Outlook for Poetry

I am glad to have the opportunity to speak in this discussion of New Zealand poetry. To begin with, we must be sure that the animal really exists; and of that I am not entirely sure. Is there a large body of work, coherent, relying upon some common tradition, understood at least superficially by most educated readers? All we can really say is that there are some poets here. There is a sprinkling of sympathetic readers too; but no certain audience, and little agreement upon what is good.

I don’t propose to talk about New Zealand poetry quantitatively, in terms of the number of books published. That’s a bookseller’s or a publisher’s business. But the qualitative side seems to me all-important. That could mean two things – that I put an invisible yardstick alongside every poem I read, and if it doesn’t measure up, chuck it out; or that the meaning of the words is more important to me than the number of words on the page. I hope it’s mainly the second: one grows tired of invisible yardsticks. All the same, it is worth remembering that in 1945 Allen Curnow included only sixteen poets in the first edition of his Book of New Zealand Verse. You may quarrel with his choice – that’s not the point – he was trying to avoid the quantitative kind of anthology which regards a poem as a museum-piece as soon as it is written.

Whenever I think of poetry in New Zealand I think of two men, or it could be women, one young, the other not so young. The first may be a solid member of the S.C.M. or else living uncomfortably with a series of girlfriends in a dirty little bach. It doesn’t make much difference: the poems have a family likeness. They are the fragmentary records of spiritual passion, the convulsive movements of a soul in chains, whether to propriety or to Bohemia. Somepage 264 of these poems are likely to be published in small periodicals; most of them remain in manuscript. I don’t think there is a vast treasure of undiscovered masterpieces, but from among these writers, and nowhere else, will come our future poets. The editor of the small magazine (of which there are very, very few) must keep his mind awake less to the technical accomplishment of the poems that come his way, than to the stirring of life in them, the grasp upon some real experience. Technical advice from an editor or older writer is rarely helpful. It may be rather impertinent, as when Geoffrey Grigson tells young Dylan Thomas how not to write. The younger poet is confronted by a rich but disordered universe. The critic’s voice may seem to him simply the voice of society which coaxes and bludgeons him to substitute a lifeless blueprint for his individual insight; but there is no other basis for poetry. Of the several thousands of young men and women now writing in this country, a few will have the courage to go on, come hell or high water. They are our poets; and their present technical ability, or lack of it, has not got much to do with it. Every poet has his private stack of bad poems. But if he can stay alive, then, at the lucky moment, he will write a good one.

The other person who haunts, me, not so young, is the man I see in the shaving mirror – who has come a good way and knows less than when he began. The most dangerous time for him is the day he first uses the word ‘adolescent’ to describe the things he does not like; when he rejects one half of his universe to make the other half safe. In that context I will tell a moral fable.

Once upon a time a wandering scholar tramped the roads of Europe in rags, folly and disrepute; but with satire so sharp that the Archbishop of Salzburg had him arrested and thrown into a dungeon. There he was converted by a talking crow which sang psalms outside his window night and morning; and on his release became a respectable monk. Soon the fame of his sanctity and good works spread as wide as his wicked songs had done. The Devil got wind of it, and came to tempt him – first of all in the shape of a willowy dancing-girl.

‘You’re wasting your time, my dear,’ said the monk. ‘I’m a dry stick now, and much too old for your kind of games.’

The Devil then came to him in the shape of a lawyer, telling him that a great inheritance had been left to him. He had only to go and claim it.

‘My good man,’ said the monk, ‘I gave up the flattery of beggars and kings to get peace of mind. Do you think I’d give it up for a few miserable bags of money?’

The Devil then came in the shape of the Pope’s ambassador, begging him to accept the Chair of Theology at Cologne.

‘All Professors are proven heretics,’ said the monk. ‘I’d rather avoid offending God than teach about His attributes.’

The Devil was in despair; but he decided to stake his luck on a last throw. So he appeared, horned and hoofed, without disguise, in the monk’s cell. ‘Ipage 265 see nothing can shake you,’ he said, ‘and I wish you good luck; but I’m sorry to see a good poet go down the drain. You know as well as I do that the fifty hymns you have written since your conversion, purely from the aesthetic angle, are rubbish compared to your old work. Go back to your old life. You’ll have the same insecurity, shame and bitterness; but I promise you one thing – the day before you die in the ditch, you will see the gates of Heaven and the angels ascending and descending, and out of your sorrow you will write one great poem. It’s up to you.’

What has all this to do with New Zealand poetry? Only to say that its future is quite incalculable, for it depends on the poets themselves. No one can write their poems for them. But we can hinder them a great deal by offering good advice.

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