Performance matters to Sam Hunt, poet

Press, 13 December 1985, Page 4

Performance matters to Sam Hunt, poet

By

DAVID WILSON

Popular bard of the road, Sam Hunt, is not expecting any plaudits from New Zealand literary circles for his latest book, “Approaches to Paremata.”

In fact, he has never felt as divorced or as far away from the literary scene in this country, he confessed soon after arriving in Christchurch last evening. His is here to give a concert — a Christmas poetry party — in the Limes Room of the Town Hall on Sunday. Talking of his latest work, he said, “Having a book out is like bringing the kids together for a big reunion. “I know it will get rubbished in literary circles, but I’ve lost faith in them anyway. “I’m interested in poems that work for me initially. My taste is not all that hifalutin’ in fact, I think it is approaching good taste,” he “Performance of my poems is as important as

publishing a book. It’s not how a poem looks on a page that’s important, it’s how it sounds.” Does it worry him that conventional literary circles may give his latest book a pounding? “Criticism of what you are about and what you are doing by someone who doesn’t understand what you are about, is frustrating,” he said. “There almost seems to be a conspiracy among college and university departments to prevent real poetry into the playgrounds and into the schools. “I’m not anti-academic,” he said, “but I’m against it when a poem gets crushed by people pushing academic barrows.” Sam Hunt painfully recalled a review of one of his books by a Christchurch academic. “He didn’t mention one poem in his 2%-page review. He attacked the man, he attacked me because I wasfoopular, and because he

obviously thought I was not a good poet, which I’ve never claimed to be.” “There are so many different ways of telling a poem. I wanted to write poems that I feel can be performed at street level to a diverse cross-section of people. “I don’t want to go to some elite place to perform my poetry.” Notwithstanding what the academics might think of his works, Sam Hunt still packs ’em in at venues throughout New Zealand. Earlier this week he drew an audience of 700 to a hotel in Wanganui where the previous week’s main entertainment, an all-male strip cast, had drawn only five people.

In his 20 years of travelling the length of New Zealand Sam Hunt has destroyed the myth that poetry primarily belongs op