Great South
Road and South Side
Tony Beyer
Puriri Press
$25 (+ $2.50
postage)
Auckland poet
Tony Beyer’s latest book of poems, Great
South Road and South Side is, at once, lyrical examination, memento and
homage of place and space – namely, the South Auckland of the writer’s past and
present. The first part of the book is devoted to the ten part poem, ‘Great
South Road’, a literary and figurative crossroads of history and
remembrance,
the road was
built
to visit war
upon Tainui
paved to transport
shitting cattle
to the works
but succeeded
by
the motorway
to Drury
boasts
no more
vineyards or
market
gardens
and few
shaded
groves
except the one
at
Papakura
Description and language, evocations
of the inhabitants, are down-to-earth, factual and frank. While the form (left
arranged line followed by indented line) reinforces the fundamental poetic premise
at work here: that the landscape voiced and depicted is a layered amalgam of
the previous and the present. This is a motif which Beyer extends in the second
part of the book, ‘South Side’ as poems such as ‘the depot’, ‘the centre’, ‘the
remnant’ and ‘the city’ illustrate:
the city
i suppose a city built on an isthmus
was always going to be a bottleneck
all roads and all manners of transport
congealing
Tamaki-makau-rau
the place everyone wants
something those of us who were born there
sometimes resent
as when I lived in lower Parnell
and infill throttled it….
The poet
as voyeur of changing times; the poet bearing witness; the poet as political
and social commentator: these descriptors have never been truer where Tony
Beyer and Great South Road and South Side
are concerned. These rich poems, imbued by knowledge, vision and belief, are
made the more enjoyable by Puriri Press’ fine book production, utilizing a
stark but redolent image by Whanganui artist Catherine Macdonald as cover art.
Wonderful.
this hill,
all it’s about is lifting it to a higher level
Vaughan
Gunson
Steele
Roberts
19.99
As the title
infers, landscape, its illustration and iconography, also underpins Hikurangi
poet, Vaughan Gunson’s first collection. An early poem, ‘the olive tree’ gives
a taster of the ornate language, imagery and themes to come:
the olive tree
.
the olive tree given to us after the war
never looked like those of Greek verse
which English poets went looking for.
what sorrows? & how could a tree be
deathless? useful I understood,
to make oil for food, warmth & light.
not until I pruned the lower branches,
the gnarled trunk of the maturing tree
revealed – giving it that classic look
& room enough to sit in the afternoon
under its lacework of silver green,
breathing ten thousand years of memory.
If
the poems in this hill, all it’s about is lifting it to a higher level are born of authentic place and space, they
are also formed from creative soils – literary and musical reverence, political
critique, the toil of young people’s lives. Poems such as ‘before the music
starts’, ‘after reading Sam Hunt’s poem ‘Better than this?’ (or why poetry is
worthwhile)’ and ‘Parisian backstreets are not here’ remind us of this. As does
perhaps the book’s finest poem, one used for study in Level 2 NCEA English
exams, ‘fastfood workers’,
they burst from the paper
bag
running like salt from
shaker
scattering flecks of taste
they gush like soft
drink
push the button &
they gurgle & froth
with youthful bubbles
over the rim
they burn & sear
like burger patties
on the grill, hot anger
spits
from their mouths as
they yell
they ooze like ice cream
filling every corner,
every gap
compact with cold
determination
they have sizzled in the
fat
crisp as you like, now
they’re
blocking arteries in the
street.
The inversion of meaning and idea; the sumptuous, colloquial lexicon; the
cadences evoked through repetitions and word plays: Gunson offers us young,
rural, subterranean topography and mindset. The result gives us windows in
worlds not often traversed by contemporary New Zealand poetry, as well as the
promise of exciting work to come.
The Judas
Tree: Poems by Lorna Staveley Anker
Bernadette
Hall (Editor)
Canterbury
University Press
$20
Another poetry collection concerned with landscape, this one the terrain
of the forgotten past; for The Judas Tree
is a long overdue gathering of 55 poems by, what editor, Hall describes as,
“New Zealand’s first woman war poet”, Christchurch’s Lorna Staveley Anker. Anker, born on the day when Archduke Ferdinand
was assassinated in Sarajevo (28th June 1914), and conducting
marriage and motherhood during the Second World War wrote verses and essays
concerned with the personal and cultural impact of war. The work Hall collects
here confirms this, including poems such as ‘V. E. Day...and Neenish Tarts’,
‘Featherston’, ‘The Scent of Hay’ and, most redolently, ‘There are Degrees
...’, which runs:
The troop train moves
rivets you,
goodbye’s are tame
without war’s shadow
when senses will not
die,
you are still aware
see hear touch pain
taste the raw salt.
From moving carriages
as faces shrink
the universe stalls,
nameless you become
dumb,
without breath
inside the black
membrane
to suffocate
before paralysis.
Later,
you will learn
how to pray.
As of their time and
about time as this poem and others, such as ‘Breasting a Thin Wind’, ‘Winter
Gold’ and ‘Vision of Escape’, are they are also alive with such freshness of
perspective, word choice and authorial control that we’re continually reminded
of how contemporary – how relevant – they remain.
In The Judas Tree, the editor
does a fine job of recognizing the numerous writers (Pat White, James
Norcliffe, Michael Harlow....) who contributed to the literary development of
Lorna Staveley Anker, and therein of contextualizing the vibrant literary scene
evident in Christchurch in the 1970s and 1980s, of which Anker was a key part;
but ultimately it is to Hall herself that credit must fall for returning to our
attentions the work, life and import of her subject.
About the reviewer
Siobhan Harvey is the author of the poetry collection, Lost Relatives (Steele Roberts NZ, 2011), the book of literary interviews Words Chosen Carefully: New Zealand Writers in Discussion (Cape Catley, 2010) and the poetry anthology Our Own Kind: 100 New Zealand Poems about Animals (Random House, 2009). Recently, her poetry has been published in Evergreen Review (Grove Press, US),Meanjin (Aus), Penduline Press – The New Zealand Issue (US), Snorkel (Aus) and Structo (UK). She’s Poetry Editor of Takahe and coordinates New Zealand's National Poetry Day. She was runner up in 2012 Dorothy Porter Prize for Poetry (Aus), 2012 Kevin Ireland Poetry Prize, 2011 Landfall Essay Prize and 2011 Kathleen Grattan Award for a Sequence of Poems, and shortlisted for the 2012 Jane Frame Memorial Award for Literature. A Poet’s Page containing a selection of her recorded work and texts can be found on The Poetry Archive (U.K.), directed by Sir Andrew Motion.
Siobhan Harvey is a regular poetry reviewer on this blog.
