POET LAUREATE

Poverty Bay Herald, Volume LXI, Issue 18528, 15 October 1934, Page 10

POET LAUREATE

MASEFIELD IN AUSTRALIA

IMPRESSIONS ON POETRY PERTH, Oct. 4. A gentle ;ind gracious dignity, relieved by gleams of humor, a fine natural distinction and fervor of phrase, shot with an occasional flash' of expressive slang, are first impressions created by a talk villi the l’uet Laureate, Mr, John Masefield, whu arrived at Fremantle oil tU« Otranto en route t.o Melbourne. His bearing suggests a sensitive shyness, but one cannot speak with him for many moments without feeling that Ini is a man dedicated to a high vocation. An interviewer asked Mr. Masefield how he had come to turn, to poetry. Was it, for example, some spiritual experience of poetic conversion .' .“No.” smiled the I.aureate; “I suppose it was just the shape of my head. 1 always wanted to write poetry and tell stories, ami cannot, have been more than three or lour before 1 commenced to enjoy wise.” Mr. Masefield said that “lugoldsby Legends” was his first introduction to verse. Asked which was his favorite among his poems. Mr. .Masefield smilingly said that he supposed that most‘writers, in The modern woman's friend . . . Fairy Eyes for iiuick color change. Jid everywhere/

the full glow, of what they were doing, imagined that it was, perhaps, the finest thing since Shakespeare. By the time the proofs arrive, doubts begin to creep in, and, once finished, the work appears, and it drops out of mind,” he said. Mr. Masefield admitted that “The. Everlasting Mercy” had a special meaning for him. "Tho most popular of his poems, he thought, was “The Fox.” METHODS OF WORK Questioned about, his methods of work, Mr. Masefield said that lie kept to regular .hours. Only to work in special moods was a dangerous doctrine for mortal man. He did not force himself, however, to do any fixed quantity of work within any given period, nor did ho follow any special course of investigation for any particular novel or poem. Mr. Masefield spoke of Australia and Australians as one bent on a mission of exploration. “I want to- learn everything of yon and your people,” he said, “f want to travel in your country. I want to see a sheep station, f want to see a gold mine, and 1 want to see the Melbourne Cup—as a spectacle and not as a business proposition. It must he a very beautiful and wonderful sight." Mr. Masefield's “Gallipoli” has been described, as the great book of the war. J! was on Gallipoli that he first met the Australian soldiers, and he made further contact with 11tem on the Somme. When questioned about the possibility of his writing the centenary ode for the Melbourne celebrations, Mr. Masefield

said that lie had never written an ode. They were very difficult things to write, and so few ports wrote them with any success. Tennyson. Keats. Wordsworth, and Milton could-do it, hut he could not think of anvbody rise.