Summer 2015, Volume 5, Issue 4
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. Poetry Notes Summer 2015 Volume 5, Issue 4 ISSN 1179-7681 Quarterly Newsletter of PANZA some responsibility for the New Inside this Issue Welcome Zealand baby boomer litterateurs. We had a student literary magazine Argot Hello and welcome to issue 20 of for which Dennis List was an editor in Welcome Poetry Notes, the newsletter of PANZA, the mid 1960s. He may have first 1 the newly formed Poetry Archive of published Bill Manhire. Niel Wright on Mark Young New Zealand Aotearoa. Dennis List also included three poems and Poetry as Intellectual Poetry Notes will be published quarterly by Mark Young, born 1941 so an earlier and will include information about Construct crop. Young trained as a classical goings on at the Archive, articles on musician but professionally became a Comment on Dick Bird historical New Zealand poets of interest, pop musician. He wrote his first poem (1925-1984) occasional poems by invited poets and a in 1959 and it appeared in the New 2 record of recently received donations to Zealand Listener. He went to Australia Classic New Zealand the Archive. in 1969 and no more was heard of him poetry by Dorothy Gard’ner Articles and poems are copyright in the as a poet, though he went on writing 3 names of the individual authors. poetry. But in 2000 Alan Brunton, Tribute to Les Cleveland The newsletter will be available for free Murray Edmond and Michele Leggott download from the Poetry Archive’s edited an anthology Big Smoke poems 4 website: Further comment on 1958-1975 and they chased up Mark Robert J Pope Young and included eight of his early http://poetryarchivenz.wordpress.com 5 poems. [The actual book title gives 1960-1975, though some poems were New publication: When earlier than 1960]. This stimulated Harry Met Marion by 6 Young to look out his poetry folders and Rowan Gibbs Niel Wright on in the last 15 years since then he has had New publication by Mark Young published nearly 2000 pages of his 8 PANZA member poetry, via overseas publishers. This earned him some attention in New Wellington poet, publisher and literary Donate to PANZA through Zealand and Mark Pirie has been in critic Niel Wright discusses the work of PayPal contact with him and as a result Mark Australian-based Mark Young recently Young has now donated eight of his Recently received donated to PANZA. poetry books to PANZA to complete donations our collection (we had only five, one ON MARK YOUNG AND POETRY early which Dr Michael O’Leary bought About the Poetry Archive AS INTELLECTUAL CONSTRUCT at auction recently). 9 by Niel Wright I say of my own poetry that each of my poems is an intellectual construct. I am In the 1960s, I was a background quite prepared to ask of any other poet, PANZA influence on the baby boomer is each of his or her poems also an 1 Woburn Road generation here in the capital intellectual construct? But as Coleridge Northland Wellington as they related to poetry. insists a poem and specifically a good Wellington 6012 Dennis List was a leader of the poem must be something else besides an generation that way. I realise that I have intellectual construct. Summer 2015 Mark Young’s first poem ‘Lizard’ in expressed in the Germanic motto, Als ik a new contributor with one poem ‘The 1959 was a clever bit of Eliotesquery. I kan ik vil. In this frame of mind I Quarrel’. am prepared to believe subsequently returned to literary activity….My Dennis List was one of the editors of Dennis List shared some similarities strategy in this writing was to do what I Argot 13, Autumn 1965, which includes with Young in the 1960s. I described could, without literary pretension or three poems by Mark Young who is the sort of poetry we might go on to sophistication, simply in terms of the described as a former editor of Argot, write as “more nihilistic than in the past cultural background. Necessarily it was now at Auckland. Argot 14, Winter in New Zealand, unsentimental and impersonal and objective, and drew on 1965, had the same editors and includes humorous rather than tragic.” pop.” and page xxviii: “I was convinced Bill Manhire’s poem ‘Threnody’ with a I read four of Mark Young’s recent in the early 1960s that conditions on the profile of him as a new contributor. poems. Young is writing serious social literary scene in Aotearoa were right for Argot 17, August 1967, includes a poem criticism, coded as it may be. This is the a new start….My critical stance to our by Niel Wright. Modernist approach. literary predecessors at this point, 1965- I agree Young’s are intellectual 1966, was dismissive; but it is fair to constructs, he can be traditional, and say that at least the new start which I Comment on Mark Pirie appreciates Young’s oeuvre wanted to see was in place.” in the William Carlos Williams and Coleridge’s Definition of Poetry Dick Bird semiotics genre. Biographia Literaria, Chapter 14, pages Pirie is including one of Mark Young’s 148-150, in the Everyman edition: “A poems and three of the American poem is that species of composition DICK BIRD’S NEW ZEALAND traditionalist Cameron La Follette in which is opposed to works of science by CRICKET POEMS broadsheet 14. Mark Pirie has selected a proposing for its immediate object poem of Mark Young’s that has a more pleasure, not truth; and from all other In this Summer issue of Poetry Notes obvious coherence than is usually the species (having this object in common and with the ICC Cricket World Cup case with him. with it) it is discriminated by proposing approaching, it seems appropriate to I tell this story to show how links and to itself such delight from the whole as include a cricket-related article. influences continue over the decades is compatible with a distinct At a book fair, Mark Pirie bought for among people who end up with some gratification from each component PANZA a collection of poems and interest in common. Another of my part.” writings by New Zealand poet Dick contacts in the 1960s is now the prestige The four poems of Mark Young I read Bird, an emigrant from England, publisher operating out of the capital. recently were in Falsely Goethe (2007), privately published in 1984. There is no Same story. Another name would be pages 5-8: Day One, Day Two, Day ISBN and no copy in the National Bill Sutton, who read and admired my Three, Day Four. Library of New Zealand. He is the near poetry in the 1960s, and has just had his Mark Young’s 1959 poem published in namesake of famous English umpire first book of poetry (at 69) appear from the New Zealand Listener was ‘Lizard’, Dickie Bird. Two cricket poems (as well said publisher. And I could give dozens reprinted in Big Smoke pages 42-3, as rugby verses) c1970s are amongst his of other cases showing how what giving New Zealand Listener (11 collected newspaper poetry: happens in the capital continues to December 1959) for original resonate among a group that I publication. The note on page 342 is in Dick Bird deliberately set out to build up from error about the year. 1958 onwards following the death of Experiment 7 no date 1960, Mark UNTITLED A R D Fairburn in 1957 which I saw at Young as editor writes only a short the time as the extinction of 1930s editorial. In these toilsome, troubled times Modernism in New Zealand. Experiment 8 no date 1961? includes There are international crimes four poems by Mark Young. Which may cause an Englishman to Citations Argot Vol 2 No 4 = Argot 9 October raise his brow, 1963, edited by John Parkyn, includes Things like famine, fire and food Citations substantiating and elaborating four poems by Mark Young. And revolutions, spilling blood, points made above Mark Young was the editor of Argot 10, These are things he understands and The prescriptions I gave for poetry are February-April 1964, where he appears will allow. stated in my Notes to The Alexandrians, as translator of a poem by Paul Eluard; Books 1-60, page 54, and the article and of Argot 11, May-June 1964, in But what he cannot tolerate ‘The Literary Scene in 1968’ which which Dennis List first appears with a Is one filled with hate originally appeared in Salient, 24 May story; and of Argot 12, October 1964, in That he deserves no place upon this 1968. which Young appears as translator of earth, Notes to The Alexandrians, Books 1-60, three poems by Paul Eluard. Understanding not the cricket page vi: “By late 1958 I had come to Louis Johnson’s New Zealand Poetry He mutilates the wicket accept the existential motivation Yearbook 1964 includes Mark Young as By digging into spots of sacred turf. 2 . Poetry Archive Such crime is so unreasonable died from cancer. His booklet contains She and Cuthbert then went on the It’s definitely unseasonable around 160 popular rhyming verses Fuller vaudeville circuit, and in the Without the slightest wit of rhyme or c1973-1984. summer of 1917 started the ‘Pebbles’ reason company, centred in Geelong and No-one could be that bad touring through Victoria. In July that Unless, of course, he’s mad, Classic New Zealand year they left for what was to be a six- I mean to say – this is the cricket month engagement with the Steel- season.