N.Z. poetry anthology remade

Press, 10 August 1985, Page 20

N.Z. poetry anthology remade

The Penguin Book of New Zealand Verse. Edited by lan Wedde and Harvey McQueen. Penguin, 1985. 575 pp. $15.95 (paperback).

(Reviewed by

Tom Weston)

The 1960 Penguin Book of New Zealand Verse, edited by Allen Curnow, is something of a benchmark in this country’s literature. Curnow was close to being the ideal editor: articulate in his own right as both critic and poet; more than able to articulate a wider vision for New Zealand poetry. Although seeing his anthology was only one step on a continuing path (and correctly so in my view), he so stamped his vision on New Zealand poetry that it is only in comparatively recent years that a different view has been taken.

In what has come to be regarded as a seminal statement Curnow wrote in his introduction of a “revaluation” of New Zealand verse (the word "verse” always seems quaint). The “radical isolation” of this country was blunted only by its artists’ "search for reality.” These were the key issues — the revaluation, the isolation of the country and its people, the search for some nebulous reality.

Curnow’s New Zealand artist was a pioneer, usually male and touched with a dash of messianic purpose. Shifting some 25 years on, the new Penguin anthology speaks of a “complete re-reading”: it too sees itself as a point of departure. Time alone will be the best judge of that (Curnow’s anthology was not without controversy at the time), but at these close quarters I confess to hedging my bets. By July 1, 1985, publication date, the anthology was already out of date. The cut-off point had been 1982 and, in considering the sheer bulk of the collection, that is hardly surprising. It must have been an enormous job. But at the same time it cannot be denied that a lot has happened in New Zealand poetry since 1982. In particular, Curnow’s stance has itself received a substantial revaluation. An entirely different form of poetry (known as post-structuralism, or semiotics) has taken some sort of root. These various new positions do not, of themselves, render the anthology invalid, but they do raise awkward questions of relevance. Already the volume seems something

of a period piece, a monument to the sixties and seventies (now a literary generation ago). You cannot be absolute in these assessments. Poems often defy categorisation and in this collection there are a good many poems that deserve as wide a readership as they can command. There are poems to be enjoyed and savoured as good poems always have been. But an anthology is more than the sum total of its individual parts and in this case the poems inevitably take some sort of colour from their new environment. In his introduction, an enjoyable but imprecise affair, Wedde shows most favour for a “demotic” form of poetry. This expression has been borrowed from a Canadian writer and critic, Northrop Frye, and is used to signify an oral, or low, poetry (as opposed to a high, or willed, poetry). There can be no doubting Frye’s perception, but his conclusions are more than sometimes superficial. This leads to some uneasiness, especially as so much of the anthology’s structure is built on just such a foundation. This use of “demotic” paves the way for the “re-reading” promised in the blurb. It provides the excuse to emphasise, wherever possible, writing of the sixties and seventies. It also allows for a reassessment of such poets as Baxter or Hunt. For Wedde, the obvious step from “demotic” is to that of “folk poet” (both Baxter and Hunt here) and then, still further, to the Maori writers included in these pages. There is no doubt that Wedde and McQueen have substantially overhauled Curnow’s anthology. Many earlier poets are quietly ditched — Katherine Mansfield and Basil Dowling are two examples. Charles Brasch gets a completely new set of works. Allen Curnow only has four poems of overlap. Even those two landmark pieces “The Unhistoric Story” and “Landfall In Unknown Seas” go by the board. Comparatively speaking, many more women are now represented. There are a lot of new faces here. Despite this, and perhaps surprisingly, the differences between the two collections are more apparent than real. Wedde and McQueen clearly focus on language itself in a way not then contemplated by Curnow. The tone of the chosen poems is less anxiously inquiring. And so on — you

could continue to list the differences. But the point is that Wedde’s focus on relation is only a reworking of Curnow’s interest in location. There is still much of a trying to find ourselves — even if it is less as a State and more as a series of individuals (as Vincent O’Sullivan acknowledged in the Oxford Anthology). But relation is still concerned with place and the emphasis, in this present volume, tends to reduce the primacy of language. Still, there are no real absolutes. Wedde and McQueen, as did Curnow, see their anthology as provisional, not definitive. Perhaps even transitional. In this sense, the concentration on Maori poetry (approximately 20 per cent of the volume) is most revealing. It is almost as if the anthology was solely designed as a springboard for Maori writers and their writing. Curnow set something of a precedent for this, but only in a small way. His 10 pages of Maori poetry consisted of English renditions of some “classical” pieces. Wedde and McQueen, with assistance from Margaret Orbell, set about it differently.

Any poetry used would only be drawn from previously written sources. Both the Maori original and the English translation would appear together. There would be inclusion of poems both traditional and transitional, representative in tribal and genre terms. The English translation would let the poems speak for themselves, untrammelled by English poetic tradition. And, when all was said and done, there would be more than a token 10 pages.

Idealistic perhaps, even earnest, and yet scrupulously done. Almost too much so. Trying so hard to avoid importing foreign influences into the Maori writing has meant a sanitised cleanness which contrasts awkwardly with the Pakeha writers (or those who write in English). As Wedde himself notes in his introduction, Maori writing must make an extra translation from an original context to that of this “written, private, passive” anthology. Whether it has done so might be for others, better qualified than I, to judge. But an anthology is a hierarchic and structured document, and drawing such obvious attention to the Maori writing is something of a discrimination in itself.