Other formats

    TEI XML file   ePub eBook file  

Connect

    mail icontwitter iconBlogspot iconrss icon

James K. Baxter Complete Prose Volume 1

Pain, Resentment his Inspiration

Pain, Resentment his Inspiration

‘Just about every poem I’ve written seems to have sprung from pain or resentment over things being out of order . . .’.

Sitting there in the scattered yellow shadows of the coffee bar, James Keir Baxter, to many the oracle of New Zealand poetry, seemed to have a long association with pain. It was reflected in his suffering face, in his heavy eyes and shoulders, in his voice. As he talked he gave the impression of a man on parole.

‘My life is like a quilt – full of holes. But the holes don’t go into my poems.’ Where did the quilt begin? He was born in Dunedin ‘of Scottish – socialist – pacifist – puritan stock’ and, as he says in one poem ‘plunged early into the abyss of life where the tormentors move’.

Following a turbulent youth, he worked at many jobs on farms, in factories and in freezing works; later became a teacher, is now assistant editor of School Publications.

He and his wife Jacqueline, who writes short stories have a daughter of thirteen, Hilary, and a nine-year-old son, John.

Much of his experience from this varied working background ‘seemed to be useless or negative at the time, but it became useful later.’

Though he holds a B.A. degree, he considers he has learned more from ‘listening for many years to people in pubs’ than from books. Practically every pub at some stage has been this poet’s pub.

Hunching his shoulders more pronouncedly under the ageless gabardinepage 596 raincoat that is his perennial outer garment, he leaned forward to talk about the ‘greyness’ in modern writing.

‘It is a defence mechanism against examining the atrocities of this century, the twentieth century smell of the execution yard. There are no heroes in our day.’ And more in this vein. Suddenly Baxter became conscious of the time. He had to collect his daughter from a ballet lesson. He must rush. The scattered yellow shadows of the coffee bar laid their tracery on the departing gabardine.

1962? (285)