Kevin Lawson R.I.P.

David McGill writes to a friend:

They build a world
Out of collected years;

They shelter in rooms the dust

That will be their death.

    Kevin Lawson ‘The Tennants’ (sic)

Miscellany Published by the Glenco 1961

Editor David McGill, who pleaded with Kevin to contribute, and he did, two poems.

David Mitchell also contributed, including:

    I walk silent, silent

    By the brooding lake

    Watching the moon.

When Mitch died only months ago, I took out his collection Steal Away, Boy referencing his son, and really him too, and at the Open Mic Night at the local pub joined Gill Ward (a year ahead of us, contributor to Matika edited by Howard Patterson; she told me of Howard also coming round to another person in his gaberdine raincoat to mend a motor, as he had with my motorbike at Eastbourne in 1960-61) and Michael O’Leary in a spontaneous reading by each of us of a poem from the collection. I could not continue for tears.

Lawson contacted me some years ago asking for I think your address. I suggested we get together and he said no, blunt as always. Did he enjoy being Sphinx-like, mysterious? Did it give him a sardonic satisfaction still, as he had been wont to do all those years ago in Paekakariki, reducing the naive McGill. You always seemed on equal and different terms with him. I never did fathom him. Mind you, he is not alone. I soldier on, pretending I have not been insulted, pretending a thick hide, maintaining an unspoken belief that all of us are equal, some assume a superior tone, underneath we are all naked. I think he knew I knew that, which was only cause for further amusement for a man who had a curious sense of humour. He had too a certain dignity, certain standards, implacably so, like Mitch. Both were part of the singular mix of that amazing place, T Coll Kelburn, Kowhai Rd, The Glen, Ngaio Road.

I have been back there in different phases, with several lady friends disporting at the Glen, always thinking of those days of wine and musings. I went back to look at the foliage that has overcome the prefabs where Keith Fox and George Webby presided, where I smoked alongside Anton Vogt and Merlene Cutten at the Lit Club, waiting for James K Baxter to come and talk with the tongue of angels. Miscellany is dedicated to Anton (to my father’s horror – the man practises free love, Dad exclaimed: I didn’t tell him about The Glen lecturer trying to seduce me). Merlene did the cover of Miscellany and contributed a poem. I recently sought contact with her through Gill’s contacts with Paul Young and Barry Lett (she visits a sick Paul in Thames frequently, they write poems still). No luck tracing Merlene, who was soo sexy and so available and I was soooo dumb. Baxter is in the Miscellany collection too, as is Garth C. Carpenter (what’s the ‘C’ for? – I should have asked him when he asked if he could be the astrology columnist for a magazine I edited in 80s). Other contributors: Pat Craddock, who ended up a producer of radio programmes for RNZ; George Webby, retired in Wairarapa, like Lawson not responding to invitations from me (I was too straight for George); porky Peter Browne in his appalling Fair Isle jersey, where is he?; Ngaire Atkinson, an austere intellectual, I must ask of her from Maureen Birchfield, in Paekakariki and a friend of Gill Ward; Kevin B. Davies, the phys-ed chap with a sensitive streak; Howard P; David Mundell –two poems; Mark Young; somebody called J.Williams (Judy?); Caroline Hancock, dead; last, Peter J R Blizard.

We might get out when you arrive the rare surviving copy of the few hundred Miscellany printed by John Milne at a cost of 30 pounds – I raised the money by selling them around T Coll and in Cuba St. Milne Printers is still going. I used them with Grant Tilly for a publication Harbourscapes. 

 Roly Vogt came with Maureen Birchfield and Gill Ward to the 2010 launch of Shaking 1960 at Eastbourne, but said it was best if I didn’t see Rosie Vogt, whom he lives with in Lower Hutt. She is not well. Then she looked like a young Sophia Loren. The mechanic she returned to from me died in a car crash.

 And later in a street

Waiting for a tram

I wondered what you felt

    While we talked of

    The sun climbing

    Back into the sea.

    Kevin Lawson, RIP.