Wellington poet/publisher Mark Pirie reports on the Alistair Te Ariki Campbell Exhibition for Beattie’s Book Blog

On Sunday 1 May, I had the pleasure of participating in a reading at the Alistair Te Ariki Campbell Exhibition at Pataka Museum’s Bottle Creek Community Gallery. Alistair was one of our finest poets.

I was asked by co-curator Peter Coates (the filmmaker, photographer and artist) to read a poem by Alistair and talk about my friendship with him. Also reading were Peter himself with Mary Campbell (reading for Alistair and Meg respectively from the love poems collection, It’s Love Isn’t It?) and Lewis Scott, who delivered a stellar tribute mixing poems from Alistair’s collection Maori Battalion with his own poem-tribute to Alistair published recently in the Dominion Post.

The poem I read by Alistair was ‘To Stuart’. It’s a memorable and moving poem by Alistair addressed to his brother who died young in WWII. The image that defined Stuart to Alistair was his bowling action at the crease, about to deliver, and the promise of it left unfulfilled just as his life sadly cut short:

              …Your bowling action

      and the flight of the ball,

gathering speed as it flew

   towards its target, were to me

      a work of art. As an admiring

younger brother, I celebrate

   this image of what you promised

      and never lived to fulfil.

‘Nature,’ wrote William Blake,

   ‘has no Outline, but Imagination has.’

      I see you turn and run up

to the crease. I see your

   arm swing over. I see the

      ball in flight – and that is all.

I also talked about my friendship with Alistair from 1999-2009, the last decade of his life. I was privileged to publish two of Alistair’s books, Just Poetry (2007) and It’s Love Isn’t It? (2008). I read my poem for Alistair, ‘Early Days’ (not the poem of mine, ‘The Return’ also included in the exhibition and published in Poetry NZ, March 2011). ‘Early Days’ is a letter-poem detailing my discovery of Alistair’s poems as a student at Victoria University in 1993 and I read it as it gave me a chance to read from Alistair’s own letter in reply. Alistair was ‘touched by the poem’ and sent me a copy of his Sanctuary of Spirits as a gift.

After, I had a look around the exhibition co-created by his daughter Mary Campbell, Peter Coates and Nelson Wattie (his biographer). As well as a series of illuminating works by artists (Peter Coates and Michael O’Leary among them), specially presented for the exhibition were other memorabilia, rare books and magazines, poem drafts, poem-tributes by poets (including Fleur Adcock, Albert Wendt, Vaine Rasmussen, Lynn Davidson, Rob Hack and Peter Bland) and photos from Alistair’s life.

Perhaps the most moving part of the exhibition was the recreation of Alistair’s living room and writing desk, including his couch and chair and the family photos from its wall. Seated on the couch, I could view a screen display of rotating images from Alistair’s life, including his friends (Sam Hunt, Denis Glover) and his family. Also included were interactive short films and documentaries complete with headsets for people to sit and watch.

The exhibition has been on at Pataka since 14 April where on the opening night, that included excellent speeches by Albert Wendt and Witi Ihimaera, was the launch of Nelson Wattie’s introductory biographical sketch, Scribbling in the Dark, published by Steele Roberts in Wellington to coincide with the exhibition.

The curators and staff at Pataka Museum have done a great job and the exhibition has proved a success and will be touring Rarotonga later in the year at the invitation of the Cook Islands Library and Museum, further proof of the esteem greeting Alistair’s work throughout the Pacific.

Photo 1: Mary Campbell, Peter Coates and Mark Pirie

Photo 2: The Dark Lords of Pukerua by Michael O'Leary

Photos by Mark Pirie