Risking delight

The Tram Conductor's Blue Cap By Michael Harlow. Photo / Supplied

In contrast to the disheartening impositions of global chaos, conflict and recession, Michael Harlow's new collection of poetry allows us to contemplate aspects of the world that give delight. This is to take a risk.

The poems bring to mind the smallest details ("a thumb-stroke of yellow", "a faultless rain") that arrest you, unexpectedly, pleasingly, in a pocket of hush and stillness. Yet the poems also summon interior worlds; the way we stockpile the words that might disband pain or loneliness, the legacy of "night-haunting things" or psychological weight.

Harlow dares to make these worlds sing. Like the ode, with its attachment to the pleasures of song, these poems have been soaked in music. The words become melody: "the light rising out of its late lying/ down with the night."

At times, a line will stand up in a quiet poem like a solo instrument. On other occasions, in the midst of shuffle and clatter, a line becomes a point of exquisite and startling clarity: "the wind's sweep across the parched hills,/ blade outward, turning landscape into bone."

As with a number of recent New Zealand poetry collections, Harlow has assembled a collection that favours interconnectedness. Song, flight, air and light are key motifs that coil through the book and add thematic harmonies to those penned for the ear.

The poems themselves are full of grace, leading us from the "shout of green" to "the long sigh of silence/ that was dinner." Perhaps it is due to Harlow's background as Jungian therapist that there is a sense of attention here that is both acute and tender. While it is not the prerogative of poetry to be uplifting, this collection does "no less than risk delight".

Twenty Contemporary New Zealand Poets is a valuable addition to the growing number of local poetry anthologies that grace our shelves. The New Zealand editors are both based overseas, Andrew Johnston in Paris and Robyn Marsack in Edinburgh, where she is director of the Scottish Poetry Library.

Johnston would have been a worthy contender for a spot in the line-up, particularly in view of the terrific poems in his latest collection, Sol, but his own poetry remains in the shadows as he resists self-promotion. The anthology comprises a handful of poems by each poet along with their individual musings on the subject of writing poetry.

Every fan of New Zealand poetry will lament the absence of certain poets (several immediately sprang to my mind) but pursuing such a train of thought is of secondary interest to me. Instead I see this as a celebration of the styles, locations, publishers and cultures that help shape local writing.

The editors propose that this anthology "overflows with talk" and while a number of poems are indeed "talky," what makes this an essential volume is the way the poems talk amongst themselves. Old favourites still make the arm hairs stand on end: Bill Manhire's Kevin, Tusiata Avia's Wild Dogs Under My Skirt, Ian Wedde's odes and Dinah Hawken's harbour poems. Others bring a wry smile: James Brown's I Come from Palmerston North, Greg O'Brien's Ode to the Waihi Beach dump and Anne Kennedy's rugby triumph. A highlight of this treat box is the vein of gold in the poets' musings: Manhire's claim that poems "do the knight's move better than the rook's or the bishop's".

C.K. Stead's assertion that 10 words "will be more charged, resonant, radio-active" than 20. While the anthology does not include the more experimental reaches of New Zealand poetry, this fine anthology leads us to an eclectic and electric poetry community: the poetry is graceful, muscular, lyrical, arresting, biting. Within this context, they acquire new and refreshing life.

The Tram Conductor'S Blue Cap
By Michael Harlow (Auckland University Press $24.99)

Twenty Contemporary NZ Poets
Ed. by Andrew Johnston and Robyn Marsack (Victoria University Press $40)

* Paula Green is an Auckland poet and children's author.