New Poetry Collections

Reviewed by Maggie Rainey-Smith

Just prior to Christmas, I was fortunate enough to attend the launch of two poetry collections, published by Steele Roberts. The first was the collection in/let by Jo Thorpe, poems that “range from the complexities of human relationships to the simplicities of light, rock, sea and sky; from myths and metaphysical to ‘the marvellousness of now’.” Jo is a dear friend whom I met at Victoria University in 1999 when we both attended Greg O’Brien’s undergraduate Poetry Workshop. There were four of us who bonded from that class, Jo, Pippa Christmas, Louise Lawrence White and me. I was in awe at being part of this group of talented women and still am.

Seven years ago, in 2003, Jo’s first collection Len & other poems was published by Roger Steele and launched in the same building, the School of Dance (for those of you who don’t know, the old Winter Show Building in Mt Cook). That time, Hinemoana Baker gave a generous performance as part of the launch, and this time, Jo was feted by her pupils – dancers, who performed for us. Jo is both a dance writer and critic, and teaches dance history at the New Zealand School of Dance. She is also a member of the Crows Feet Dance Collective. I do not intend to review Jo’s poetry but only to marvel at the way she manages to incorporate so many of the big important themes with the most personal, and always with a strong underlying theme of beauty in all its forms. I will quote instead from Greg O’Brien who launched this collection, who in his speech, and with his permission, said this:

“Jo knows how words rise and fall on the page…

Her poems find their feet on the page and, within the pearly white rectangle, they perform for us, with exactitude, without exaggeration. There is restraint, as one would hope, but the poems are neither repressed nor hemmed in. Poetry, you could say, fits her perfectly, as she fits it.…

Like Dinah Hawken in this regard, Jo Thorpe knows how to breathe (and she understands the relationship of the line and the stanza to the human breath).
…

"Jo’s book in/let strikes me as a series of gestures, manoeuvres, choreographic phrases, dance steps. These are knowing and knowledgeable poems – but more important than knowing is feeling. And feeling, here, means sensation in its broadest sense. Jo is talking about the way the body as well as the eye encounters and reads the world. The book is an immersion in that awareness. It is an outpouring as well as an inlet, a dancing through time and very well-judged space".

Roger Steele spoke too of how he was utterly struck by the line in a poem titled Twilight and melancholies “I move to change stations, put the dial on Search so that when I emerge some ringlet of music might Rousseau me into the day.” Roger is delighted with this brand new verb, and of course we already know because of Laurice Edmond, that Wellington is the home of the verb – so how fitting.

Then, a week or two later on a very pleasant Sunday when Eastbourne village is holding its Christmas fair and carols are to be sung in the evening, the local bookshop, Rona Gallery, hosts yet another book launch. Rona Gallery is the place where local writers feel loved and hugely supported. This time it is a brand new collection from John Horrocks (a neighbour of mine) whose previous book of poems was called Raw Places. This new collection is called Something in the Waters. It is a series of poems about Rotorua’s thermal waters, Lake Rotorua and the healing power of water. Alicia Ponder, daughter of the Ponders who own Rona Gallery and a poet on the Tuesday Poem hub, introduces Roger Steele and John Horrocks. This time, Roger is side-tracked entirely by his absolute enthusiasm for Rotorua. He too is a friend of John and Ginny Horrocks and this seems to give him permission to segue into his own reminiscences of a childhood spent in the area. There is much laughter and indulgence and John patiently awaits his turn in the spotlight.

When John talks to us of his collection he thanks Vincent O’Sullivan for his advice on keeping the collection almost entirely about Rotorua – apart from one poem which endears itself immediately to us all, titled Windy Point and which is about Eastbourne.

Roger hints that perhaps the next collection from John will indeed be about this very area – and of course we are all most enthused. John’s daughter is the well known poet Ingrid Horrocks and she is there with his twin grandchildren who want to be held (one in each arm if possible) by their grandfather as he reads.

The collection is interspersed with historical images to support and illustrate the poetry – quite fascinating – and I am sure this collection will be an import addition to the history of this area. In particular I am very struck by the electric four-cell bath, a photograph showing a man in a chair with his feet and arms strapped in water, presumably receiving some sort of electrical impulses. Of these sorts of cures, John Horrocks writes about Dr Arthur Stanley Wohlmann, the Government Balneologist at the Rotorua spa in 1902…

Wohlmann protests in silence. He looks lovingly

at rubber-coated leads, the dials rusted

by sulphide gas, he fine commodious bath.

In her speech, Jo Thorpe spoke of the few, the very few who go out and buy poetry books. If you are one of the few and reading this, then I urge you to become one of the many and buy a copy of these two new poetry collections.

in/let by Jo Thorpe
Published by Steele Roberts
$19.99


Something in the Waters by John Horrocks
Published by Steele Roberts
$24.99

Footnote:
Maggie Rainey-Smith is a Wellington novelist/poet/bookseller and regular guest reviewer on Beattie's Book Blog.