Pretentious presentation

Press, Volume CXII, Issue 33065, 4 November 1972, Page 10

Pretentious presentation

From Bottle Creek. By Sam Hunt Published by Alister Taylor, Ltd. (Reviewed by H.D.McN.) There can be very few young poets who manage to get themselves published in a shiny silver folder embracing four booklets, each on a different colour paper and containing an assortment of hand-written poems, somewhat difficult to decipher in themselves and further obscured by photographs superimposed on almost every page. Certainly, it is an interesting curiosity, but the presentation .tends to impede appreciation of the poems, some of which (especially those in a loose, more obviously song form) do not stand up to the enforced slow reading, and the illustrations are not well co-ordinated with the text. For an example of a most effective and harmonious use of graphics with poetry, readers might compare David Young’s magazine, “Fragments,” the latest issue of which was devoted to work by Peter Hooper. Let it be clearly stated that Sam Hunt is a talented young poet who deserves to be read, and who has the additional qualification that he is capable of performing his own work. But it must be realised that only certain types of poems are really suitable for setting (W. H. Auden has analysed these), and that a poem which performs

well may look ridiculous when printed, unless the reader can recall the performance. The best poems (judged strictly as poems) in this folder are mostly to be found in the booklets entitled "A Purple Balloon” and "My Father Scything;” the rest may well prove more satisfactory when read in conjunction with the companion set of L.P. records. It is unfortunate that this collection should have been issued in such a form, with so many production gimmicks cluttered together. Hunt’s first book, "Bracken Country,” was, apart from the occasional high point, a work of competence rather than brilliance; “From Bottle Creek” may be seen by some as pretentiousness with a thin veil of primitivism, by others as a gesture towards a personality cult (in which, of course, there is nothing inherently bad, except that it can easily conflict with lyrical aims). So much heraldry may tend to build up false expectations in readers who are not familiar with the writer, if he accepted the modest conventions with which other poets are satisfied, he might hold the reader in a more generous frame of mind. There are, after all, quite a few other young New Zealand poets whose work is every bit as promising as Hunt’s, and, as poetry, much more adventurous.