Some Bird by Gail Ingram (Sudden Valley Press, $30)
Gail Ingram has a very robust feminist case to make in Some Bird and she sets it out in terms of five phases in a woman’s life. First, the adopted baby girl growing up vaguely understanding she is different from her siblings and not quite wanted. Then, going through puberty and teenagerhood, having to conform to boys’ expectations about unrefined courting. Then reaching young adulthood, married and having everything change as she has to care for a baby of her own. As a housekeeper, she is always under scrutiny with judgments about how “good” she is as a mother. Worse, though (as told in the poems The Provider and That Thing Between Us), it is clear she is doing all the heavy lifting when it comes to childcare and her husband contributes very little. Which leads to a well-earned separation and independence, but she’s not entirely happy with the way feminism has gone.
Christchurch-based Ingram is not concerned with only feminist matters. The Wading Bird looks at the degradation of the natural environment. I am Pākehā is half a protest against colonisation but also half awareness of being Pākehā. Even so, it is the feminist perception that dominates and it is reinforced by two poems that chart all the insulting terms men have used against women – “bird”, “chick”, “tart”, “bitch”, “bag”, etc. It’s bracing to read something so clearly articulated.
Sleepers Awake by Oli Hazzard (Carcanet, $30)
In his third collection Sleepers Awake, Bristol-born resident of Glasgow Oli Hazzard is distinctly on the side of the avant-garde. He produces verse that is often cryptic and opaque, requiring careful scrutiny of the reader. But once decoded, it has many rewards. His 70-page sequence, Progress Real and Imagined, is best understood as a quest for personal identity but is also concerned with the value of poetry itself. He declares, “Sometimes, I will simply list basic queries / about the nature of my personality / in order to allow for the possibility that it exists.”
Hazzard is deeply into thorny philosophical problems of the existential sort, sometimes using landscapes to kick off theoretical discussion. Such is his poem May Face, which begins as a Clydeside scene at a certain time of day but becomes a mental puzzle. On the other hand, the collection’s title poem is literally an account of waking up on a snowy winter day in Glasgow and taking in the changing moods as the snow slowly retreats and the sun begins to dominate. Hard tack but worth chewing on.
Tigers of the Mind by Michael Morrissey (Aries Press, $30)
In his 14th collection, seasoned poet Michael Morrissey’s work is often bizarre, making huge imaginative leaps.
In earlier work, Morrissey told his public that he has periodically suffered from severe bipolar disorder, leading to psychiatric care. This has fuelled some of his best work in Tigers of the Mind. A stand-out poem is Defiant View from the Fifth Level of a Psychiatric Ward. The view is “defiant” because the poet, aware of his disordered condition, nevertheless sees the validity of the images his fevered mind is conjuring up. Later are sequences about the malign power of the moon and poems dedicated to aliens and strange beasts
The impressive Poem for a Large Rodent becomes a conversation between a biologist and a giant rat. It is hard to avoid such terms as surrealist or even Dadaist. Yet Morrissey is just as adept at lucid reportage, especially in his poems about his parents and his troubled childhood. And, remarkably, there is a serene poem called Making Breakfast which could well qualify as a love poem.
Tigers of the Mind is a very diverse collection, vigorously presented and engaging to read.
Spindrift: New and selected poems by Bob Orr (Steele Roberts, $40)
In terms of poetry, Bob Orr is the direct opposite of avant-garde. Orr’s poetry is clear, straightforward and colloquial. Spindrift selects from the 10 collections that Orr has had published since the 1970s and ends with 36 poems hitherto unpublished. In effect, it’s a summary of all of Orr’s best work.
The typical Orr poem sits stark and lean on the page. Only rarely does Orr take on longer poems such as Fairfield Bridge and Roads to Reinga, recalling his youth. Or River, which combines a grand view of the Earth’s tectonics with the suffering of being in a hospital. He can strip things right down to the essentials, as in Orkney Poet, which reads in full: “Your meagre / hard-won harvest / from stony sea-girt acres / barely put food on the table – / bequeathed a banquet to the world.”
Orr often deals with Auckland, with poets he admires, with ordinary working people and, very occasionally, with satire. But more than anything he is captivated by the sea and the seashore – with good reason, as he was a seaman for years. Many poems have him pacing the shore and imagining distant oceans. This is not sentimental. It is an album of reality and it’s very accessible.
