IS NEW ZEALAND STODGY?

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume 72, Issue 197, 20 August 1929, Page 2

IS NEW ZEALAND STODGY?

The question is asked, of course, merely that one may be able to answer it in the negative. But nevertheless up in Auckland, there be citizens from the country of kookaburras and kangaroos who’ve had. what one might safely call the nerve to write to a local newspaper, complaining bitterly of the stodginess of New Zealand poetry, and protesting the superiority of ‘ ‘even Australia’s minor poets, such as Roderic Quinn.” The present writer didn’t know that Roderic Quinn was an Australian minor poet, she had an idea that he was the best Australia could, under the circumstances, do, unless one happens to care for the C. J. Dennis touch, which, whilst it amuses, is hardly poetry, or unless, again, one remembers with regret the dashing cavalry charges of poor old Adam Lintsay Gordon, who had sometimes a feeling in his verse which as least brought it equal to Thomas Bracken’s eloquent complaints against misunderstanding. Nowatays, Australia seems to possess Hugh Macrae, who has a delicacy and charm about the exotic little blossoms of his verse which certainly don’t strike one as being typically Australian. The average Australian writer prefers to be forceful, ”ke the village blacksmith and many other worthy people. He writes of things which touch the great heart of his nation—bluegums, and bullock-drivers and Mum and Dad, and droughts, and magpies, and so on. £t is all very entertaining, b ur it isn’t all, or nearly all, distinguished verse, and what one heartily wishes to know is the list of higher and finer Australian poets ilj doubt prepared by the writer who is pleased to describe New Zealand poetry as stodgy. The scenery of these two Southern Dominions is different; their climate more so; their temperaments, of necessity, almost as far apart as the poles. It is quite safe to say that there is a far closer kinship between England’s outlook and New Zealand’s or between the Australian and American temperament, than can ever exist between New Zealand and Australia —which needn’t in the least prevent them from being excellent friends, and sincere admirers of one another’s beauty and progress. But taste is vitally a part of temperament, and it’s almost silly for an Australian to expect New Zealand taste—particularly in regards to so fine and subtle a matter as poetry —to coincide with his own. If he takes stock of himself, he will almost undoubtedly find that he prefers the Blue Mountains to our ►Southern Alps, the glowing distances of Australia to our exquisite corners of scenery. The parallel is not hard to follow.

This visitor to our shores has bten unfortunate in finding nere no poets to equal Australia’s minors. When it comes to the style affected by /Astalian lyricists—breezy, with just sufficient undercurrent of thought to make the readers feel that he’s doing the fair thing by poetry —there’s a man in New Zealand who could, if he chose, probably write as much of that in an hour as Australia’s lightweight champion could turn out in a day. His name is Mr O. N. Gillespie; but a point to be remembered is that Mr Gillespie can write other verse, which is neither so fluent nor so easily forgotten. That is where he will pass beyond the comprehension and the applause of the Australian school. • .T 1 ere are people who will inevitably find a grey day stodgy, be the gra,ss and the branches never so softly jewelled with rain, and the clearness of a thrush’s voice never so poignant in the stillness. So possibly, the same people would fail to appreciate the grey skies of Eileen Duggan's poetry, her music, which is a windborn thing with hardly a false note in its inspiration, the truth of her art; and certainly, they would fail to appreciate her, for she is as shy as her own poetry, not at all a good central figure for a burnt plain and a hard blue sky. There are others, nearly all young, who were if discoveries” only a few years ago, and who still, in many cases, have never published books of poems, New Zealand publishers being, as a general rule, very firmly convinced that nobody wants to read little books of verse.

An Australian specialty is verse verse after style of the tuneful little rhymes about the gum-blossom babies. They love children’s verse, being perhaps a less restrained and more youthful people than the New Zealanders, who, if they’re children at all, are the ‘ ‘quiet children’ ’ of Sologu’s book. Well enough; when has Australia produced a children’s verse book with the same wealth of fantasy, the same humour and vivid sense of the pie-

turesque, as Marna Service’s book, “Blue Magic” which was published a year or two ago? This young writer, no more than a girl herself, showed herself a native of the castles of fairyland. Probably the gentleman who found fault with our stodginess has never heard of her. It’s very sad that more New Zealanders don’t realise how enormously it pays to advertise. Even if you are seeing dreams and fairy gold, nowadays, you must make it very plain that the first are worth dreaming and the second worth jingling. Ishbel Veitch and Alison Grant are two who have not yet published books —yet it is unquestionable that both will, in the very near future, produce books which will be a very valuable contribution to modern poetry. That is no exaggeration. All over the world when the printing presses have time to breathe in between turning out extremely romantic novels and lives of big—also fat—business men, small books, bound in blues and greys and suchlike inconspicuous colours, are squeezing themselves into prominence. England has lost the golden fire that burned up so nobly, just before the war, in the works of James Elroy Flecker and Rupert Brooke. America is turning out a tremendous volume of verse distinguished for its shortness, its vivid colouring, its cheerful freedom from conventions and its originality. Occasionally, in our neighbour Australia’s territory, a rhyme goes up to “the glimmering verge of Heaven.” But New Zealand lias a muse of her own, and if people don’t like her grey • eyes and dark hair, they might, :r ; least accept the word of her admirers,! that she has a style of her own.