Poetic riches from N.Z. women

Press, 4 February 1978, Page 17

Poetic riches from N.Z. women

Private Gardens: An Anthology of New Zealand Women Poets. Edited by Riemke Ensing. Caveman Press. $7.20. (Reviewed by Peter Simpson)

Two of New Zealand’s best women poets — Janet Frame and Ruth Dallas — declined to appear in “Private Gardens” in protest at the concept of an anthology solely for women. Also absent are the famous dead: Jessie McKay, Ursula Bethell, Blanche Baughan, Katherine Mansfield, Robin Hyde. Yet, in spite of the omissions, the collection is rich, vigorous and colourful. The soil is clearly fertile and green fingers abound. Thirty-five poets are included, ranging from professional writers with established reputations, such as Fleur Adcock, to a dozen or so names unfamiliar even to close observers (or should I say close male observers) of New Zealand poetry.

In addition to the poetry the reader

is given a somewhat fussy, but nonetheless entertaining and informative collection of extras: an editorial introduction; an Afterword by man poet Vincent O’Sullivan treading on egg shells with elegant panache; a selection of photographs (some of the poets, others accompanying the texts of particular poems); statements about poetry from Fleur Adcock and Gloria Rawlinson; and copious biographical and bibliographical notes. It is not, perhaps, surprising that a book which was planned for the International Women’s Year of 1974 took three years to reach the book stores.

“Private Gardens” is presumably a metaphor for poetry itself, and suggests many of the tendencies observable in the poetry included: the personal orientation of much of the verse, the pre-occupation with immediate relationships (lovers, husbands, children) or with the world of subjective feeling. The scale is typically modest, the tone intimate and

informal. Surprisingly little of the verse is political and overtly feminist statements are entirely absent.

If the Women’s Movement has affected the poets in any way at all it is only in giving them confidence to articulate their private worlds. The writers to stand out for me were Fleur Adcock for technical mastery, analytic power and control of atmosphere; Christina Beer for what Thomas Hardy called an “idiosyncratic mode of regard”: Lauris Edmond for grave lyrical eloquence; Jan Kemp for erotic directness and delicacy; Elizabeth Smither for delightful touches of humour, and Mary Stanley for emotional exactness. Marianne Moore in her famous poem entitled simply, “Poetry,” wrote that not until poets can “present for inspection, imaginary gardens with real toads in them,/ shall we have/it." “It” is poetry. Some of these private gardens contain real toads; some of these women have made “it.”