An Alistair Campbell collection

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

An Alistair Campbell collection

Kapiti. By Alistair Campbell. Pegasus. 88 pp. Most of Alistair Campbell’s six volumes of poetry might have been subtitled “Selected Poems,” as this one is: the process of revaluation, selection, and revision seems to have no finality for him, and even some poems that are more than 20 years old are still being changed. “Kapiti” represents his whole poetry-writing career, and some of the pieces in it are making their fifth appearance in book form; only about a dozen have not been in a previous collection, and readers will remember some of these from their publication in magazines. On the other hand, if some of the poems now seem somewhat over-familiar, it is very pleasing to see the reprinting of most of the work

in his last book, “Blue Rain,” a Wai-te-ata limited edition. Campbell’s early, “Tennysonian” work has been frequently scrutinised in the past, and it will suffice to comment here that it is fairly represented in this volume. “Blue Rain” (1967), however, did not receive much critical notice even though it contained a radical new departure which is further developed in some of the latest poems. It is pertinent to remember that James Bertram made a perceptive comparison between the irresistible “dark sounds” of Campbell’s early work and the concept of the “duende” which dominates the best-known poems of Garcia Lorca. Bertram was writing before “Blue Rain,” and it would be most interesting to know whether his review led Campbell to a deeper reading of Lorca; at any rate, preoccupation with “the

duende” led Lorca to surrealism, just as Campbell moved to the vivid surrealism of “Blue Rain.” The nine poems in the volume which date later than "Blue Rain” are an odd assortment, not all of the highest quality; some of his uncollected “Listener” poems are better than some of these. “Reflections on Some Great Chiefs” is a disappointing clichestudded (intentionally, one guesses, but unsuccessfully) return to the material so vividly dramatised in “Sanctuary of Spirits, A Pattern of Voices,” which is of course also included. “My Grandfather” is another rather insipid, lowkey glance in the same direction. More conventionally modem personal lyrics have never been Campbell’s strongest point, and there are a few of these too. On the other hand, Campbell’s surrealistic experiments have crystallised into a most accomplished style, demonstrated in a splendid poem with which the book ends. It starts: Walk the black path Walk the black path at noon Walk the tilting earth Between dream and nightmare. Bright orange are the shadows Under the awnings The eyes of the parking meters Weep tears of blood. Surrealism seems the obvious outlet for Campbell’s talent, a method of revaluing rhetoric and revitalising the imagination to arrive at a most serviceable vehicle for intractable emotions. It is to be hoped that Campbellwill continue to explore the possibilities of this field: there is no reason, for example, why Polynesian material should not be lifted to a surreal plane in poetry, and the consequences could be fascinating. For Maori writers like Hone, Tuwhare, Witi Ihimaera, or Alistair Campbell, literary self-con-sciousness is a dubious by-product of maturity; surrealism allows Campbell independence in developing his idiosyncracies. And, if he ever has difficulty in filling up a volume to publishable size, perhaps he might let us have some of his five plays?