Dear To Me: 100 New Zealanders Write About Their Favourite Poems Random House NZ, 2007. $36.99, royalties to Amnesty International NZ. ISBN 1-869418-32-8
Joanna PrestonStudents at Auckland Girls' Grammar School sent letters to 100 ‘well-known New Zealanders', asking them to nominate a favourite poem, and say why that piece was ‘dear to them'.
It's an interesting proposition - what do you choose? And what does it say about you? A poem that makes you look erudite? A comfortable classic that everyone will be able to relate to? Do you make some sort of disclaimer ("Alas, I have not spent nearly as much time reading poetry in recent years as would have been good for me") and then offer a lesser-known poem by an ‘interesting' poet? Do you make a political statement?
In this case, the "what" is less interesting than "why". And many of the poems selected are above criticism - good, safe, well-written pieces. Baxter (an obvious choice) is represented by eight poems; but would you have expected Lynley Dodd? There's one by Wordsworth, and two from Spike Milligan. There are a couple of song lyrics, and three poems that were the choice of more than one person. (I have a mental image of Helen Clark and Sir Geoffrey Palmer having a slapping contest over who gets 'Kubla Kahn', but that may just be me.)
A number of people responded with a poem of their own, or with a poem written by a family member. Not a problem if you're Fiona Farrell, or Alison Wong's uncle. But Bernice Mene "hunted through [her] poetry books", and offered a poem she'd written as a child. (You really couldn't find anything else? Anything at all?) And too many poems were written by children. Sorry, but there are no Laura Rangers here, and I'm not emotionally rewarded by the whimsy of someone else's kids.
The explanations that accompany the poems are quite varied. Some obviously enjoyed the process, and took time to engage with the poem and offer an explanation of what made it work for them. Owen Marshall, for example:
"... would prefer that my favourite poem was not as conventionally popular as this, and almost everything I have read about Dylan Thomas suggests a personality that I would dislike, nevertheless I cannot deny the power I find in this poem ..."
Sir Robert Jones declares that poetry "forms no part of [his] reading" (Boo, hiss!), but admits that Shelley's 'Ozymandias' managed to stick, and gives an interesting explanation of why.
A few others consist of little beyond a salutation and a signature - a pity, as the book was intended to be a window into their poetic consciousness. All we learn from Steve Braunias is that he was slow to reply!
I wanted to like this book. This should have been an intriguing anthology. But too many things have been done poorly - most annoyingly, no attempt was made to edit the accompanying letters, so you're routinely distracted by the personal salutations. Some contributors were given length limits, and others either weren't, or disregarded them. And too many of the contributors were allowed to ignore the question of why the poems were important to them, when this was the whole point of the anthology!
Disappointing. Make a donation to Amnesty instead.
