KEY POINTS:
With its turquoise ocean-coloured wrap picturing a double outrigger, one may assume to judge by its cover. Yes, it is a collection largely concerned with poems of travel by sea and the islands in-between, but there is much more. The foreword gives the reader an overview of the texture of the poems ahead: "The moment of arrival at any new island is a good one/ But I often think that the moment of departure is even better/Small humour of daylight."
Weston's poems deal with travel - islands as yet unnamed, places of the soul, craggy atolls of the darkest night, volcanic remains of the dream worlds, the sparkling seas of his imagination. Take for instance, "At the edge of dawn, Gentleness leaking out", as if daylight was not totally committed to the solid start of the day.
Not all these poems are of islands and ocean travel. Exhilaration deals with desire and unrequited love, while The fertile everywhere holds these beautiful evocative lines: "Time requires very little, no more than goals which also use the road/ Fertility is everywhere, and excessive./ There is a fourth girl and they move off in pairs singing, they stoop./ A soprano's voice climbs above the tree, each stands again and they walk ahead, still singing./The four of them, this unearthly choir, rehearsing the language of heaven. Song, music, singing."
Music and vocal attributes are at times as much a recurring theme, scattering through the verse like a waiter with a generous pepper-grinder. Each time I search for a favourite poem in this book, it is eclipsed by another, so I choose stanzas, small twigs of verbal beauty as in the opening of The unprepared mind: "The western island is furthest from land a place of shrubs and grasses only, a holy place, devoid of adultery."
Unlike many other poetry collections there is no rhetorical list of past achievements, how many anthologies, how many awards, how many accolades. I find Small Humour all the more poignant for its modesty. Sue Wootton is a Dunedin poet, as the title Magnetic South may suggest, with wide publication in newspapers, anthologies and journals. This year, she is Burns Fellow at the University of Otago.
The references to the south are quite ambiguous, even oblique -Wanaka, Horoeka, Bannockburn, and other southern realms are name-checked but not always with the poetic fanfare one may expect from a proud southern lass. Some text has been placed with scattered words in the shape of hearts, words singularly framing the right of the page, making them (for this reader) a little confusing, eyes searching for the key words - or is this purely cosmetic?
The poem String snap suits this style and is self-explanatory, opening with a quote from Czech poet Miroslav Holub - "when the strings break, that's the end" - illustrating the breaking of an heirloom, a set of pearls: The gold clasp clicks in place at the graceful base of the seventh bone/ quick twirl ping/ Clatter clatter clatter clatter clatter clatter/ clatter clatter clatter clatter clatter clatter/ scatter/ bounce/ flounce."
The opening poem, Le Temps entre chien et loup (the hour between dog and wolf, the French expression for dusk), is superb, counterpointing the friendly stick-chasing domestic canine and the wicked yellow-eyed wolf of the night, the fears that come with the closing dark, after the beachside pleasure of the bright day and a bouncing labrador dog.
What we tell the kids about Auckland closes with the lines: "Yes they have the Sky Tower/ But look, We have the sky."
Small Humour of Daylight
By Tom Weston (Steele Roberts $19.99)
Magnetic South
By Sue Wootton (Steele Roberts $24.99)
* Graham Brazier is a singer-songwriter with Hello Sailor.
