. Poetry Notes Autumn 2011 Volume 2, Issue 1 ISSN 1179-7681 Quarterly Newsletter of PANZA Meg respectively from the love poems Inside this Issue Welcome collection, It’s Love Isn’t It?) and Lewis Scott, who delivered a stellar tribute Hello and welcome to the fifth issue of mixing poems from Alistair’s collection Welcome Poetry Notes, the newsletter of PANZA, Maori Battalion with his own poem- 1 the newly formed Poetry Archive of tribute to Alistair published recently in New Zealand Aotearoa. the Dominion Post. Mark Pirie on the Alistair Poetry Notes will be published quarterly The poem I read by Alistair was ‘To and will include information about Campbell Exhibition Stuart’. It’s a memorable and moving goings on at the Archive, articles on poem by Alistair addressed to his historical New Zealand poets of interest, brother who died young in WWII. The Tributes to Alistair occasional poems by invited poets and a image that defined Stuart to Alistair was Campbell 2 record of recently received donations to his bowling action at the crease, about the Archive. to deliver, and the promise of it left Classic New Zealand The newsletter will be available for free unfulfilled just as his life sadly cut poetry download from the Poetry Archive’s short: 3 website: …Your bowling action Young New Zealand poet http://poetryarchivenz.wordpress.com 4 Rhys Brookbanks dies and the flight of the ball, gathering speed as it flew towards its target, were to me Donation from the family of Mark Pirie on the a work of art. As an admiring Marie Weldon Parker younger brother, I celebrate Alistair Campbell this image of what you promised Recently received and never lived to fulfil. donations Exhibition ‘Nature,’ wrote William Blake, 5 ‘has no Outline, but Imagination has.’ About the Poetry Archive I see you turn and run up Wellington editor/poet/publisher Mark to the crease. I see your Pirie reports on the recent Alistair Te arm swing over. I see the Ariki Campbell Exhibition. ball in flight – and that is all. On Sunday 1 May, I had the pleasure of I also talked about my friendship with participating in a reading at the Alistair Alistair from 1999-2009, the last decade Te Ariki Campbell Exhibition at Pataka of his life. I was privileged to publish Museum’s Bottle Creek Community two of Alistair’s books, Just Poetry Gallery. Alistair was one of our finest (2007) and It’s Love Isn’t It? (2008). I poets. I was asked by co-curator Peter read my poem for Alistair, ‘Early Days’ PANZA Coates (the filmmaker, photographer (not the poem of mine, ‘The Return’ PO Box 6637 and artist) to read a poem by Alistair also included in the exhibition and Marion Square and talk about my friendship with him. published in Poetry NZ, March 2011). Also reading were Peter himself with Wellington 6141 ‘Early Days’ is a letter-poem detailing Mary Campbell (reading for Alistair and my discovery of Alistair’s poems as a . Autumn 2011 student at Victoria University in 1993 (Mark Pirie’s report first appeared on and I read it as it gave me a chance to Beattie’s Book Blog, 6 May 2011) read from Alistair’s own letter in reply. Alistair was ‘touched by the poem’ and sent me a copy of his Sanctuary of Tributes to Alistair Spirits as a gift. After, I had a look around the exhibition Campbell co-created by his daughter Mary Campbell, Peter Coates and Nelson Wattie (his biographer). As well as a Mark Pirie series of illuminating works by artists Photo: Alistair and Meg Campbell with their dog (Peter Coates and Michael O’Leary Mozart, 2006; and below: c1950s EARLY DAYS among them), specially presented for the exhibition were other memorabilia, For Alistair Te Ariki Campbell rare books and magazines, poem drafts, poem-tributes by poets (including Fleur Early in my first semester Adcock, Albert Wendt, Vaine as a student, I looked at Rasmussen, Lynn Davidson, Rob New Zealand poetry Hack and Peter Bland) and photos from for the first time Alistair’s life. since High School and two books stood out: Baxter’s Collected Poems The exhibition has been on at Pataka and Alistair Campbell’s since 14 April where on the opening Collected Poems. A choice night, that included excellent speeches that could do me no wrong by Albert Wendt and Witi Ihimaera, on the path to being a poet. was the launch of Nelson Wattie’s Both could be trusted introductory biographical sketch, for form and content, Scribbling in the Dark, published by humour and honesty. Steele Roberts in Wellington to coincide Alistair’s work with the exhibition. I read and re-read The curators and staff at Pataka and was enamoured by Photo: The Dark Lords of Pukerua by Michael Museum have done a great job and the his hills, his life at Kapiti O’Leary (painting) exhibition has proved a success and will his personal sonnets and be touring Rarotonga later in the year at his elegies, so much so Perhaps the most moving part of the the invitation of the Cook Islands they became part of my exhibition was the recreation of Library and Museum, further proof of student existence – Alistair’s living room and writing desk, the esteem greeting Alistair’s work something that I wished to including his couch and chair and the throughout the Pacific. emulate if I was good family photos from its wall. Seated on enough. I wrote an essay on his the couch, I could view a screen display work and a review in Salient of rotating images from Alistair’s life, when his later Pocket including his friends (Sam Hunt, Denis Collected Glover) and his family. Also included appeared; it was as if, were interactive short films and like in his poem, ‘Green’, his documentaries complete with headsets words for people to sit and watch. had come to me and knocked like a friend at my door. Below: Alistair Campbell with Sam Hunt They wouldn’t leave, of course, till I discovered more, They were ‘lilies on a green stem the small wind shakes.’ (from Poems for Poets by Mark Pirie, Photo: Mary Campbell, Peter Coates and Mark Earl of Seacliff Art Workshop, 2004) Pirie by Geraldine Earle 2 . Poetry Archive L E Scott THE FLY IN THE AMBER Classic New Zealand ALISTAIR TE ARIKI CAMPBELL poetry She was brilliant, yet so neat; a man who crossed over the sea She had shapely hands and feet; Was nicely bobbed, correctly up-to- The man who crossed over the sea This issue’s classic New Zealand poems date; lived in two worlds are by New Zealand-born writer, John And her darkly splendid eyes, in a time when the oral was changing to Barr. The poems included here are from Where the shadow flames and dies, the written his sole book, Men and Other Sins Took my breath away and nearly he was a poet from the sea (1927), which was discovered at the sealed my fate. womb of living things recent Heretaunga Book Fair by man walks on land PANZA member Mark Pirie. Book Like the moth unto the flame he reflected our footprints collector Rowan Gibbs sent us the At her beck once more I came. through discourse and winds of following information on Barr: I, the hitherto indomitable one, celebration And her talk of men and books, knowing we are spoken to by the voices He is not the early Otago poet John Added to her charming looks, of Barr of Craigielee, nor novelist Forced the ice of years to melt before tyrants, poets, dreamers and dead people John Barr (Dunedin lawyer) nor the sun. and how we struggle with the wisdom John M. Barr, an earlier Australian of courage journalist and writer. She could sing and jazz and play, John Barr trained as a printer then Knew each novel of the day, The poet who crossed over the sea became shipping reporter on the At the Shows she rode the jumps with came in childhood time Evening Post [Wellington], then a steady hand; and stayed until death Special Writer and Parliamentary She was sound on cigarettes, marching through human seasons Correspondent for the New Zealand On the racecourse made her bets, addressing our time in words and deeds Times. In 1906 he moved to In a way that not all shrewdies not with the pen of judgment but with Australia, joining the Daily understand. an open hand Telegraph in Sydney, then was swimming through human waters asked by James Edmund to join the But the worst is to relate, he saw madness and the beauty that Bulletin. And the story of my state comes from it He later edited the Sunday Times Of single, crabbed discontent I’ll sing: he knew the words of RD Laing [Sydney] and worked on Aussie When a happy chance I took nothing is mad in the questions of life magazine and as a freelance To inquire if she could cook, sometimes we just live on different journalist. He was one of the She said she’d never tried that sort of levels earliest writers of an Australian thing. within the rays from the moon film-script, co-writing ‘Australia and he knew – the sea sometimes pulls Calls’ with C. A. Jeffries. This, an Then my idol shrivelled, dead. away account of an invasion of Australia And my heart was swinging lead; from kissing the shore by Asiatics, screened in 1913. He Bitter loneliness was with me as of and he knew – the mind sometimes was a founder of the Australian yore; pulls way Journalists Association and Sydney Stately castles in the air from the head Press Club.