KEY POINTS:
Alistair Te Ariki Campbell and Meg Campbell are names that will be familiar to most poetry enthusiasts - between the two, this couple have an impressive volume of work.
The Love Poems is the narrative of a long life together. The front cover shows a photo of a young, strikingly handsome couple, mirrored on the back with the same pair looking content and pensive in their older years.
Meg Campbell, who was educated at Marsden School and Victoria University, was pursuing a promising acting career when she met and fell in love with poet Alistair Te Ariki Campbell. For 47 years they lived together in Pukerua Bay, with the relationship going through stormy patches at times.
Yet they stayed afloat until Meg's death last year. Before her death they agreed to publish a joint book of poetry - It's Love, Isn't It? It seems unjust that she did not live to see this task accomplished. She passed away the day after her final book of poetry, Poems Drift, was released last November.
The poems comprise works taken mainly from the early and middle years of their time together, with one of Alistair's works on the left page counterpointed by one of Meg's opposite.
The poems at times almost trampoline off the page - as mentioned, there was turbulence in the marriage, as well as in their individual personal lives.
Dreams of Porirua Hospital deals with Alistair visiting Meg while she was in the mental institution: "They came across the frosted grass in their policemen's boots cracking the moon in the iced puddles, had to empty out my pockets like a common criminal."
Alistair had affairs during their time together, alluded to in poems such as Daisy Pinks. Meg's poem Bee Of Anger addresses this infidelity, and one gets the feeling they shared a mirror which could not be easily broken.
Despite the trials and hard times, Meg also shows a weary sense of humour in poems such as This Morning At Dawn which I found delightfully honest and clever:
"Pirate! I woke this morning to find you had come in through the head at first light. /My plump whiteness amuses you vastly. /Your teeth gleam and your eyes are dark slits. "Shamelessly you have beached your long-boat high on the sand. /You handsome bastard. /How is it that you are so very sure of your ground? "The tide is going out amigo, take care that the water doesn't drown you, leaving only your cocked hat floating on the surface - is it true, then that pirates never learn to swim?"
On more than one occasion Meg and Alistair Campbell have been referred to as the Brownings of New Zealand literature. These poems of enduring love have a truly timeless quality.
It'S Love, Isn'T It?: The Love Poems
By Alistair Te Ariki Campbell & Meg Campbell (Headworx $24.99)
* Graham Brazier is a singer-songwriter with Hello Sailor.
