>Being a klutz of the first order, I seem to have lost the days of the
>week and the plot as far as the NZ poets are concerned. Apologies
>all... there should have been a New Zealander last Friday and one
>this week as well. Once I sort out the rocks in my head, or
>alternatively my emails, I'll get the next one posted.
>
>In the meantime, I'm kind of intrigued to ask any New Zealanders (or
>others on the list, like Doug) if there is anything about the poetry
>of New Zealand which makes it distinctive. Curious to know... I have
>a vague sense of something, but obviously it can't be prescriptive.
>Any takers?
My suspicion is there are lot's of things, Alison, & maybe it's just a
matter of tone, as with Australian poetry. But if pushed, one thing I would
point to is a particularly sharp kind of wit, often tied to local
perception. Which is still not to say something that different from what I
might end up saying about other poetries. So, I'm left, again, with the
fact that I have come acrss indivisual poets, their work, that I just came
to love & admire. I could say some particualr things, but I'd just be
copying parts of some of the essays in _Lyric / Anti-lyric_. One of the
things having to do with that particular kind of wit is to be found in the
wonderful energy, sustained by a powerful anger I think, that appeared in
the later poetry of Allen Curnow. Another, quite different, but equally
immediate for me, can be found in some of Bill Manhire's poetry, &
something very different, & powerfully affecvtive in its insistence on
refusing the usual affects, is Michele Leggott's poetry responding to her
loss of sight...
But, really, I don't trust large, national, generalizations, just the
individual poems...
Doug
Douglas Barbour
Department of English
University of Alberta
Edmonton Alberta Canada T6G 2E5
(h) [780] 436 3320 (b) [780] 492 0521
http://www.ualberta.ca/~dbarbour/dbhome.htm
I fear this war
will be long and painful
and who
pursue
it
Lorine Niedecker
