Reviews:

Southern Ocean Review

    Music Therapy - Poetry by Peter Olds


    Earl of Seacliff Art Workshop (Paekakariki), New Zealand. 2001, 65pp, $17.95. Reviewed by Bernard Gadd, Auckland

    This first collection of poetry since 1985 and written after a long illness is almost compulsively readable. This is not the Olds of Lady Moss Revived or other poems of the 1970s, but a man who has been to the darker places of the mind and spirit and whose earlier perhaps rather madcap restlessness has been replaced by a stubborn willingness to find the beauty and love and all the other reasons for living in a world sombrely tinged. The lines have the freedom of their precursors of the 1970s but now can focus on quite minute details. At times the reader is quite powerfully reminded of Dennis Glover with their feel for the countryside, for a life close to subsistence level, and for the people and creatures of the countryside:

    The impatient horses in the paddock
    scrape & stomp expecting the promised cold rain
    to sweep in from the west
    (Uncovering the Hospital)

    But none of this is pastiche, all of the poetry has the feel of real experience re-lived and shaped in the imagination. The imagery is often metaphorical but can catch the spare crispness of haiku:

    Yellow sun on frost –
    children chasing geese (From the Hut window).
    Or suggest the ambivalence of the surreal:
    & the young girls folkdancing on the lawn
    are as sweet as multiheaded spiders –
    gypsy skirts & limbs like blades ...
    (Helicopter Ride / Cherry Farm)

    The first section “Uncovering the Hospital” relates to a time in the 1980s when Olds lived in a hut at Seacliff and then old Seacliff mental hospital haunts the poetry. In “The Superintendent’s Garden” the doctor and his wife stroll amid disturbing hints: No patient’s names / are carved on these trees ... paths of ash ... a mad bellbird / weaver of chicken wire ...a trellis of bees / bees without name.
    The section Music Therapy deals more directly with mental breakdown and its therapies. The poems’ melange of vivid images, realistic or the result of distorted perception, can produce an effect of a post-modernism without artifice that can be disturbingly effective as in “The Execution of Karla:

    they’ll offer you a happy pill (which you’ll turn down)
    they’ll fit you out in a white gown
    measure your arm
    check for the vein .....
    & you’re approaching the cross-shaped bed you’ll lie on
    for eternity
    ... & I will water the new garden as well as I can
    this dry weather
    ..
    & you’ll be dead
    your face will have lost recognition.

    The final section, The Dead Woman’s House continues the interweaving of darkness and light. This is a very strong book, a remarkable antidote to the blandness and banality too often currently on offer, a welcome return of a gifted poet. Mike O’Leary as publisher has served the work well, usefully including biographical notes on the back cover.

    Rivers Without Eels - Rangi Faith - Huia Publishers


    39 Rawene Road, Private Bag 34901, Auckland, New Zealand. Reviewed by Judith Wolfe.

    Rangi Faith's collection of poems is a wonderful smorgisboard of delicate flavours - each poem a vignette of nostalia expressed with strong imagery. Rangi Faith has the ability to make ordinary things memorable and meaningful - full of wry wit and colour. Each poem a little story, spiritual and lingering. His inner strength is his unpretentiousness and the clear direction of his thought. Also a clear vision of truth, as in Rites of Discovery - concluding: "A sailing ship / stands in the bay in the rain / unheralded and unwelcome. / There is a fear / and a gripping of weapons", the neat touch being "In the rain" - in itself a cause of uncertainty and trepidation. Faith's vision is essentially very graphic. I get a feeling of the land where Maori and Cook's men met, thought his poetry. In "Matters of Land", "... men from Waihora - / that glassy, triangular slice of water / where blank-eyed eels in trenches..." And where the author has 'been to the ice' in "Not My Kind of Painting" - "At night, yes, through the cracking of Ice, / We thought we could hear the bodies / Of large animals moving against The Door / & the air most certainly howled / Like a lost dog. / Yes, not my kind of painting". Faith's word usage brings to mind Hone Tuwhare's spring and rhythm - in "Astronomer's Point Delight", describing the visit of Cook in March 27th 1773 - "...a Mellifluousness of Meadow Lark & a Piping of Pipit, / A Rumpus of Rook & a Thrilling of Thrush, / a Bubbling of Blackbird & a Carillion of Crow / the timbre of tui in the timber" - sounds almost overdone, but in context, flowing and beautiful. And what about (later in the poem) "A tangi of Tui at the table"? This is a landmark book and hopefully we are going to see a lot more of Rangi Faith's work.

    You Make me Dizzy - poems by Trish Scahill, Philip Garside Publishing Ltd, P. O. Box 17-160, Wellington, New Zealand.


    Reviewed by Judith Wolfe.

    This is an excellent little book. It looks at the serious side of life in areas where many artists or poets fear to tread. Designed for reading by teenagers, one can imagine them getting quite a bit out of this book as many of the imagined drear problems faced by teenagers are treated sometimes in a lighthearted way that does not denigrate the seriousness of the circumstances involved. I particularly like "Cry of Innocence" concluding "...Now I'm scarred and you are proud / bad memories cloud my mind / but now a reason to move on / is something I must find" - it is valid for youth throughout the ages and, whatever has happened, ends positively. These poems are not full of censure or overloaded with portentous advice. They fill a niche where other kinds of 'advice' to teenagers are full of fashion statements or talk about the latest fads. Excellent, witty, full of pathos sometimes - all of Trish Scahill's work shows style and panache. Funny without being flippant. Serious without being introvert and boring. This poet has crossed the gulf of taboos and has emerged from the other side smiling. A special work about the illustrations: Tasteful and non-intrusive, they help lift the book nicely.

    Abstract Internal Furniture - poems by Helen Rickerby - HeadworX Publishers, 26 Grant Road, Thorndon, Wellington New Zealand. RRP $19.95.
    Reviewed by Judith Wolfe.


    This is a pleasant stroll along pathways of memorbilia. Restful and charming, its imagery will have a wide appeal. The surreal illustrations by Maggie Grant compliment the content and add an avant guarde flavour. To make something special out of apparently ordinary events is a talent Helen Rickerby has, which few other poets have without forcing things. In "Frank Kitts Park" the sounds and sights seen conclude with: "I am saying what is: / It is Sunday afternoon / and it is sunny / It isn't like anyhting else". For simplicity of affection, in "Driftwood" - "We make each other / crowns of seaweed / and stage a double coronation / on the beach". A simplicity of affection, well done. A domestic knowingness is expressed in "Calling You Home" - "...The House where / we turn from each other / and turn back again". Simply and very deftly done. And in "Precious Things", the many ways of describing love never ending is like love itself: "I am picking up your diamond words ..... (ending) ...to wear around my neck". It is not often that you get such a brilliant juxdaposing of visual image and written word as in this book - it is just so pleasing to discover the various neat nuances word complimented by image that has you searching in your mind for the truths therein, and being rewarded so pleasantly. Helen Rickerby is involved in publishing as well as writing and has reviewed books for several magazines and newspapers. She is presently working on her first novel, Cartography.
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