Cathedral tribute to James K. Baxter

Press, Volume CXII, Issue 33060, 30 October 1972, Page 16

Cathedral tribute to James K. Baxter

Maoris and pakehas, nuns and students, priests and parsons gathered in the Christchurch Cathedral last evening tor a memorial service to the one-time alcoholic turned loser of humanity, the late James Keir Baxter.

An overflowing congregation of more than 1000 heard a Roman Catholic priest. Father J. Weir, speak of the life, death and funeral of the non-conforming poet who had himself twice spoken from the cathedral’s pulpit. Fr Weir, a personal friend of Mr Baxter, described his journey from Christchurch to Jerusalem last week for the funeral. “We drove over an impossible road, passed three cars with broken axles. Some 300 people made their way to that remote spot. “PEOPLE CAME”

“I met a young man who had borrowed a car in the street of Wanganui because he had no friends or money to get there. I heard of a young man in prison who begged to be released for the funeral.

“People came from all over New Zealand. Teenagers skipped school for the day. I met a Maori boy who had walked from Masterton. It took him three days. “James Baxter’s body was in a tent. People were there to speak and they spoke to the dead man as though he were alive. “One Maori said: ‘No more hitch-hiking now, Hemi.’ Another said: ‘Hemi is a Maori. We bury him for nothing in Maori ground. You are pakehas. Mr Muldoon takes your money. You pay for your grave. “The coffin was placed on the ground. It came on to rain. A little child played on the coffin. She drummed her heels on its side and wiped off the raindrops. “It might well be that the most valuable gift that he brought was not his writings, not his social reforms, but his love and tenderness,” Fr Weir said. PROPHETIC VOICE The dead poet, even in his earliest writings, had frequently spoken in a prophetic

voice. “It was a voice born of suffering," Fr Weir said.

“For some 10 years. James Baxter suffered from the effects of alcoholism. He was unable to hold down a job. He calculated that in a threeyear period he had been employed in over 30 positions.” In a poem, “Pig Island Letters,” Baxter had reflected the restlessness that plagued

[him as he tried to shake off I alcohol. I Ten years before he had : become a Roman Catholic he (had written: Jesus and Mary, make the i springtime come again, ‘Somewhere, sometime, or take the burden of my pain. I seek the green inn where life and death begin. j “CELL OF GOOD LIVING” Father Weir said that Baxter had been convinced as (early as 194 S that the writer should remain as a cell of (good living in a corrupt society and in this situation I by writing and example to attempt to change it. “Almost 20 years later, he carried this statement to its logical extreme by deciding to work among the drug addicts in Auckland. The last shift of his restless man was to Jerusalem. "He was now attempting to assist in social reform in New Zealand. It was to be no Marxist revolution but a genuine transformation I stemming from love, the Maori virtue of aroha. “He continually questioned the values of a Christianity which had become increasingly identified with a

middle-class culture. It was in the Maori people that he identified the qualities that our paranoic, technological, materialistic culture lacked. “Yet in our stupidity we were attempting to convert them to our own emptiness. We should instead have learned from the Maori, our elder brother.” POEMS READ Father Weir referred to the poignancy of the "Dominion” poster the day after James Baxter had died which said: “James Keir Baxter, 1926-1972, friend.” During Father Weir's address, Mervyn Thompson and Mildred Woods read selected poems, prose, and extracts of letters written by James Baxter. Jennifer Goldsbrough, a schoolteacher, spoke of how James Baxter had during the last nine years helped her to overcome a great personal crisis. She explained afterwards that the poet had gone without meals to provide her with desperately needed money when others round her had “dumped” her. The service ended with the flautist, Anthony Ferner, playing a lament.