The poetry I was most familiar with in my childhood was that which was printed in Palgrave’s Golden Treasury, originally compiled by Francis Turner Palgrave in the mid-nineteenth and later revised. This was the standard poetry reference when I was at school and whose lyrical language, stilted and formal as it was by current standards, swept me away. As there was little or nothing else available at the time, I mistakenly believed poetry was written by geniuses in far countries – which didn't stop me trying my hand at writing poetry myself. It wasn’t any single poem that ‘grabbed’ me, but poetry in general.
Would you say your childhood and teenage experience of poetry has had a distinct influence on how you write poetry now, and why?
In spite of my becoming a naval officer in my early twenties, I spent two years in hospital as a child suffering from osteomyelitis. There was no entertainment except reading which I did continuously and became so entranced by language and words that I developed an addiction for it, how it was written and how it sounded when read aloud. At primary school the class I was in was taught Verse Speaking – reciting poems aloud in chorus – which enhanced my addiction and was the primary cause of my trying to write poetry myself.
Who is another poet whose poetry you admire and why?
The poet I most admire is William Butler Yeats whose grave I visited a few years ago in Drumcliffe – in part for his technical excellence and in part because of the struggle he had in trying to escape the bondage of nineteenth century metrics, techniques and sentiment. The other poets I hold in most respect are probably Ezra Pound and Walt Whitman for their innovative freeing up of verse. It was Randall Jarrell however (a poet I discovered in my late thirties) who helped most with my own writing as well perhaps as Robert Creeley whom I had the pleasure of bringing to New Zealand in 1976 and whose work exemplified how little of the language was needed in putting together a poem.
How would you summarise one of your poems in one paragraph?
Africa, my most recent poem ,runs to a little over 2,000 lines and deals with the origin and migration of all of us throughout the world. Technically it consists of a long serious of what might first appear to be disconnected fragments of verse which overall however, combine together to form an emotionally and intellectually unified whole. Postmodern techniques combined with occasional elements of semiotics provide the emotional and unifying tone. This is my fifth longer poem and follows on from The Toledo Room, Incantations for Warriors, Qu’appelle and Odysseus Rex.
How would you describe the appeal of this poem to readers?
I like to think Africa’s appeal to readers rests mainly in its structure and feeling rather solely in the subject matter.
Could you share a stanza or small section of this poem?
Here is a section from Africa:
This the moon
I told you about, that I desired
should return –
should come for me,
Kabbo says
I’ve waited for the shoes
I must put on
strong for the road.
The sun will go along,
Stay with me.
I will go with the moon
& the warm sun
while the ground is hot,
along a great road,
I shall walk
letting the grass
the flowers become dry
while I follow the path –
while I go
with my ancestors . .
How would you describe the contribution this stanza or small section makes to the poem?
This section of Africa, introduces the general concept of the piece and the path it follows.
Would you describe your poetry primarily as narrative, thematic, character portrait, or how would you describe your poetry?
My poems aren’t narrative or traditional or expository in any sense but tend to work through drawing the reader in as a fellow composer and contributor to the work – a participant in it as an experience and operation. Hopefully this is how these poems work, but poets don’t always own a precisely correct interpretation of what they do.
Do you read your poetry aloud to people? If so, how would you describe the size and response of your listening audiences?
Yes, I read my poems to audiences in New Zealand and have also read them in the United States and England. Audiences vary in size but they usually seem to like what I do.
Do you write groups of poems to form collections? If so, how were the poems connected in your most recent collection?
I’ve published nine books of my own poetry: four of these books are devoted to short pieces of the kind that appear in most collection, the other five are long poems, one of which was co-winner of Auckland University’s John Cowie Reid Memorial Award for longer poems. I’m currently working on tenth book which will offer poems of the usual short (from my point of view) length - twenty to forty lines or so.
http://www.bookcouncil.org.nz/writers/patersona.html
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