OTAGO WOMEN'S CLUB

Otago Daily Times, Issue 23831, 10 June 1939, Page 27

OTAGO WOMEN'S CLUB

POETRY CIRCLE MEETS The June meeting oi the Poetry Circle of the Otago Women's Club was held on Tuesday last, when the poetry and life of Jessie Mackay was studied. The chairwoman brought before the members the fact that a memorial fund is being instituted by the P.E.N, centre of Wellington as a memorial to this poet, who died last year, and that the money is to be devoted to an annual prize for literature and to a small plaque in her honour Mrs J. Stewart 'was entrusted with the paper for the day. and gave the members a comprehensive and scholarly outline of Jessie Mackay's life, activities, and writings. The fact that this poet was a descendant of the ancient Mackay clan that was dispossessed in Highland Scotland evidently coloured her life and writings, in that she was, at all times, a passionate sympathiser with the oppressed She fought hard for all women's causes, both in New Zealand and abroad and for Prohibition. In fact, politics and poetry were her main interests, but she still found time to help many other literary strugglers. She wrote poems and prose in defence of her ancestral Scottish scenery, in defence of the Maori hosts, the Armenians, the Serbians, Russians. Scots, Bolivians, and the people of many other nations. She commenced publishing in 1881, and continued almost until her death last year at the age of 74. During that time she was school teacher, lady editor, journalist, reporter, and writer to many papers and periodicals. On Jessie Mackay's seventy-fourth birthday she received a unique testimonial which had attached to it the signatures of many hundreds of her friends and admirers from all over the world, thanking her for helping to build up a literary tradition in a land where literature might have been forgotten in the struggle for existence. The reading of her poems commenced with the stately and sonorous "Burial of Sir John Mackenzie," followed by the famous ode to Mount Cook called "Song of Aorangi.*' Others were " Harvest of Tani Mahuti." "Noosing of the Sun God," 'Passing of Macphail." "Lord Riach's Lament," "Maydew," '"Spring Fires." "Morning Glory," " Nor'-wester Sunset," " Daydreams," " Dunedin in the Gloaming," "In Galilee," and, in lighter vein. " Christchurch Cold " and " Charge of Parihaka." Verses to her memory written by her lifelong friend, Mary Gilmore, of the Sydney Morning Herald, were also read.