Bonfires on the Ice
By Harry Ricketts (Te Herenga Waka University Press, $25), out November 6
A seasoned poet with 11 collections already behind him, retired academic Harry Ricketts is an urbane writer with much wit but who is always aware of the human condition. His earlier collection, Winter Eyes, had him beginning to consider older age. Bonfires on the Ice goes further into that territory, especially in the three poems he writes about his late mother, Pink Blanket, Last Day and Irregular Villanelle for My Mother. They might seem almost frivolous at first, but they show warmth and real affection. In The Lecture 3, he says “I’m counting down the lectures / I’ll never give again” and sees how his students reacted – sometimes negatively. But he reminds us, in Another Footnote to Larkin, that even the mainly pessimistic British poet Philip Larkin could say such positive things as “we should also be kind while we may”. Ricketts’ reach takes him to a cowboy version of Robert Browning’s Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came – a great 19th-century poem – and a version of a medieval tale told completely in limericks. Very engaging and soothing in a messy world.
If We Knew How to We Would
By Emma Barnes (Auckland University Press, $24.99)
Emma Barnes warns us in a preface that “this book deals with themes of suicide, grief and depression” and also says to “particularly avoid the middle section if you aren’t up to this content”. Barnes deals with important things, especially intimate relationships. The focus is on the human body and the human creatures that we are. The poem I am a circle says, “You can see I am one thousand years old in a body made of all the decisions of ancestors and the cold crush of time”. Throughout, this collection is made of prose poetry, presented in solid blocks of print. Nearly all is told in the first person. Is this collection near to being confessional? Maybe. At any rate, much of Barnes’s life seems to be clear. There is apparently a break-up. One poem, Chain of connected resentment, suggests fearsome love-hate. Though sometimes coming near to despair, Barnes buoys us with unexpected imagery and fast moving one-liners – bracing, even if the subject is often sombre.
Dancing Heart
By Jan Kemp (Tranzlit, $35)
Jan Kemp’s Dancing Heart is subtitled “New & Selected Poems 1968-2024”. The poems were selected and edited by Jack Ross. Kemp has lived for some years in Germany with her husband. Many of her new poems refer to the European scene and classic situations. The first 32 pages are new poems in the section “Dancing Heart”. In these, there is an acute awareness of becoming older. Thus the poem Forest burial, wherein “We’ll sink before AI / is rife, we’ll have / known human lives. / And human love”. And in Shedding, she tells us it is “Time soon to start shedding” and give things away. Crater begins, “A Week ago / on the crater’s edge / I looked down & saw / endless nothingness / & death”. But there is some hope in older age with poems about love and friendship. One of her best poems, Anima mundi, salutes the glories of nature where “I have my own cathedral here – / the nave-like path / leads through sunlit trees / where light filters / as through green, stained-glass windows.” Kemp often tries to work out some sort of belief. Could it be love itself? Or could she be trying to devise a home-made religion? At any rate, she sometimes quotes the Bible and wonders about it, as she did in some of her earlier collections where Dante often turned up. But she stoutly rejects any particular faith. Those are the new poems. The rest, taking up most of this volume, are the eight collections Kemp wrote earlier, going back to the 1970s. She is, and will always be, an idealist with a strong eye for landscapes.
Pill-Rolling Fingers
By Tara Coleman (Atuanui Press, $35)
“There is something wrong with me / strange sensations /overwhelmed constantly / … / began to tremor / noticed a slowness / googled extensively …”. These are the opening words of Pill-rolling Fingers, which bears the subtitle “Poems About Early-Onset Parkinson’s”. A preface makes it clear that the onset is not confined to the aged. Parkinson’s disease often begins in one’s 30s or 40s, and it does not mean instant cognitive decline. These poems are drawn from Coleman’s Marsden-funded research with many people and their predicaments. They are not asking for pity but deal with it in different ways, such as, “It takes energy / to control symptoms / so that friends don’t feel / I’m taking the air”. For some, there is comradeship. But the poem Someone’s Fingers Are Becoming My Ribs tells the awful truth that “people in health systems / end up, add up, give up / are missing out / are missed”. There is much clarity and purpose in this collection.
