Young and Old Marched Shaking their Fists, Singing

Piet Nieuwland

Hibiscus Tart by Carin Smeaton (Titus Books, 2024), 83pp, $28; Halfway to Everywhere by Vivienne Ullrich (Cuba Press, 2024), 69pp, $25; Motherland by Kathy Frantz (Birdboy Press, 2024), 52pp, $25; and The Richard Poems by Simon Sweetman (Cuba Press, 2024), 76pp, $20 

Hibiscus Tart is the second book by Carin Smeaton and reflects her multi-faceted busy life in central Auckland. She is well supported by whānau and friends who are thanked in the whakawhetai. For me this book proved a bit of a challenge at first; there was a shift in the language, and the culture, with unfamiliar combinations and associations. I could handle the text abbreviations, shortened spelling and absence of punctuation. But slowing down led me to appreciate where this might be taking me. The response to poetry is purely personal; it is a very subjective experiential activity. I freely admit to not understanding it all, but I do appreciate the intensity and its enthusiastic, vibrant energy.

The poetry spans, among other things, the city as it surges and heaves, relationships with family, friends, lovers, husbands, those stroppy aunts, work, cinematic fantasies of Winona, libraries, cleaning movie theatres, menstruation, the Harbour Bridge, Australia, and death. The poems are filled with personal images, slang, fragments from everywhere, weaving between now and te ao Māori, between spare lines and prosaic hybrid forms. They form a sequence, groups of related poems, like different takes on a subject. They are playful in a way that you might hear being rapped with a deep bass beat, guitar strumming and/or synthesiser. I’ve yet to hear the live versions.

A couple of pieces intrigued me in their simplicity. ‘Irene’, about the death of a friend on a bike, is heartfelt, simple and open. Its images resonate:

she never really wanted to be perfect she jus wanted to be human …

As did those in the following poem, a kind of coda, titled ‘frank counts the chrysalises’:

tellin him no one was gonna touch it
til all them butterflies was free …

In contrast, ‘a property manager walks into a forest’ is a much longer take on that suggestive lead-in line of a joke being told. The poet, accompanied by her work colleague, goes along jabbing a sharp stick at ownership and management and the way we look after the environment—our attitudes to places, houses and homes and our understandings of the values of natural ecosystems. Her intention is to acknowledge the ways, collectively and individually, we are intimately and viscerally connected to them all, and responsible as well:

& lays on the
floor of decaying vines her thighs spread far n wide opening up for
mother earth to wrap herself in to bloom n grow her womb swells …

Then there are the other challenging pieces, such as ‘renata’s dream in ui ui’, which could be an alternative title poem for the whole collection, evoking as it does the cover painting with its scorpion tattoo, heightened colouration and suggestion of transgressive imagery:

the more she believed
they was no sin but forever colours of life tuning out flowers into
the sky the most
striking colours
the ones her spine would recognise right up to the tip of her lashes …

‘Tart’ has multiple meanings and, in an act of language reclamation, here all of them seem to be in play.

Vivienne Ullrich demonstrates the strong influence of her background in the legal profession in Halfway to Everywhere, her second collection of poetry. Her deft and precise poems are as well articulated as a judge’s decision. A notable feature of the book is its pieces based on fairy tales, not the sugar-coated Disney versions, but rather the original stories. These poems remind me somewhat of the children’s stories by Roald Dahl, where the world is turned on its head with unexpected consequences. But these are more adult versions, with intimacy, politics, sexism, racism and philosophy thrown into the uncertain topsy-turvy mix. A favourite is ‘The frog prince’, where the initially kind, generous, attentive, romantic man becomes overbearing and controlling. He is dealt with in an amusing turn involving his relationship with her father.

‘But Goldilocks was a Victorian’ is great with its invitation to speculations on who she might really have been.

This hussy was one brassy tart
Who took what she wanted
And trashed what she didn’t
maybe her mama and papa
are just too busy minding
the Industrial Revolution …
perhaps she had read Adam Smith,
Mary Wollstonecraft and John Stuart Mill …

This poem with its rollicking rhythms is funny and good to share by reading out loud.

More interesting ultimately for me, though, are the more grounded subjects of the other poems, for example, in the response to a painting by Star Gossage of 2007, entitled ‘I am waiting for the poet’, where:

She lays down shapes and colours that call
From the clay of her whenua …

And:

She speaks to me, bypassing words …

Similarly, I am stopped in my tracks when Ullrich writes in ‘Max say at eighty’, a light, airy, detached found poem, about a Max Gimblett exhibition:

time is an illusion
dying is like taking off a garment …

The visceral ‘Field trip’ also makes me pause, impressed by its detailed, matter-of-fact yet poignant description. Perhaps we all have something like that to share—a childhood realisation of what lies beneath the surface of ourselves and the creatures around us.

‘The last inlet’, too, is a piece I really enjoyed and found personally relatable. It recalls the exploration of an isolated, hidden abandoned house and garden, lost to time, still with a piano in the front room. It bought back memories of the fantasy of what might have been; a sense I’ve often had travelling through quiet back-country roads:

Not now. Maybe in a while, with solar
cells and satellite reception, but you’d
have to be okay with the isolation …

I found this an enjoyable yet easy-to-read collection; surprising and rewarding, succinct in its choice of words.

Stories of immigrant families and their descendants are frequently compelling, at least to me personally. Motherland by Kathy Frantz offers such stories. This small book of poems, Kathy’s first, positively oozes with genuine expression and emotion. The language is direct and uncomplicated, coloured by occasional Hungarian terms, which, while un-translated, add to the flavour and texture of the work. The black and white cover photograph, presumably of Kathy’s parents and their young family of three children, speaks to a time of hope and opportunity in the 1960s. Her father and mother separately escaped from their Motherland, Hungary, after the 1956 revolution to settle in Aotearoa New Zealand. The pieces explore the adjustments that needed to be made and the pains of separation.

The poems speak openly of first love in a caravan, of the difficulties of motherhood, and of the beauty and soul and passion of the poet’s mother:

My mother is Gypsy.
The Queen of Hungary …

Frantz acknowledges the support and contribution to her poetry of her now ex-husband in ‘This one’s for you’, writing:

There is still a deep ravine of understanding …

She also acknowledges, respectfully, in ‘O Hungarian poets’:

Petofi Sandor and Jozef
Attila for igniting my words and
stoking my soul.

After those introductory pieces we encounter ‘Story fragments’, which is composed of a series of statements describing situations, memories, moments, and experiences that seem to capture childhood in the 1960s—the sensations of a more innocent, sheltered era the poet was lucky enough to enjoy. For example:

Waiting around after lunch on Sunday afternoons while Dad
slept, to go to Waiwera pools …

And:

Taking thick white sandwiches to school with zsir and salami
or runny jam and Granny Smith Apples …

There are also poignant, moving poems about her mother, for example, ‘Eva, at 16’, depicting her escaping the Hungarian insurrection and Russian Communist backlash of 1956:

You were there Eva
while monstrous grey tanks roared through
narrow cobbled streets
young and old marched, shaking their fists
singing …

Her father’s story, which is retold in the poem ‘Apam’ is at once brutal and hopeful:

The first three, shot on the spot
the next three, carted off to a labour camp
the final three thrown into jail
Was he lucky to be standing
in that place in the line?

I look forward to seeing more of Kathy’s poems in print. Her piece, ‘Pregnant’, indicates that there are more to come. I found these poems vitalist in their essence—a beautiful expression of experience, energy and enthusiasm for life.

The Richard Poems, by Simon Sweetman, is an engaging, amusing, but also deeply disturbing sequence of poems and stories about the dynamics of a boyhood friendship and its slow unravelling. It raised for me many questions about what happened earlier in Richard’s life, especially the nature of his relationship with his father, and what makes some young males behave the way they do, as insecure and immature bullies. Most of the book traces events in the lives of Simon and his friend Richard from the time they first met at a wrestling SummerSlam in 1988. A lot of their initial connection was based around enjoyment of the music of the time (Pink Floyd in particular) as in ‘Listless’ where:

We were’t quite Lennon and McCartney. (Not even close.)
And we were’t Mick and Keef. But we were Richard and
Simon. And this was when that meant something.

The initial boyish humour of the poems stands out, even if that humour is somewhat dark in mood, as it is in ‘The most learning we ever did at school was in one day on a field trip to the abattoir’ where, following a vivid description of the death of a cow:

we were gifted a cow’s eye in a bag
to hurl on the bus or slip down the back
of a girl’s uniform …

But eventually, after a series of disturbing events described in several poems, including ‘I was (friends with) a teenage psychopath’:

It all started to add up. My bike tyre slashed
one day, and he offered to help me look
for the cunt that did it. Didn’t need to look very far.

The disharmony and dissonances continue as they get older, through adventures with alcohol, drugs, boozing in pubs, employment, twenty-first birthday parties, girls, and flatting. These are story-poems, or poetically-told anecdotes, that lead you into a mix-up of lives and lies, usually with a neatly delivered punch-line that leaves you wondering, how could they continue? Answer: They didn’t.

The last part of the book is a thoughtful reflection on the preceding years, recalling with compassion and empathy some of the really good times but also even more of the bad experiences. Simon is asking some what-ifs. What could it have been in another life? What is Richard doing now? What would he think of the poems? It’s also asking to be shared. Do we all have someone like Richard in our lives? What does it mean to be friends—to have a long-term friendship with someone that seems doomed to turn sour or disastrous?

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PIET NIEUWLAND is a poet, writer and artist who lives near Whangarei. He was formerly a strategic planner for conservation in Northland and the upper North Island for Te Papa Atawhai/DOC. His poems and flash fiction have been published in numerous print and online journals in New Zealand, Australia, Canada, the United States and India. He is managing editor of Fast Fibres Poetry magazine.