Launch of C.K.Stead's new poetry collection - The Yellow Buoy

On Wednesday this week evening an enthusiastic crowd packed the splendid Arcadia Bookshop in Newmarket for the launch of C.K.Stead's latest collection of verse, The Yellow Buoy.

The official launcher was Professor Emeritus Mac Jackson with additional comments from bookshop owner Doris Mousdale and AUP's Sam Elworthy.
Photo above - left to right - Sam Elworthy, Doris Mousdale, C.K.Stead, Emeritus Prof.Mac MacPherson

Among  the audience I noticed many from the world of books including:

Kevin Chapman PANZ / Hachette

Catriona Ferguson, new head of NZ Book Council

Jo Garden, PQ Blackwell

Historian Russell (RCJ) Stone

Poets Robert Sullivan (also Head of the Manukau Institute of Technology’s Creative Writing Programme and Sam Sampson

Novelist Charlotte Grimshaw

Literary scholars Don Smith, Alex Calder

Music and art critic William Dart

Librarians John Laurie and Nicky Jackson.

A former colleague of mine Jan Chilwell, now sub-editor with NZ House & Garden

About the poet:

CHRISTIAN KARLSON STEAD was born in Auckland, New Zealand, in 1932. Acclaimed both at home and internationally, he has published more than forty volumes of fiction, poetry, memoir and criticism.

In this, his fifteenth collection of poetry, the writer journeys in time and space from Croatia and Colombia to Karekare and the Cote d’Azur; Catullus returns to receive plaudits, write to friends and read the world; and various other literary fellows appear in person, dream or conversation – Allen Curnow and Hugh Kawharu, Frank Sargeson and Barry Humphries, Robert Creeley and Katherine Mansfield. Alongside glimpses of fantails and elegies for friends, The Yellow Buoy also includes translated versions of poems by Eugenio Montale, Carlo Vita and Philippe Jaccottet. These poems wisely urge a reader to stay alert, to pay attention, to ‘the poetic moment I so easily missed, I so quickly lost.’

Stead’s numerous prizes and honours include most recently the 2009 Prime Minister’s Award for Fiction, a 2009 Montana New Zealand Book Award for his Collected Poems, the Sunday Times EFG Private Bank Short Story Award and the Hippocrates Prize for Poetry and Medicine in 2010. Stead received our country’s highest award, the Order of New Zealand, in 2007.

Here are three of my favourite poems from the collection:

Vivienne

Today was her send-off.

In a plywood coffin

hand-painted with flowers

she was laid out on trestles

in the Trades Hall,

eighty-four years

of Stalinist conviction

leavened by jokes.

Tunelessly

interspersed with reminiscence

we sang The Internationale

The Red Flag

and for last farewell

that Bill Blake soul-stirrer

Jerusalem.

For her the Wall had fallen

and nothing was changed.

Love and folly persist

and our songs are their servants.

Waving goodbye

to Robin

The working port is a sheet of noisy light

across the harbour. Greg thinks he hears men’s voices

shouted above their fork-lifts, drifting

over the autumn water. Floodlit on the hill

the Museum stands to attention. Eastward

light and shadow scout’s-pace the waterfront drive.

Kay and I and Chris, Greg and Jenny –

today we watched good editor Dudding let down,

fruit and flowers on his plain-wood coffin,

while we sang to trees and sky those arcane ballads

he liked to croon – ‘Clementine’, ‘Yellow Bird’,

‘Cockles and Mussels’ – a life remembered, rich

in songs and daughters, books and chooks and friends,

fruit, vegies, flowers, never quite in tune.

Some shadowy tug or fishing boat chugs by

discreetly, puttering over the silky water.

Summer is always ending. Five good friends

on one veranda now, we’re looking across

to the brilliant city as if that were our past

and we at the rail, sailing out, waving goodbye.

Frank

Rain in the night and I’m dreaming of Frank

all those years ago alone in his fibro bach

waiting for Harry, thinking what this dousing will do

for his lettuce and beans, silverbeet and peppers,

but especially the rock-melons – always

the melons are mentioned because they’re exotic

(and how good he got the tomatoes picked in time!) –

such a generous sound, rain on an iron roof

in a haven of books and papers, while a story

about Harry goes round in his head . . . so much

rain, so long ago, such a garden, such a friend.

 The poet signing books

Bookman Beattie with bookseller and host Doris Mousdale

Footnote:
 Professor Emeritus Mac Jackson's remarks in launching the book will be posted on this blog later.