Poetry: the New Zealand scene

Press, Volume CXIII, Issue 38183, 24 March 1973, Page 10

Poetry: the New Zealand scene

The Man with the Carpet-Big. By Peter

Bland. Carton Press. 46 pp. Sap-wood and Milk. By Hone Tuwhare. Caveman Press. 42 pp. Venus is Setting. By Owen Leeming. Caxton Press. 53 pp. Review by H.D.Mc.N. Peter Bland is widely known as a sort of poetry-writing Austin Mitchell, an Englishman who settled in New Zealand and, after surveying the local territory from Kelbum to Karori, proceeded to write it all up, before returning to Britain: Bland's microcosm is his statehouse bedroom, his macrocosm is the whole of Porirua. Of course, one must also add that Bland is a poet of considerable dexterity who was able to exploit the comic potential he found here with a great deal more subtlety than Austin Mitchell, and who also wrote several plays about New Zealand suburban life including "George the Mad-Ad Man.” “Fathers Day,” and "Shsh, He's Becoming a Republic,” which was recently produced in Christchurch. Bland’s satirical writing is too well known to need description, and his skill in this area must be admitted. But when the poet turns from satire to lyricism, he is expected to transcend the limited life that he has been ridiculing—if he fails to do this, he looks like a clown, and Biand is too fond of clowning to leave Porirua for long. This would not matter if he felt any deep attachment to New Zealand suburbia or if he had any real sympathy with those who live there, but a lot of his more serious poems find him trving very hard to become involved in the banalties of Kiwi culture and apparently not finding much to interest him: this is predominantly a book of relatively serious poetry, and yet it does not manage to say much of any seriousness. It is when Bland goes on an excursion away from the suburbs that he writes good serious poetry: This summer we've had two beached whales (More dead than rocks). We wrote them off As bits of night left over, midnight Ocean offal, or pieces of black Horizon to be booted . . . James K. Baxter once commented that the key to Bland’s poetry is in its aggression. This insight pin-points his skill at satire, but aggression is an unhappy basis for personal poetry, and it is only when Bland is in an environment with which he can feel affinity (as in this extract from “The Bay”) that his aggressive instinct is appeased. The poem concludes: It's day! The light lets nothing come between us. We lie like fallen monoliths. The bay Is vacant now . . . there’s only a brown man

With slabs of ocean on his back, and sticks Of eels that buckle like thin black drains.

Compare Bland’s problem of dislocation with the sense of dispossession that runs through Hone Tuvvhare’s work and is made explicit in “Bus Journey, South”—

Distantly the mountains stand away radar-like tracking, cutting my ego down to a pocket-size Gulliverpebble . . .

. . . And I get a hell of a feeling that if I’m caught trapping eels under the long bridge the mountains will rush up to stone me alright. . .

Tuwhare is too old to get bitter or aggressive under the pressures he feels: he can translate failure or sadness into song.

Both Bland and Tuwhare are outsiders in a puritanical society, but Tuwhare has enough experience of that society to have developed a sense of his own identity in relation to it. This is his greatest asset: a strong, consistent voice which, once it is recognised, can support the flimsiest poem and give resonance to the most pedestrian statements. There is nothing in this book that adds a new dimension to his previous work, but it is certainly an appreciable addition to the slim body of work from which his reputation is developed. There are also several colour illustrations by Ralph Hotere, which contribute to making it an attractive little volume.

Like Peter Bland, Owen Leeming has written a number of good plays for both stage and radio, and, in the opinion of this reviewer, his talent is also better suited to the more objective form of drama. However, even if his poetry is regarded as a secondary achievement, it must be admitted that he continually shows a lyrical impulse which comes to Bland only rarely. His limitation is one of expression; there is no single, cohesive language to give texture to his verse, and the ambitious strophic patterns he chooses sometimes appear to lead him off into exercises in lexicography. This means that most of his poems proceed rather jerkily, and have the appearance of verbal density which can obscure a relatively plain statement.

In some poems, though, Leeming does achive a fluidity which reminds one of how well he can write. “The Priests of Serrabone” is a long religious poem which holds its intensity fairly well and adroitly uses a complex stanza. In the title-poem, he invades Peter Bland’s territory:

Night drops as each bar voids. Out of office, men empty words While their hilly suburbs wait.

‘I am a man: My beery breath is warranty.’

The poem develops into light satire, but with more sensitive wording than Leeming often uses. Even so, it is lightyears away from Tuwhare’s relaxed, unpretentious style and his dedication “to anyone who may feel left out, and bloody glad of it.”