Poems from unborn part of her mind

Press, 28 July 1979, Page 15

Poems from unborn part of her mind

“Poetry' is not omy a gift. It requires a lot of hard work in response to it Sometimes very lonely work, but I wouldn’t like not to have it or not to be able to do it ... “Sometimes a poem is given to you. I don’t sit down and say, I will write a poem. It varies for different poems. Sometimes a poet is given a poem and other times you’re given the bones of a poem or maybe the marble chunk of rock or stone from which you can catch a glimmer of the figure within and you have to do a lot of chipping to release it.” Jan Kemp, aged 30, has just finished a New Zealand tour with three other New Zealand poets — Sam Hunt. Alistair Campbell and Hone Tuwhare. She was in Christchurch with her fellow poets reading her poems to audiences in schools, colleges and universities. “We’ve been on the road for four weeks,” she said. “It’s been most enjovable. Very hard work — a tough schedule, but I’ve got excellent companions and I think the response we’ve had from New Zealanders of all ages and interests has been overwhelming. “If poetrv can serve society in "this way of being" meaningful to all sorts of people, not just literary people, then it’s doing what it wants to do, what it needs to do. Giving people artistic expression.” She wrote about five short pieces on the tour. “Just before the tour I had a flood of poems come, which was very ex- | citing. Possibly the pre- | tour tension had something to do with it: knowing I was going to have to be very much in the public eye and show the pub- | lie part of myself. “The first inspiration of writing a poem is a very private act. A poem must f come from the heart. For me. writing poems is part of my life, my experiences. my feelings. Therefore, all things can be used, though not all things are. Your experience is filtered, and I think that if you don’t work like that — through experiences and feelings — your poems lack gutsiness and will be too cerebral.” When did she first realise that she was a poet? “I think that after your first book you probably begin to realise, well maybe I’m a poe". It’s a continual thing. A sort of identity question. It will be nice after the tour to become anonymous again and get back to some Writing." Jan Kemp was born in Hamilton and grew up in

the small country town of Morrinsville. She always liked the outdoors, although they did not live on a farm. When she was about 13 the family moved to Auckland, near the sea. She went to Pakuranga College and had “a very fine English teacher who used to read the poems I wrote and encouraged me. “He was my first mentor. One needs mentors if one’s going to write poetry — someone who isn’t necessarily interested in poetry but who’s close to whom you can relate with and communicate with. “This particular chap was very keen on words for a poet, one’s mentor would have to be a person with a love of words.” She did a BA and went to training college before teaching for a year. “I taught primary school children first because they seemed to be pretty fresh in their response to the world. I liked the children — I didn’t like the system.” “I guess the most important thing for me is to write. I found that school teaching, if you’re going to do it very well, needs to be the number one thing in your life. For me it can’t be unless it’s specialist teaching because my first impulse is to be a writer. I find systems dampen or freeze surprise. There’s a quote about a good poem — a good poem always surprises you. To write a good poem one needs to be awake, alert, taking in things. “Teaching was emotionally draining. I like feeling that I’m in the world — out there — not in a specialised world like a scnool.” After the year's teaching she did an MA in English at Auckland University and “then became a gypsy and wandered off overseas" living in Fiji, New Hebrides, Australia, Canada and Malaysia for about four years. “I think New Zealanders are rather anesthetised, or have been, against world problems, but the life I saw in South-East Asia certainly opened my eyes to how tough life is for many human beings. One is concerned, and anguished by the political situations where people are at each other’s throats.” Her new book of poetry, “Diamonds and Gravel,” just published by Hampson and Hunt, contains a nu. ".er of the poems she wrote while overseas. Last year she taught at an intermediate school in Auckland for seven months and did some specialist poetry classes. (“If children were taught well

how to come to poetry they would find it very enjoyable”) and now she is working in an Auckland bookshop. “I’m hoping when the tour finishes to work there part-time and do more readings and discussions in schools under the Book Council’s ‘writers in schools’ scheme. If anyone offered me a job as poetry adviser to schools, I guess Td take it.”

Has she run into any discrimination as a woman poet?

“I’ve always felt first that I write poems and second that I am a woman poet. I haven’t found that niuch discrimination. I don’t carry the flag or radical feminism. My idea of feminism is to do what I want to do, which is to write well, and I’ll do that despite causes and flags.

“My cause is good poems, and if by writing poems I can express what it’s like to be a woman living now — that’s good. If it can have meaning for other women, that’s good, but I don’t have feminist banners. I’m not a radical lesbian or anything like that.

“I think, live and let live. I think the world is in need of unification rather than separatism. Too often radical groups like that go in for separatist doctrine which in the end closes itself off. I think that if more people seek understanding of each other — seek to care for each other, then that’s a good thing.

“I believe in life — that’s my religion. And death. I believe in no doctrinal thing, but in developing an understanding of life which is always elusive — always very hard to pin down what it’s about. I think that’s what poems do; for a moment, catch something of the ephemeral nature of things and record it; and therefore give it a certain timelessness. I believe in listening to my intuitive self which guides me.” She tries not to give everything away in her poems.

“Hopefully one is subtle in one’s writing so that the poem remains a poem and isn’t just journalese — not to put down journalism — but so that it remains something special, as a painting is, as a good piece of music. First I write for myself; to understand what’s happening to me; then if I feel I’ve said it well and that it might communicate with others, I’ll share it.”

She says the first inspiration of writing a poemis a very private act.

“Sometimes the birth of a poem can be after a pregnancy of time. When the birth is on, I might hear a phrase in my head, and write it down and see where it leads me. I deliberately try not to intellectualise too much, not to think too much, but rather to have my mind clear so that my intuitive thinking or rumination can go on unheeded, because I think that’s where the poems come from — the unborn part of your mind.

“When such rumination, such gathering of image, of ideas, is ready, the poem surfaces on to the page, like a porpoise coming up for air.” The title poem of her fist book of poems, “Against the Softness of Woman,” was written 10 years ago, when she was 20, after a love affair.

“It is a bit dense,” she commented. “If I’d written it now, ten years later, I would’ve tried for a different kind of diction but I might’ve lost some of the vigour of it. Words like ‘vacillation’ I probably wouldn’t use now. What you’re saying and the words you use to say them must be as much like each other as you can make them. They must be really right on. “You have to map your poetic country very clearly like a Lands and Survey topographic map — that type of clarity — but also with the richness of a colour photograph of earth from space, (let’s keep on with this metaphor) also flaming with an inner core of feeling. “Words are your tools. A poet must learn to use them well because they are very powerful creatures. To me they have tonings, and I must select the best word to express

whatever it is. But I don’t sit back and say, I shall choose you, you or you. It’s a much more flowing process than that. In a way, the words choose me, and I think every poet’s map of words reflects his nature. After all, first he is expressing him or herself as a human being, and if he does that as truly as he can, then the poem will ring with that truth, that human truth.

“This poem was. actually written after a iove affair that fell apart. It expresses a sense of loss after that. Rather than becoming embittered by the lass, the woman is seeking to learn from the experience and to learn something of the man’s independence. “That, independence is my contribution to feminism. She became a pip between the petals. He didn’t

want me, this particular guy. It's not that he spat me out, but that once the reality of the situation was that the affair was over, I had to face up to this and not become embittered.

“Had I stayed embittered then I would have been a dry pip rather than again letting life pulse through me and energise me.

“The ‘rings of honesty’ is that little dry flower they use in dry flower arrangements — about the size of a monocle, with a translucent membrane with seeds in it. It’s ambiguous, the rings of honesty. He’s being honest saying, ‘OK, it’s over,’ and making his own way again. I too had to face the truth and make my own way.

“Possibly then as a girl of 20 I was more dependent on him than 1 would have been naw. It’s natural to build up dependence in relationships. A woman is conditioned to be more dependent in our present society than men are. Men are encouraged to be independent. A woman has to learn it, 1 think, later. I’m still learning, I guess. “I don’t mean you don’t have friends — but just be yourself and be proud to "be yourself. I think women are very adaptable; for myself being a Piscean, my nature can tend to be like water.l can assume the shape of whatever bowl I’m placed into which means I’ve felt the need to give myself a stronger sense of definition, of identity, by discovering, by listening to my intuitive self about what it is that I need as well as looking at other people's needs.”

— Genevieve Forde

Against the softness of Woman Vagrant woman, pawn your piscean flood, don't wave your flower, keep your blood dry as the gaze behind your eye; let the resilient bitch rise in the belly of your skies and face her without your usual vacillation: you were born to fit him to be his lay, his lie, his way to run his way; when he has pared down his spare image, don’t try to catch him, you’ll catch yourself — don’t let the quick spring flow, hide it behind; cut your lip-service, your idolatry; he has bared himself translucent like the rings of honesty; don’t be the dry pip between his petals, he will spit you out — when you are sunk tight on the pain, let his singularity teach you: soften your gall, it wanes thin held in the light: transparency holds no mystery; become like him — wear your other heart on your other sleeve, keep this one boned down fine. — Auckland, 70.

Sea Eagles near Kuantian Beach White-bellied sea eagles hang-glide on tiding air, cruising for crabs, silent as these fishermen who drag the urgent sea with drift-nets: sinewy and quick as eagles snatch. they pull with hands long used and tuned to sounding string, a vital ancient catch. Jan Kemp, Malaysia, 77.