C.K. Stead: Dog

Reviewed by PENELOPE BIEDER*

THE 12th collection of poems from this distinguished Auckland writer is divided into three tidy parts.

When he won Norfolk's King's Lynn Poetry Award in 2001, one of its conditions was producing a series of poems celebrating that English maritime town, as well as one of the places it traded with.

Stead chose our own region, using two of King's Lynn's seafarers, James Burney and George Vancouver, who sailed with Cook, as conduits. Both were involved with the drama of Cook's murder, and both retired many years later as rear admirals. Burney was the younger brother of writer Fanny Burney and Vancouver gave his name to the Canadian city and island.

Thus the first part is titled King's Lynn & the Pacific and the poems are thick with reference points and allusions that could well be missed by the casual reader, in spite of helpful navigational signposts from the poet.

Travelling to a world that is upside down, these pioneering sailors can be forgiven for misspelling God. Technically brilliant, but cool and dispassionate, the poems chart epic voyages, an illness and a murder, all with a rigorous discipline and technique that Cook himself would have admired.

Part Two is Creation etc. Dogs (and Zac the cat) and "Big Daddy-in-the-Sky" continue to appear in a variety of guises, there are dedications to friends Allen Curnow, Karl Miller, Andrew Bennett and James K. Baxter, and the poet recognises something of himself at 70. There is a wistfulness in these lines, not quite morose or envious, but the poems reverberate with a disconcertingly sombre and reflective tone that undercuts the intended irony.

Part Three, At Wagner's Tomb, is one long poem charting the people who were important to the German composer. The musically repetitive metre is impressive, and Wagner is entertainingly alive on the pages, but the poet's wooden technique drowns out the song. It is disconcerting to discover that the page references in the notes are wrong - hard to achieve in a slim volume of 63 pages.

Auckland University Press, $21.95


* Penelope Bieder is a freelance writer.