POETRY AND POETS

Press, Volume LXXXVI, Issue 26122, 26 May 1950, Page 6

POETRY AND POETS

Observations In Britain And U.S.

MR ALLEN CURNOW RETURNS

A 30-minute broadcast in the 8.8. C. Third Programme, and recordings of his own poems at the Library of Congress, Washington, and at Lamont Library, Harvard, were among the activities abroad of Mr Allen Curnow, the New Zealand poet, who has returned to Christchurch after a 14 months’ absence.

Mr Curnow left New Zealand with a grant front the State Literary Fund and assistance from the British Council. and while in England obtained a Carnegie Corporation grant for travel in the United States.

It was a very great pleasure indeed to record his script on New Zealand poetry for the Third Programme, Mr Curnow said yesterday. He took it as a compliment to the quality of his subject matter that it had been accepted by the 8.8.C.’s most selective transmission for English listeners. Mr Curnow’s anthology. "A Book of New Zealand Verse.” helped to prepare a welcome for him both in England and America, he said. “I found it in places more or less expected, like Harvard and the Library of Congress —and quite unexpected places, as in the hands of Dylan Thomas, the poet.

“Within a few minutes of my meeting Thomas at the George public house, near Broadcasting House, he had claimed acquaintance with my work and that of R. A. K. Mason, of Auckland.” said Mr Curnow. “He began to quote with admiration and several mistakes. Mason's poem ‘Judas Iscariot.’ which he had included in readings to a student audience at Oxford.

“Thomas wanted to know if a poem like Mason’s had not startled readers in New Zealand, and I could only suggest, by way of answer, that New Zealand readers were perhaps not easilv startled.” Mr Curnow said. After a few months’ work on the sub-editing staff of the “News Chronicle.” in London. Mr Curnow went to lhe Edinburgh Festival as a guest of the British Council. He was a guest of the Scottish P.E.N. at its Festival luncheon, presided over by the Scots novelist. Eric Linklater —“a stocky, bald, spectacled, whimsical Scot.” T. S. Eliot’s New Play One pleasure he had anticipated at Edinburgh turned out a relative disappointment. He felt that T. S. Eliot's new play, "The Cocktail Party, lacked both poetic interest and dramatic strength, said Mr Curnow. “But by the time I reached New York,” he said, “the play had scored a big success on Broadway, and I found myself one of a dissident minority when the play wa c being discussed —chiefly at literary" cocktail parties where it was impossible to avoid discussing it. Broadway audieneds and critics are very different from London ones.” said Mr Curnow, “and it seems likely that the part so masterfully played by Alec Guinness, representing something between a priest and a psychiatrist, impressed them much more.” Among poets with whom Mr Curnow had conversations in England were Louis MacNeice and W. R. Rodgers. b 'th Ulstermen by origin. Roy Campbell the South African. Terence Tiller—“a fellow-Cornishman who also knew my childhood stories of the wicked "Squire Tregeagle' —George Barker, and the young Scots poet, w. S. Graham. It seemed that the present was a fallow period for important new poetry ho said, and this was true of England and America alike In England, publishers hardly dared tisk a new volume even by a poet of some reputation. More now verse was appeering in America, but little to claim more than passing attention. the

drift was all towards new volumes ot criticism and interpretation. 'Nobody would seriously question that W. B. Yeats was the greatest poet oi our century,” said Mr Curnow. “X-H his poems remain out of print wnilo book after book is published about his life and work.” In the United States Mr Curnow stayed with Richard Eberhart the American poet, at Cambridge. Massachusetts. and while there he made his poetry recordings at Harvard and met members of the English faculty there. „ “The Woodberry Poetry Room at Lamont Library. Harvard, has one of the most complete collections in tne world of poetry recorded by the poets themselves.”- he said. “Any day. m this room specially designed by a Finnish architect, you will find upwards of 20 students and others, sitting with headphones or round the big turntables, either following the poems they have chosen on lhe printed page as they listen, or just listening. I listened myself to recordings by Yeats. Ezra Pound. Eliot, Dylan Thomas, and Edith Sitwell. Readings by Poets “These readings by poets of their own work are auite a special development in the United States, though the recordings made by the 13.8. C. for its

own use are probably of better quality,'’ said Mr Curnow. ?The pity is that all poets, especially the Americans. do not do justice to their own work when they read. In New York I heard E. E. Cummings read pleasantly but monotonously to an audience at lhe Museum of Modern Art. Incidentally, Cummings was one of the older generation of American poets whom 1 felt it a great privilege to visit, at his apartment in Greenwich Village.” Mr Curnow was invited to Washington to record his poems by Miss Elizabeth Bishop, the poet who at present holds the annual appointment ;f Poetry Consultant at the Library of Congress. "I Ju d to fill two 16-inch discs., from which they will choose the poems they like best for inclusion in their albums of records for public sale.” he said. “While they had me there, we also made a brief interview recording for intermission use in a I Library of Congress orchestral conj "visits to Yale University, to see ; Professor Cleanth Brooks, one of ; America's foremost critics, and to the i poet Karl Shapiro at Johns Hopkins ity. Baltimore, were other fea- : Hires of Mr Curnow’s brief American ! tour. At the State College of San i Francisco—“a baby American uni- | versify with a mere 6000 students” — he was asked to address a class of graduate students. “I could only tell them what had struck me very forcibly in America.” he said, “that there were dangers as well as advantages to poetry' in having many teachers, many critics, and not enough readers.”