Graeme Lay remembers his long-time friend and colleague Kevin Ireland, writer, poet, translator and wit.
Kevin Ireland, writer, was born Kevin Jowsey, in Auckland, and grew up on the city’s North Shore. He attended Takapuna Grammar School, then travelled overseas. In 1963, his first book of poetry, Face to Face, was published. Several other collections followed. Although written while he was overseas, all were published in New Zealand. He returned to this country in 1985 and for the next four decades established himself as one of our most illustrious writers.
How to pay fitting tribute to someone who has published 27 books of poetry, plus six novels, a collection of short stories and three volumes of memoir? A daunting prospect, but as someone who has known Kevin as a friend and colleague for 38 years, at least I’m suitably placed to try.
For me, Kevin’s reputation preceded him. From his then-home in London, he wrote regularly to his elderly mentor in Takapuna, Frank Sargeson, who relished Kevin’s witty letters. One day in 1978, when I visited Frank at his home, he read one out to me. A new Pope had just been chosen. Frank waved an aerogramme. “Heard from Kevin again today. He mentions the new Pope.” Frank read from the aerogramme. “Kevin writes, ‘Pope … John … Paul … Why didn’t they choose John, Paul, George and Ringo?’” Frank roared with laughter.
I met Frank’s London correspondent for the first time in 1985. We both had books being released, Kevin’s poetry collection Practice Night in the Drill Hall and my first short-story collection, Dear Mr Cairney. The launch dates for the two books were announced, and author and historian Michael King, who knew both of us, noticed the launches were to be on the same day. By going to one launch, the guests would be deprived of attending the other. Book sales would suffer. Michael alerted the publishers to this clash and the launch dates were changed; mine was now to come one week before Kevin’s.
Kevin came to my launch accompanied by his mate Maurice Shadbolt. Both had been drinking, and Kevin was well away. Exuberantly so. He introduced himself, then bought a book. As I signed it for him, I asked, ‘Were you really Frank Sargeson’s paper boy?’ Frank, who had died three years earlier, had told me he had been. Kevin laughed, then launched into a series of affectionate reminiscences about Frank, while in between time helping himself to more and more red wine. Later, Maurice took him home.
It was Kevin’s launch the following week. I was astonished by his transformation. He was now calm, sober and immaculately groomed. He made a gracious speech, then read several poems in what I came to know as his professional manner: clearly, movingly and with perfect enunciation and fine comic timing.
From that time to this day, we have been friends, although he was 10 years my senior. I have relished his company, respected his achievements and been grateful for his advice on all manner of subjects. The words “I don’t know” never came from Kevin’s lips. There seemed no subject he was unfamiliar with and his opinions were forthright and passionately held, whether it was art (he was a trenchant critic and a painter – one of his self-portraits adorns the cover of his third memoir), gardening (he grew vegetables), cuisine (he cooked superbly), wine (he was an expert on assessing as well as consuming it), angling (he loved fishing Southland’s rivers with his Mainland mates), politics (he was of the Left, while often castigating Labour when its policies displeased him) and music (he once wrote a libretto). He could gib-stop a wall as perfectly as he could write a poem or review a novel. Parsing or plastering, all was taken in his lengthy stride. The only thing he couldn’t do was drive a car. His multifarious interests brought him into contact with many people. It seemed he knew everyone. Certainly, everyone knew Kevin. Women loved Kevin for his courtesy, his wit and his erudition. Men loved him, too.
While espousing passionate views on innumerable subjects, he somehow managed never to sound like a know-all on any of them. He commented acutely and always with great humour. Kevin and laughter were always close.
A load of laughs
He had worked on newspapers (including the Times) in London and magazines (including the Listener) for many years as a subeditor. This gave him an accrued knowledge of magazine and newspaper production, as well as an encyclopedic handling of language and syntax. His work on the Times and the Listener, along with his vast general knowledge, culminated in the ideal job opportunity: deputy editor of the 1990s arts and literature magazine Quote Unquote.
When founding editor Stephen Stratford was considering a deputy, Kevin’s name came up. “What do you think?” Stephen asked me. “He’d be ideal,” I said. “And best of all, you’ll get a load of laughs.” And he did. Kevin’s media and publishing experience, his incisive judgments and finely honed wit made him a great deputy for Stephen. The two worked as a splendid team during the magazine’s too-short life, from 1993 until 1997. Kevin was devastated by Stephen’s sudden, untimely death in 2021.
Kevin’s wit was swift and always original. Once on a Friday evening, we were walking up Queen St on our way to a PEN meeting. Standing on the footpath was a vagrantish fellow of about 60, trying to play a number of instruments simultaneously: drums, trumpet, tambourine. We stopped to watch and listen to this sad one-man band. The collective noise emanating from the man was appalling. Kevin shook his head unhappily and said, “We can’t even say, ‘At least it keeps him off the streets.’”
He was a staunch supporter of PEN, the writers’ organisation. Auckland branch meetings were fun when Kevin was present as he invariably commented amusingly on the literary issues of the day. When at one turbulent meeting a drunk postmodernist poet abused Kevin and threatened to kill him with a bread knife, Kevin responded with a calm directive to the meeting’s secretary: “Put that threat in the minutes, please.” And after Maurice Shadbolt timorously resigned as national president in 1990 over a fiasco to do with the government’s purchase of a flat in London for New Zealand writers, Kevin characteristically stepped into the breach. His unerring judgments, coupled with his fearlessness, made him a highly effective advocate. As always, he was presidential.
There were other responsibilities. We were both founding members of the Auckland Writers’ Festival Committee, as well as long-serving members of the Sargeson Trust and the NZ Society of Authors’ legal advisory committee, known affectionately as the “Portnoy’s Committee”, since it dealt with writers’ complaints.
Unstoppable poet
Kevin married three times. His first wife, Donna, was Bulgarian. After they divorced, in England he met and married Caroline, who was from Yorkshire. Kevin adopted her two sons, Bill and Sam, and became a devoted, generous father to the boys. After Caroline died in 2007, Kevin in 2012 married Janet, the Oxford-based daughter of writer Phillip Wilson, who had been a close friend of Frank Sargeson.
Their years of marriage were shared between Janet’s base in England’s Oxford and Kevin’s home in Devonport. They enjoyed 13 very happy years, travelling widely in Europe through Janet’s work as an authority on post-colonial literature. During this time Kevin never neglected his own writing. Indeed, he drew inspiration from travelling with Janet, publishing collections of verse inspired by the battlefields of France and Belgium, for example.
There were many awards, all richly deserved. In 2000, Kevin received an honorary doctorate from Massey University, in 2004, the Prime Minister’s Award for Literary Achievement (poetry), and in 2006, the AW Reed Award for his contribution to New Zealand writing.
Always the poems and the books kept coming. The man seemed unstoppable. It seemed to me that at times he was more of a sorcerer than a poet, such was the rate at which the poems almost miraculously appeared. And if he was a sorcerer, I was his apprentice. He taught me a great deal – not about writing itself, as that is always very personal – but the whole business of writing, the production, the editing, the packaging. He knew everything there was to know about the process.
In 2013, his monumental selected poems 1963-2013 (Steele Roberts) was published to coincide with his 80th birthday. This was followed by further collections of new verse.
People had long urged Kevin to write a third volume of autobiography, and were not disappointed when one eventually appeared in 2022. Entitled A month at the back of my brain (Quentin Wilson Publishing), it was as amusing and idiosyncratic as its predecessors. The final memoir was summarised by Kevin as a “rummage through 30 episodes – one a day, for a month” – at the back of his brain.
No matter how stubbornly Kev defied old age, in his 80s, his health deteriorated. Walking became difficult and his bones ached. Yet his mind was as sharp as ever. He was admitted to North Shore Hospital in March, when bone cancer was diagnosed. I rang him at the hospital. “They’ve given me three months,” he told me. Then he chuckled. “Three months …”
After a time, he returned home, where he became bedridden. Friends visited, but the laughter had stopped. Communication was difficult. On May 18, he was moved to the North Shore hospice, where he died a day later. He would have turned 90 in July.
With Kev’s passing, we have lost a unique and truly remarkable New Zealander.
Today’s love poem
for Janet
Love poems sometimes blossom
from dishevelled gardens in the head.
One minute you’re weaving down a street
walking into lampposts and the next
you’re sitting in a coffee shop
jotting down a poem that flowered
from inside you on a matter even older
than the two of us – as we are constantly
reminded by official documents that have
no notion of reality. It’s not the fact that love
and poetry can bloom like this,
the marvel is the way it seeds. Perhaps
it’s carried on the wind – a warm one
with a scent of roses. This is my love poem
for today. It’s written. Nothing else.
It wouldn’t wish to offer explanations.
Kevin Ireland, from Just Like That Quentin Wilson Publishing, 2021
