[Notes for ‘Poetry in New Zealand’]

Intro.

A fair amount of quoting. My own views. No authority on N.Z. literature. Poetry of last century. Quote Curnow.

Until 1920 poetry ‘the reflection of a reflection’. Imitation of Georgians, themselves imitators of Romantics.

McCormick in Letters and Art in N.Z. demands social content and criticism. Industrialism makes for shallow lives. Wars. Sargeson.

Quote Basil Dowling. J.K.B.

University mainly promotes sciences, not criticising Science as such. But aims of Art different from those of business world. Not ivory tower either. We remember the Elizabethans as poets and dramatists rather than as successful merchants.

Quote Strickland in The Moon and Sixpence. Blake and the Industrial Revolution. Human values must be emphasised.

Art a full-time profession. Now the playthings of amateurs. Difficulty of finding freedom from irritation. N.B. Rita Cook.

Will quote only from what I consider most to the point.

A.R.D. Fairburn. Job in 1ZB Auckland. Quote from letter:

For Christ’s sweet sake never let yourself get a lift on the band-waggon of Official Art, however comfortable the upholstery. I fully expect the Golden Age in New Zealand to be issued in with the appointment of a Director of Poetry (branch of one of the existing Government Departments – probably Fisheries or Mental Hospitals.) But I shall be working with a long-handled shovel on the remotest road I can find. I got a shock the other day when I looked at a collection of Russian paintings published recently. Most of them looked like extremely competent illustrations to the Illustrated London News. Once the artist becomes an Official he’s done for.

Romantic tradition. Quote ‘Diogenes’.

Dominion as different trend. Best long poem yet in N.Z. Analysis of growth of industrialism. Quote.

Humorist. Satirical poem, ‘La Belle Dame Sans Merci’.

Love poems best yet written here, will stand with best English. Quote ‘A Farewell’.

R.A.K. Mason a contrast. Elegiac. Now running a leftist newspaper. Notpage 14 written any verse for some time. In his notes to No New Thing, a collection published in 1934, Mason wrote –

Some of these poems were intended to appear in a vast medley of prose and poetry, a sort of Odyssey expressing the whole history of New Zealand. This I designed long ago and did much work on. I may possibly yet resume it, but youth having smouldered in senseless drudgery I can scarcely expect age to supply the necessary fire.

Strong sense of tradition. Quote ‘Song of Allegiance’.

‘Be Swift O Sun’ – a very beautiful love poem. His problems are private ones rather than social.

Charles Brasch. Editor of Landfall. Private income. Mystical. Dream may be more real than waking life. Effective symbols.

Quote first poem. Earth as a friend. Mention Holcroft. ‘The Iconoclasts’. Earth as an enemy.

Allen Curnow. On Christchurch Press. Feels the strain of being a reporter. It destroys his sense of reality.

Quote ‘House and Land’. Other poems difficult to read aloud. Time myth. More than any other a N.Z. poet.

Denis Glover. Caxton Press. Most lucid and attractive writer. Likes his work but not much time for writing verse. Caxton printing.

Quote ‘Holiday Piece’ for natural use of N.Z. names. ‘The Magpies’ for satire. ‘Sings Harry’. An elegiac quality. Very fresh and vivid.

J.K.B. Quote ‘Blow, wind of fruitfulness’. ‘Elegy for my Father’s Father’.

Art is the spearhead of individualism. Against the current. Landfall, good sign. European influences with refugees.

1946 (13)