Poet Predicts N.Z. Language Soon

Charles Brasch, editor of Landfall, told the annual congress of the New Zealand University Students' Association at Curious Cove that New Zealand poetry will develop a tone distinctive from that of any other country.

Brasch emphasised that, he was not talking about, subject matter but about the style and attitudes of poetry.

"I am not sure that there are any New Zealand poems which, if you ignore subject matter, might not have been written in England. Australia or the United States, poems whose rhythms, imagery, attitudes of mind and tone of voice could not have come from some other country." he said.

"I don't think we know yet what we mean by New Zealand in this sense." he said. "The poetry that will be written here in the next 100 or 200 years will reveal it to us."

Mr. Brasch said that in time New Zealand English would develop "an attitude to experience peculiar to us.

"We shall mould the language to our use and it will gradually diverge from the English of Britain and from Australian." he said. "The most intimate expression of our New Zealandness will be found in our poetry, because a people expresses itself most inwardly and revealingly in its poetry."