As a child, I read voraciously and loved the poems of Walter de la Mare, especially those in his collection Peacock Pie which was given to me when I was eight. My mother was very good at reading to us (my sister, brothers and I) and one treat was hearing (often) all of Robert Browning’s Pied Piper of Hamlin. As a teenager, the first book of really grown-up poetry I picked up and read with enjoyment, of my own volition, was (New Zealand poet) James K. Baxter’s The Fallen House (1954). I also went through the standard moody, self-pitying adolescent A.E.Housman phase and a rather intense Emily Dickinson phase.
Would you say your childhood and teenage experience of poetry has had a distinct influence on how you write poetry now, and why?
I’m not sure how to answer this as my taste now is not my teenage or childhood taste and on the whole I do not relish the sort of poetry I enjoyed then. But sometimes I do catch myself in a mood of nostalgia for it, so I suppose it does interest me. And also, my stressing over FORM probably shows that part of me is a traditionalist.
Who is another poet whose poetry you admire and why?
Of poets known to the world I have a very high regard for Seamus Heaney and his humane concerns and sense of history [my main academic life is as an historian]. Of my fellow New Zealand poets, I like the maturity of Vincent O’Sullivan and C.K.Stead; the sardonic wit of Anne French; the versatility and thorough knowledge of form of Richard Reeve (who is my junior by quite a few years).
How would you summarise one of your poems in one paragraph?
If I could summarise one in a paragraph it wouldn’t be a very good poem, but for what it’s worth my poem A Racehorse Down a Coal Mine [from my collection The Little Enemy] began as a protest against the attempt to harness the arts for propaganda purposes (especially in coercive states). The reference is to the early Soviet poet Mayakovsky, who committed suicide as he realized the doleful direction in which his country was heading.
[POEM FOLLOWS]
A RACE-HORSE DOWN A COAL MINE
(Mayakovsky)
(for Judith)
Strangle him with leather thongs.
The brace and harness that he wore
will draw the iron cart in creaking
cortege – his own muscular funeral.
The froth grows cold on his jaws
and flanks beneath the coal dust.
Backward-turning hocks and fetlocks tired with strain,
and again the prescribed misery
of parallel tracks before his blinkered eyes.
Impulse of grass, instinct of ribbon
breasted, memory of fierce combat
and his five foot spear erect and
penetrating.
Collar him with wood and work.
The way is dark, the tracks inevitable
as duty, as human will in triumph,
this utilitarian imposition.
Itch to gambol, itch to snort,
itch to joy in the speed of the animal
moment, unreflective and sure, shitting
in clean hard globular essence of grass.
Wind and sun would lick him, flies
madden to a horse-hair whip.
He would breed and bite apples
and laugh ha-ha among the trumpets.
Parody Judaeo-Christian dominion over beasts.
This is your way, racehorse down a coal mine.
To the greater glory of the Five Year Plan
you will strain as man must strain.
Horse no more, carbon compound,
beast dragging, peasant bleeding,
poet in harness, cloud in trousers.
A man on four self-chosen hooves.
How would you describe the appeal of this poem to readers?
[Always assuming that it does have appeal to readers!!] By its dominant metaphor as announced in the title – the absurdity of incongruity, as in an artist [or poet] harnessed to the wrong work. Also in the sounds and in the dialogue of two distinct voices – the voice of the state and the voice of the horse, combined into the voice of the poet.
Could you share a stanza or small section of this poem?
Collar him with wood and work.
The way is dark, the tracks inevitable
as duty, as human will in triumph,
this utilitarian imposition.
In these four lines, the last three words “this utilitarian imposition” are deliberately heavy, awkward, clumsy and non-musical – like the totalitarian concept they are intended to convey. The words “human will in triumph” are allusive, referring in part to the Biblical dominion of human beings over animals, but also in part to the title of the notorious Nazi propaganda movie Triumph of the Will, my point being that one totalitarianism is very much like another.
How would you describe the contribution this stanza or small section makes to the poem?
It is the voice of the state, beginning with an imperative verb (“collar him”), but modified by the viewpoint of the poet and therefore probably showing more self-awareness of motive than the brute state would show.
Would you describe your poetry primarily as narrative, thematic, character portrait, or how would you describe your poetry?
Again a hard one. Not narrative. Lyric I suppose. All poetry is thematic and at times I have consciously created character portraits. I find I do like composing monologues in the voice of somebody else – sometimes for satirical purposes. In a way, this is a distant descendant of Browning “dramatic monologues”, so maybe my mother’s childhood readings of The Pied Piper led somewhere.
Do you read your poetry aloud to people? If so, how would you describe the size and response of your listening audiences?
I read my own poems out loud to myself at various stages of their composition.I have six times participated in public reading of some of my poems. On three of those occasions it was an “open mike” affair to restive and/or indifferent pub crowds, and in such cases you are a nutter if you don’t read something rowdy, accessible and rhythmic, which I proceeded to do. On the other three occasions I was actually paid (a very little) to read my stuff to a respectful and polite audience of poets and afficionados. In truth, I’m not sure which audience I prefer.
Do you write groups of poems to form collections? If so, how were the poems connected in your most recent collection?
Theoretically yes, but I have only one collection to my name so far: The Little Enemy. This is a bit of a bind, because publishers seem to prefer poems to be thematically connected so that they can sell them as collections, but the reality is that I tend to compose individual poems rather than thinking of their relationship with others. Having said that, however, I gathered the contents of into four distinct sections – poems of childhood recall; poems of adult experience; poems with religious overtones; and poems written in response to literature and the other arts. As for the second collection upon which I am currently working, it is being strictly organized around a central theme. This is a hard discipline for me.
Author website: http://reidsreader.blogspot.com/
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