Poetry Notes

. Poetry Notes Autumn 2015 Volume 6, Issue 1 ISSN 1179-7681 Quarterly Newsletter of PANZA the importance of the artist in New Inside this Issue Welcome Zealand society by reprinting this interview in his memory. Hello and welcome to issue 21 of Jack was known to collaborate with Welcome Poetry Notes, the newsletter of PANZA, poets like Bill Manhire and Ian Wedde. 1 the newly formed Poetry Archive of Jack Body remembered New Zealand Aotearoa. AN INTERVIEW WITH JACK Poetry Notes will be published quarterly BODY by Paul Wolffram and will include information about ANZAC tribute and goings on at the Archive, articles on Jack Body is a leading New Zealand 100 Years From Gallipoli historical New Zealand poets of interest, composer and currently teaches music 3 poetry project occasional poems by invited poets and a at Victoria University. record of recently received donations to Classic New Zealand the Archive. Abbreviations used: P: Paul Wolffram; poetry by Karen Smith Articles and poems are copyright in the J: Jack Body. 6 names of the individual authors. The newsletter will be available for free Comment on Elizabeth download from the Poetry Archive’s P: Your fascination with Asia, its music Montgomery 8 website: and its people began in 1970 on your return from Europe. You travelled Hilaire Kirkland project http://poetryarchivenz.wordpress.com through a large part of Asia and were drawn particularly to Malaysia and Thailand. What is it that attracted you Rare George Nepia poem Jack Body to these countries above those European found countries which your musical training remembered was based in? New publication by J: I guess one is always fascinated by PANZA member 9 Wellington composer Jack Body (1944- the unknown or the ‘other’. In my 2015) died in May this year. PANZA generation you were brought up very Donate to PANZA through archivist Mark Pirie found an interview Euro-centrically and there is this kind of PayPal with Jack Body, published in his inherent racism, being white and Recently received magazine JAAM in 1997, around the believing that ‘white is best’ and donations time he was working on his opera Alley, believing that Asia represents the about Rewi Alley, the poet and teacher Yellow Peril. (Growing up in the years About the Poetry Archive in China. of the Cold War and all the memories of The interviewer is Paul Wolffram, a co- the Second World War.) So to kind of strike Asia and to realise founder of JAAM, also an that it is such an extraordinary and ethnomusicologist, poet, composer and PANZA documentary filmmaker. wonderful place, and that there are all 1 Woburn Road PANZA would like to remember Jack’s these people living there and living rich Northland considerable contribution to New and fascinating lives and one has no Wellington 6012 Zealand arts and his understanding of . Autumn 2015 knowledge of it well it’s absolutely works that you have collaborated on. Poets, of course, try to stretch the appalling. What do you find to be the most conventional meaning but music For me, it was confronting Asia and interesting thing when working with unless it’s a song and uses words well, seeing it. I was struck by so many things: writers and other artists? you can’t even begin to say what it the heat, the smell, the decay, and the means. renewal. The view of life; especially in J: It’s difficult to generalise, but I guess India where the cycle of life is so what one is looking to achieve, is the P: You have been seen as having ‘an manifest and rotten. And out of all this ability to combine with other artists and entrepreneurial flair running in your comes new life. to create something new and unexpected. veins’ and the list of your impresario Musically, I was fascinated by the One often finds that the process of roles is long. How do you perceive your strange sounds everywhere collaboration can be very fraught at role as an artist/director in New not just the music, but the sound times. Zealand? environment. It took me a little while, The most recent thing I’ve done is work however, to get involved in those things on the libretto for the Alley opera and I J: In a way, collaborations require you to because equally fascinating is the food, did this with Geoff Chapple. When we suppress your ego and to put your self the climate, the clothing and the religion. sat down to work on it I had some aside. Many of the things I do are not general ideas and we struggled with necessarily related to my own work. P: Your first taped piece resulting from material but we didn’t struggle with each Most of my collaborations are more your time in Indonesia, Musik Dari Jalan other. It was just such a joy to work about making things happen, for (1975), consequently won the 1976 together. We worked at it and worked at example, it might be a good idea that we International Festival of Electro-acoustic it and in the end we had to say that we have CDs of New Zealand music. I guess Music in Bourges. Musik Dari Jalan like had got something done but we would there is a kind of ego in having an idea a number of your other works of the time have to come back to it. When I came and getting it realised, but it doesn’t Turtle Time (1968) and Carol to Saint back to it, I saw just how great it was, always have to relate to my own work. I Steven (1975), uses a lot of language there is nothing in it that I can’t totally think there is a kind of creativity in and speech. What is the appeal of accept it is just transcendentally having ideas and realising them. working with poetry and the voice? wonderful. I should mention Douglas Lilburn. When Geoff was always able to incorporate my he retired, he stopped composing. He put J: It’s a good coat hanger. It’s a frame to ideas. Now I’m writing the music and all his money into a trust, which is quite work around and provides imagery. that is just my job and I don’t have to wealthy. The trust is for New Zealand work with anybody but in terms of music, and he is closely involved in P: Do you find that poetry gives you making that script, it was incredible that where that money goes and I guess that visual stimulus? we could work so easily together. is where he focused a lot of his creativity. I’ve known Douglas for years and I J: Yes, and it helps to give it a form. But P: Does it happen often that ideas guess I’ve taken on his kind of values, what I am most interested in (and which come together so cleanly as they did for partly pressure from him, and partly in I use in my Opera but hope to take it the script of this opera? admiration of him. If you are in a much further) is the use of non-Western position of power, I think that you are music. Word settings in other cultures J: Well, that depends, because some somehow bound to exercise that power are very interesting. You get songs on people are willing just to toss something for the wider good. As with Wai-te-ata one note, broken vocal sounds and many in and what ever becomes of it Music Press, I am represented there, but different kinds of chanting. I am really they’re accepting. so are 27 other New Zealand composers. very interested in these things and want The most difficult thing I find is film. So a lot of my energy simply goes into to explore these more and more. (Moving Film is such a multifaceted art form a making things happen. away from conventional Western kind of ‘Bastard art’ if you like that singing.) I get frustrated with singers that the director’s vision becomes the P: Do you find the return from these use vibrato all the time and kind of important thing. Directors have to deal things generally rewarding? hammer their voices. with costume, cameras, lighting, actors For instance, in my opera, one of the and a composer, so the only way that the J: Well, if I could just say, my opera characters has a swan song as he is about director’s vision can be portrayed is by [Alley], as you know, has collapsed. to die. I think it will be very powerful; being an autocrat. Funding from Creative NZ was not here is somebody who can’t sing singing. forthcoming and so it has completely P: How do you see that your art differs collapsed. Part of my resentment was P: You have been involved in many from that of a writer? that none of the money from Creative NZ multimedia productions with artists and was to come to me, it was going to venue writers over the past ten years. The J: Music is so abstract it has no fees and performers, etc. Apart from my Sonic Circuses (1974-75, 1987) and intrinsic meaning that you can define. value as a composer, I feel I’ve earned Song Cycle (1975) are just some of Words in a sentence define themselves. the right for a little bit of nice treatment 2 . Poetry Archive like an opera production. I mean after P: You have also experienced intimately as far as he is aware of.

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