Young Poets Urged To Leave New Zealand

Press, Volume CVI, Issue 31085, 14 June 1966, Page 15

Young Poets Urged To Leave New Zealand

oung poets willing to commit themselves should leave New Zealand while they still have plenty of time. They should try to make their way in an older community that is more congenial to the artist,” said a Wellington poet and critic, Mr Louis Johnson, to the third annual Poetry School, held in Wellington.

“There is a lack of tension In the New Zealand way of life that inhibits the imagination,” he said.

"There are, for instance, no real villains in New Zealand novels; they are mainly narratives of day-to-day living and domestic matters. "The novelist has not the confidence to try to insist that bad characters can get away with leading bad lives in this sort of society.” Not Like Dickens

“And so we can never expect to have a New Zealand equivalent of Dickens.”

Mr Johnson recalled that a clergyman had recently created a public uproar when he suggested that the Kiwi male was a “lousy lover.”

“A claim like that is at least a two-edged sword,” he said, “for love is, at least, a gift between two people.

"If the Kiwi male is a lousy lover, perhaps it is because the female Kiwi has not got what it takes to inspire blinding passion. “Can great poetry be expected from a passionless society?

‘The poet is, to my mind, very much in the nature of someone who feels he has experienced a personal call, almost of a religious order. Gropes Way

“He gropes his way toward understanding the life around him through language, sensing beyond the words we use areas of possibility, magic and mystery that he hopes may deliver up to him all the secrets of the race.”

Other problems confronting the young poet in New Zealand, he said, included a

dearth of places in which to publish and experiment with his work; the apathy of any audience gained once it was published; and the savagery of critical cliques anxious to determine that none but their friends should be read with understanding. New Zealand had become more self-conscious about the need for art in recqnt times, and large sums of money were being spent on it—but on the interpretative arts rather than the creative arts. “It is possible,” he said, “for a young actor to be paid to gain experience and study theatre techniques while at the same time he earns £3O a week. “Not To Writers”

“But aid of that kind is never offered to writers who could be expected to produce something of worth that might affect us for ever. "A young poet today must pit himself headlong against most of the training and thinking processes that a more mechanical society insists is necessary. “More and more young people are being exposed to a close study of poetry in our universities, which may be a good thing for many of them.

“But the process involved here is not the most helpful for those wanting to write poetry. “It involves dissecting something already built, on the assumption that a poem is like the engine of a car. “It’s more like the human body—a doctor can take it to pieces but there is no guan-

tee that he can reassemble it and make it function.”

Throughout the world, Auckland poet, Charles Doyle, said, poetry was becoming more and more of a local affair.

It was turning away from the larger social issues to concentrate on immediate experience. If it went too far in New Zealand, New Zealanders, might be in danger of ignoring their own sources in Europe and the United States. It was important for New Zealand to establish standards of criticism.

There were many more New Zealand poets in print today than there were 15 years ago when he started writing, but the situation for poetry seemed worse now than it did then.

There were a great many “half-baked” slim volumes about, and while N&w Zealand had gained many more individual voices, there seemed to be no common direction or objective in the poetry. New Zealand poetry had attained its own tone and vocabularly. and it was time to think of trying to make something truly regional with it.

“Perhaps our poets should try to gain a better sense of their own past and history—read more of the journals and records of the pioneers,” Mr Doyle said.

OCCIMAL CONVSRSIONS Decimal currency will be Introduced In New Zealand In July, 1867. Recommended conversion rates from 5s to 11 are as follows:

5s 50C 13S 81.30 6s 60c 14S SI 40 7s 70c 15S SI SO 8s 80c 16S SI so 9s 00c 17s S1.70 10s SI 18s SI 80 Ils 81.10 19s Sl.SO 12s 11.20 20s S2