Max -Gosh this sounds to me like dorothy parker!!(or have I missed
something?? Patrick
-----Original Message-----
From: Poetryetc provides a venue for a dialogue relating to poetry and
poetics [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of cooee
Sent: 26 January 2005 09:07
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Elizabeth Smither
on 26/1/05 1:45 PM, [log in to unmask] at [log in to unmask] wrote:
> Just found my old copy of 15 Contemporary New Zealand Poets ed. by
> Alistair Paterson and was struck by how the transplanted seed of the
> Black mountain School had taken root (noted that Creely had recently
> visited) in almost every case but Elizabeth Smither's. She's quirky,
> a tad like Laura Riding, I'd say with her combination of awkwardnesses
> and grace notes. Whatever happened to her? I saw some of her work in
> an issue of Iron magazine in the 1970's but after that, nothing. Any
> leads appreciated. Jesse
There will be better informed and more up to date (website?) responses than
I can offer here in Melbourne but I've opened my copy of Robinson & Wattie,
oxford companion to NZ lit, 1998...
Smither, Elizabeth (1941- )...twelve collections of poems...inc. 'The Tudor
Style: Poems New and Selected' (1993).
The entry, by Harry Ricketts, mentions 'miniaturist technique', 'a strong
interest in Catholicism', 'the slipperiness and paradoxical nature of
language'...
Way back in 1986 Ricketts included Smither in his 'Talking about ourselves:
twelve NZ poets in conversation...' The American poets she mentions to him
are Dickinson, Stevens and Berryman, Bishop and cummings.
'William Empson I absolutely love.'
Here's an eight line poem of hers I just happen o have a clipping of, from
the NZ Listener, July 26, 1986:
The muse (for women poets)
for Allen and Jeny Curnow
I often think of him
As secretly booked into the Algonquin
And sending up the bellboy
With flowers and a knowing grin.
'The gent's anonymous.' His tip
Outdoes yours for information.
Coming down the lift is rosy
And what is this light about the page?
|