controlled by Maori, for Maori, based on Old Testament metaphors of a chosen people, persecuted by remote authority, exiled tribes, warrior kings and prophets.’ It’s a succinct summary of an important historical force in our past that I was completely unaware of when I left university.

Elsewhere he writes, ‘Maori were managing their entrance into the modern world through the door best was exiting: Christian literacy and biblical anthropology. He missed the significance of contemporary Maori experience in his search for an essentialised ‘Maori mind’ – a supposed mysterious and primeval psychology existing prior to European contact, persisting right through to his own day, untouched by half a century of Pakeha influence.’

I’m enjoying the Holman book. It’s pulling together many threads I’ve observed and read about since that young man started teaching.

Tuesday Poem: We Are Getting To The End

2010-09-27T21:21:00.004+13:00

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We Are Getting to the End

We are getting to the end of visioning
The impossible within this universe,
Such as that better whiles may follow worse,
And that our race may mend by reasoning.

We know that even as larks in cages sing
Unthoughtful of deliverance from the curse
That holds them lifelong in a latticed hearse,
We ply spasmodically our pleasuring.

And that when nations set them to lay waste
Their neighbours' heritage by foot and horse,
And hack their pleasant plains in festering seams,
They may again, - not warily, or from taste,
But tickled mad by some demonic force. -
Yes. We are getting to the end of dreams!

Thomas Hardy

As a young man I read this poem about the same time as I read H.G.Wells’ last book ‘Mind at the End of its Tether’. Wells’s bouncy optimism of his youth long gone, he felt disillusionment and despair as the world he knew seemed to be collapsing into chaos. Hardy’s emotions are more complex. This is one of his last poems. The idea of progress is on the outer. Rage is obvious. Yet there is hope in some strange if ‘demonic’ form. The tortured syntax reflects and refracts meaning.

Down the centuries old people have bewailed the end of civilisation. (Not all, I acknowledge). But on the whole, age, experience, regret, nostalgia, guilt increase a sense of helplessness and failure. (Some may say, wisdom). The idealistic young are certain in their prime, as I once was, that they are captains of their fate.

Now! I understand Hardy better. Wells too. But Hardy carries an extra dimension – we repeat the tragic failures of our predecessors. A bleak vision? Before discarding it, it warrants consideration, the record of the 20th century is its measure. As are all preceeding centuries.

And what a magnificent second stanza! Four great lines!

No Italian Siesta

2010-09-27T06:05:00.005+13:00

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Just when life appears to be returning to normality something disruptive seems to happen. Last night when we came to put me to bed we discovered the little plastic failsafe plug in my face-mask was missing. [Failsafe; it’s meant to pop out if the power suddenly cuts out]

A frantic search of bed and room failed to find it. So we had to revert to plan B. A new untried mask, different shape.. At first it fitted snugly, but very soon as the machine ramped up it started hissing – a sign of leakage. Anne had several goes to settle it. We settled on the best we could and she went off upstairs.

After two hours without sleep – the mask’s noise and the blast of cold air on my throat was too troublesome I rang the bell awaking her from her sleep. She tried to get it on properly but it remained not on a good seal. So we tried again for second best.

This time I dozed off but came awake to the machine hissing. I sat on the edge of the bed and tried to adjust the mask. I managed to get a good fit. Very gingerly I put off the touch lamp and lowered myself back into bed. [I have to sleep on my back with the equipment]. It worked and in the quietness I fell asleep. But I must have turned and twisted a bit for I woke up about four with the mask hissing again. I took it off and made a cup of tea. The advantage of daylight saving is that morning will come earlier.

But at least I had some sleep and oxygen delivered for over six hours. It was no Italian siesta though.

I had meant to blog about the DVD ‘Letters to Juliet’ which we watched on Saturday evening. The earthquake aftershocks intervened yesterday. It is a delightful romance, a comedy of the heart. I’ve always been a fan of Vanessa Redgrave. But above all the attraction was the Tuscan landscape and the shots of Sienna itself. .

My visit to Verona was brief. Anne and I took the overnight train from Nice to Venice. It was autumn. There was a heavy frost and mist down the Po Valley. After the stop at Milan I’d had trouble going back to sleep and as it was morning and we had the compartment to ourselves we put up the blinds and watched the bleak landscape. We stopped at ome stage and reading the station sign realised we were in Verona. It did not look appealing. Indeed, the very opposite of romantic, icicles hanging from the station roof.

But the film shots of the country around Sienna in summer sunshine were idyllic – a travelogue with romance. It’s a pretty strong combination.

I’ve been to Italy twice. With my first wife in 1970 enroute to France and Britain. A day in Rome, a four day excursion to Florence via Assisi on the way and Siena on the return. After such a brief glimpse I wanted to go back

When I finished working for David Lange I said to Anne I need a holiday, let’s have that Italian trip I’ve often talked about. So we went – hence the rail stop at Verona. I’ll never forget stepping out of the railway station at Venice and seeing the Grand Canal. It was real. We’d made no bookings. At the stations there were good information centres that arranged accommodation in the area you which to stay in.

I won’t rave about Venice, or Ferrara (with a side-trip to Ravenna and its eye-boggling mosiacs) or Florence (with side trips to Sienna and Pisa) but I fell in love with Santa Margherita a fishing town and tourist centre not far from Portofino on the Italian Riveria. It was charming and ordinary after the excitement, art and architecture of the larger centres. We both had hair-cuts in establishments where not a word of English was spoken. We ate at the taxi-driver’s café. We wandered around the port and watched the fishing boats come in. Being a tourist can become wearisome.

And so on Lake Como for Christmas the one booking we’d made ahead.

I’ve always wanted to go back. I wanted to show Anne Rome and explore it more myself. We’ve talked about renting a Tuscan villa. Talk without action meant delay and now my ill-health has put the kibosh on such plans. So the DVD involved both nostalgia and regret. I enjoyed watching it immensely. There’s a full circle here. In my younger days cinema fuelled my dreams. It does so again.

Aftershocks

2010-09-26T11:55:00.002+13:00

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Poor Christchurch! Three big aftershocks yesterday! When will they end?

When I was a boy, just across the road lived Uncle Charlie (Mum’s brother) and Auntie Thora his wife. Their three daughters, Marlene, Robin and Judy played with my younger brother Doug and I throughout those wartime years.

I had a letter from Marlene yesterday: ‘My mind doesn’t seem to e functioning properly since the big earthquake. Can’t seem to think of much else. It’s a strange feeling having the ground trembling under you most of the day, every day, with bigger shakes every now and then just to remind you that it’s not over yet.’

‘The bigger aftershocks always wake me at night so I lack sleep and feel like a walking zombie. I’m not the only one and we try to carry on as normal but its very trying. I suppose the time will come when the ground under us stops moving. It’s like living on a boat, and women seem to notice it more than men.’

‘My cupboard doors are still tied up and big ornaments lie on the floor or on chairs, and all crystal and glass vases are packed away. We had another 4.6 quake last night, which jangled our nerves again.’

‘Ron and Robin lost many possessions, a chimney and damage to cars etc. They were hit pretty hard. Judy and Barry lost a chimney and some glass ware and their lawn is still sopping wet caused by water coming up from below. Every home will have something broken I’m sure. Even TVs and fridges were thrown over. The noise and shaking had to be heard and seen to be believed. Very frightening indeed.’

‘Nearly every house lost a chimney in Sumner and at least 10 houses are no longer liveable, probably more by now. Everyone thought my place would be history but by some miracle it was spared. A few things broken inside but nothing of great value. I’d taken down my chimneys so no worry there. Sorry my news is all about the earthquakes but nothing else exciting has happened in my life recently.’

Etymology

2010-09-25T11:50:00.001+12:00

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A million dollar question at present is whether the Commonwealth Games will go ahead. My hunch is that they will – but it will be a bit like the Moscow Olympics, in a truncated form.

We were discussing it last evening. Apparently one of the Welsh cyclists who has pulled out had his spleen removed after a fall. This leaves him very prone to disease and he does not wish to expose himself to unnecessary health risks such as denge fever. Who can blame him.

This led to a discussion about spleen – the organ and the use of the word to denote anger; ‘to vent one’s spleen’. Anne got out my trusty Onion. Onion’s Dictionary of Etymology, a standard reference book for scholars, which has long been one of my well-loved books, large and on the bottom shelf. When I was teaching it was the source of many a lesson and established a life-long habit of pursuing word origins – a sort of lazy intellectual’s crossword puzzle.

But of late the books got too heavy to lift with my muscular condition. But I’ve discovered the internet serves the same purpose. Chasing the origins of words and how meanings have altered over time heightens my awareness of my cultural background.

For example, the simple word, ‘onion’. It derives from Anglo-Norman which of course came from Old French ‘oignon’ which in turn came from rustic Latin ‘unio’. The old Germanic word ‘ramsyn’ was replaced after the Norman Conquest. (Gentle critic! I summarise complicated explanations for my own use).

In 1066 on this date Harold the Angl-Saxon king of England defeated a Norwegian invasion force at Stamford bridge near York. He promptly had to march south to face the forces of William of Normandy, not yet known as the Conqueror. With Harold’s defeat, William’s feat changed nomenclature.

The same conquest added a two-fold vocabulary to the English meat diet. On the nobleman’s table ‘deer’ became ‘venison’, ‘pig’ became ‘pork’, ‘sheep’ became ‘mutton’ and ‘cattle’ became ‘beef’. Obviously ‘rabbit’ remained the peasant’s fodder because ‘lapin’ did not enter English.

Back to ‘spleen’. It too came from Old French from Latin from Greek. Definitely the organ ‘spleen’. But as to the feeling – that varies. One site says ‘regarded in medieval physiology as the seat of morose feelings and bad temper.’ Another goes back to ancient Greek medicine. But the linkage is clearly old. The water is further muddied by another Greek meaning, ‘mirth’. These are depths clearly over my head but I glimpse a sense of well-being behind this linkage.

But Onion the book has an advantage that the internet does not. The word ‘spleen’ is on a page with dozens of other words. The roving eye sees these and goes contentedly wandering and wondering. Last night the word ‘spitchcock’ attracted my attention. It is to split an eel and cook it. I’d heard of ‘spatchcock’, a fowl split and grilled. The derivation of both is from Old English. A hasty killing and a hasty cooking seems the common link. Both suggest a tasty meal.

I was just going to leave the ‘spatchcock’ search when I made one last hit. It can also mean in military usage to insert or interpolate. The example given is General Buller writing in The Times 11 October 1901. ‘I therefore spatchcocked into the middle of that telegram a sentence in which I suggested it would be necessary to surrender.’

Creation

2010-09-24T13:02:00.004+12:00

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Yesterday I read about the birth of a zebra at Auckland zoo during a violent storm. Apparently that’s usual. On the veldt stormy weather lowers the odds of a predator finding and killing the newly born foal. Zoo staff were surprised how quickly the youngster got his balance and could run.

This morning’s news has an item about scientific research into the odours of our native birds. Apparently some, especially the kakapo and kiwi, have considerably more than imported forest birds. Before human settlement there was less need for protection from ground predators. The scientists hope that by learning more about those scents they can produce baits that will lure stoats and rats into traps more easily.

Last evening we watched a DVD, ‘Creation’ – a BBC biographical drama about Charles Darwin. It was good drama, not great or compelling but interesting and well worth while. I accept the convention that drama adapts historical figures for its own use. But I’m interested to know whether the portrayal of his religious wife’s demand that he publish ‘The Origins of the Species’ is factual or made up. The ideas of the book certainly put a ferret into the warren.

At one time I’ve have gone to the library. We have the novel ‘Mr Darwin’s Shooter’ on our shelves but it is of little help in this instance though a good read. But I’ve been searching the net. Not much joy on the particular question. Lots of fascinating material re Darwin’s life and work. Before he proposed he drew up two columns – one for marriage, one against. The Anglican wedding service had already done this job for him but Darwin liked to follow his own thoughts.

I’ve begun reading Holman’s ‘The Best of Both Worlds: The Story of Elsdon Best and Tutakangahau’. It’s decades since I read Best. While I was researching 19th century New Zealand poetry a life of Edward Tregear came out. I read it with interest – especially the application of ideas of race and evolution. I put this down to Tregear and author Howe’s own interests.

Here are some lines I wrote after reading Howe’s book.
… All that talk of racial purity,
19th century gobbledegook, spilling into
the next. Maori appeared Aryan. They
fought well. Just as a boy sorts marbles,
so do scholars sort races, creeds, rank
them good or bad. People from an isle
considered blessed seek another isle also
to be blessed, another seat for Mars.

Holman’s book draws attention to an obvious link I’d missed. Sinclair’s idea of ‘ideas as a minefield’ for Maori was not confined to Christianity. The evolution of the species theory created an intellectual ferment throughout the literate world. New Zealand was not exempt. Holman makes another obvious point. Maori by this stage were literate. There was cross-fertilisation between cultures. Maybe osmosis may be a more accurate term scientifically. Anyway I’ve not advanced into the Holman enough to comment further.

The natural selection of the zebra and the kakapo is a miraculous story. The history of ideas is as always a stimulating study. Story and Study combine this morning in a creative way. The human mind at search is a marvellous occurrence. Would it be pride to admit admiration. When I was teaching this internal monitor ran all the time - good question, bad question, why are the boys not responding, this isn't working, that girl's upset. Of late that monitor has been dormant. Maybe I should try to activate it more often? I might write more poems if I did.

Isa and May

2010-09-23T11:00:00.002+12:00

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Novelists usually write about relationships. Margaret Forster, in her non-fiction as well as her fiction, concentrates on one aspect – family relationships. She does it very well.

I’ve just finished reading Forster’s 'Isa and May'. It’s a novel polarised around Isamay’s (heroine/narrator) account of her two grandmothers - middle-class Isa, determined to shape the world to her bidding, working class May, stoical in every way. Flesh and blood from different generations, the interplay between them, the hopes and tribulations, all the stuff and matter of family life, are grist to Forster’s mill.

She adheres to the Jane Austen formula, men are discussed and described offstage but they do not take place in scenes where there are no women present. If I say this is a woman’s book I do Forster a disservice. As a man I found it fascinating. It’s about inheritance, genetic above all else. And that is finally the woman’s ultimate reality. And the book is from this perspective. But the men in it remain shadowy figures. Even Ian the reluctant father of Isamay's child.

Whereas the woman characters seem vital and real – even when they are dissembling. When I was at university my grandmother asked me why did I like reading novels so much. I replied with the confidence of youth. ‘I am not a Catholic but I can read ‘The Power and the Glory’ and gain an understanding. Likewise ‘Jane Eyre’ and being a woman. Or Quiet Flows the Don, and being a communist.’

It’s more complicated than that. But I feel that way about this novel. It reminded me of Lauris Edmond’s ‘Late Poems’ with their lovely descriptions of her grandchildren and the continuity of the line. Her Kiwi experience though did not have the class-consciousness that hovers still over writing from England.

I won’t tell you more about ‘Isa and May’. It would be a shame to spoil the plot. But I enjoyed it so much it’s kept my birthday books at bay. And I realise now that I never did talk to my grandparents about their younger years. I did ask my mother those questions. I’m pleased I did for it built up a bigger picture – a sensitive, sensuous, shy young woman, a tomboy at heart, undereducated and under-estimated. Interesting. I put Forster down – a novel about connections - and started thinking about my mother.

And my father. Killed, when I was five. I basically lost touch with his family. I had Mum's father as mentor for seven years and then Dick my stepfather until my maturity. They were good role models. But I realise I missed out on learning about half the genetic stock from which I've emerged. I further realise my lot is also the lot of many humans down the ages. Forster's novel assumes a family. Or does it?

Connections rather than relationships – that’s its theme. And it's different.

Tui Again

2010-09-22T17:04:00.005+12:00

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When I woke up this morning there was much condensation on the windows – a sure sign of outside cold. As the taxi took us to hospital I realised there was a dusting of snow on the Orongorongas. Apparently down to relatively low levels in the Wairarapa. I haven’t seen snow on those ranges for some time.

We took my VPAP machine in to respiratory to have it checked, a follow-up to my visit a month ago. They are pleased with its fit and lack of leakage and apparently I’ve been sleeping well and at length. So that’s good news. But I still find such visits nerve-wracking.

I’ve taken another step away from responsibility – the keeping of my hospital appointments. Anne has to make necessary arrangements so it makes sense to hand over the complete task to her. But as I say it’s a move backwards from being an independent adult.

Another example of this retreat. I envy several blogers on the Tuesday Poem site who post lovely photos they take themselves or have others take for them. Not only can I not get around to take them I lack the muscular control to operate the camera properly. Still, I retain the capacity to admire the work of others.

The garden reflects the confusion of the equinoctial season and the constant rainfall. The mock-orange blossom is budding flowers and the medlar new leaves. Kowhai is in full bloom. Camellias are past it. Roses resent the wind. The French lavender in its pot has fresh flowers and promises a lazy summer ahead. The first bumble bee appeared yesterday. With sense it’ll stay out of sight today.

My Tuesday poem this week attracted lovely comments. Deborah’s in particular struck a chord. She points out that Australians love the sound of the magpie which to us Kiwis are raucous calls. There was a large belt of pine trees on the knoll where our Okuti farmhouse was. They shaded the veranda from the westerly sun so Dick, my stepfather, arranged for them to be cut down.

He stopped the process half-way through because there were magpies nesting in the south end. ‘Keeps the hawks away from the chickens and ducklings’ he said. True! Several times I saw a hawk grounded after combat in the skies. Mum, however, always said he was a bigger ‘softie’ than she was.. During their nesting season they were a menace, dive-bombing humans getting too close.

As the pines fell, my brother Doug and I, after school or in the weekends would knock the cones off the fallen branches with the blunt end of a tomahawk and barrow them to the woodshed. That summer Mum cooked many a meal with the heat from those cones. When I mention this now people mutter child labour. We didn’t see it as such at the time. It was doing our bit to contribute to the economy of the farm, like ringbarking poisonous ngaio or getting the kindling ready each evening.

Anyway, back to the magpies. Their ‘Quardle oodle ardle wardle doodle’ call was part of my boyhood. It’s a sound I associate with Canterbury. There were tui in the Okuti bush but they were few and their singing was obscured by the louder magpies who were in proximity to the house. It was not till I lived in Wellington and since the Karori Wild Life Sanctuary was started that I’ve heard much tui.

Scientists report that since the bellbird began to prosper in the sanctuary the tui call has improved. Tuis are great mimics. That’s why the early European settlers caged them and taught them to whistle. The neighbour’s son in our previous house whistled a certain tune to the tui that used to come and feed in their banksia. They seemed to pick it up very quickly.

So my delight in the tui song is a recent addition to my mental establishment. It seems the embodiment of the indigenous – uniquely ours. I get great delight in their presence as I watch them flirt, feed and fight in the kowhai across the fence.

I understand that in the central North Island pine forests they’ve learnt to imitate chain saws. We once stayed in our friend Rosemary’s Browns Bay bush-surrounded house to cat-sit while she went on holiday. Just after we arrived and before Rosemary left I said ‘I see you’ve a resident tui.” She replied she could wring its neck. I was shocked. But by the time we left I sympathised. That darned tui had grown up near mynahs. It grated their calls all day – a very unmelodious noise.

The dawn chorus that Banks, Cook and co rave about would have been based on the bellbird and the tui singing the bellbird’s song. It must have been a great sound – they write about it at length. I’ve heard its echo at both Waikaremoana and Franz Josef enough to appreciate its glory. Ichabod!

Tuesday Poem: AN UNEXPECTED TUI

2010-09-20T20:47:00.002+12:00

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AN UNEXPECTED TUI

To my knowledge
    I have never heard
        a nightingale

As a boy
    on the Okuti farm
        moreporks mourned nightly

Last night
    in the darkened city
        an unexpected tui sang

clear & loud in moonlight.
     Keats keep your nightingale
        amidst the alien corn

for I’ve heard a tui
    toll midnight
        in the hills of home.

Harvey McQueen

I was surprised last summer to hear a tui singing in the middle of the night. Admittedly it was full moon. Research on the net the following day told me that this was not unusual. Indeed early Pakeha scientist Buller rhapsodises about hearing one.

At the time I was reading Keats. He’s a poet to whom I keep returning. His ‘Ode to a Nightingale’ is one of my lodestars. .As my poem says I’ve never to my knowledge heard a nightingale; despite stays in Iran, France and Britain and sitting outside in these countries on balmy evening nights.

When this poem was published in Broadsheet 5 I had an indignant letter from a lady living in Wadestown, Wellington. She’s spent most of er life in England. How dare I compare a tui’s song to a nightingale singing. All I can plead is ignorance, and my sheer delight of my own experience hearing such lucid and sweet sound in a quiet night.

Complete and Utter Blackness

2010-09-19T16:42:00.002+12:00

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I was in the Beehive bunker the day Peter Button was killed. For a few seconds complete and utter blackness. I felt completely disoriented.

For overseas readers: Our Parliament consists of three buildings. A circular one, commonly called The Beehive has the Prime Minister's and major ministerial offices. In the basement is a civil emergency bunker. It was recently fully activated during the recent Canterbury earthquake.

I was there because I have been contracted as an education consultant to give advice to Civil Defence on a kit they were preparing for the upper primary school. We had met before in the bunker to work at it, two officers from Internal Affairs, two teachers trialling the material and myself and someone obviously on duty all the time in the facility. I didn’t like it as a working space. It felt claustrophobic with its artificial light. .

Peter Button was an admired, well-known Wellington helicopter pilot, renowned for his search and rescue flights. That day he was on a photographic mission when the police diverted him to help them look for a fugitive somewhere in the scrub between Johnsonville and Tawa. He got too close to or didn’t see the the high frequency power lines in the gully. The helicopter hit them and crashed killing all occupants. An unnecessary tragedy!

In the bunker the lights suddenly went off and the computers shut down. As I say it was pitch black. I was amazed at the speed of my panic attack for almost instantaneously a pale light came on. A phone rang. The duty officer picked it up. ‘Helicopter down’ he said to his colleagues. He turned to us, ‘I’m sorry but you’ll have to leave.’ We quickly picked up our papers and left. As we went through the door I heard him briefing people down the phone. I overheard the name Peter Button. I was impressed at the smooth reaction to an unknown crisis.

Out in the corridors of power there was chaos. Power was out over the entire city. And in Parliament. The lifts had all defaulted to the lowest floor. Scary for those in them. People were evacuating upper offices. “Bloody hell’ one staffer said as he rushed disconsolately past, ‘I’ve lost three hour’s work.’ ‘That’ll teach you to back-up' a smug colleague told him. At this stage I had little idea of what was happening or its scale. But I recall thinking about the human mind's capacity to trivialise matters. At this stage, my own 18 months stint in the:Prime Minister’s office was a year ahead.

Out in Bowen St there was further chaos. Traffic lights were out so cars were manoeuvring cautiously. A fire engine, siren blasting eased its way through to turn into The Terrace. There were fire and lift alarms ringing everywhere. Trolley buses were out. Northland buses weren’t electric so I waited for one but none appeared. A taxi pulled up and disgorged its passengers so I hailed it to go home. The driver told me what had happened. Back home I turned on the transistor radio and boiled a kettle on the gas stove for a cup of tea.