I Want More Sugar James McNaughton (Steele Roberts NZ, 2008 ) ISBN 978-1-877448-26-3

Nancy Loader

This is James McNaughton's second collection of poems, which is described as "the long awaited thesis to his previous collection The Stepmother Tree (2001) which was a critically acclaimed and controversial cosmic cult classic".

Does it live up to the hype ? Definitely.

I Want More Sugar is a collection of 27 poems written over a period of about 7 years. Some have been published previously in literary magazines and will be familiar.

McNaughton covers themes of modern life, values, perceptions, nature, travel and science. Many of the poems were written whilst he was travelling  through Asia including Tibet, Sri Lanka, the  Maldives and the Himalayas.

The collection is divided into 4 parts which broadly speaking stretch from politics and society today (part I) through experiences in Asia (parts II and III) and then come full circle in part IV as he re-explores his own culture from a different perspective. 

McNaughton seeks to educate and illuminate in his poetry, but rather than hectoring he does this in an ironic and pleasing way. His tone is simultaneously relaxed and engaging.

The first poem in the book, ‘The Waistland', starts by mimicking the opening lines to Eliot's ‘The Wasteland', but it develops quickly into its own contemporary theme.

Autumn

April is the most expensive month, hollowing
phantom pangs of hunger, raising
the colours of Coke and McDonalds
in a triumphant seasonal franchise, mixing
memory and fat and cheap sugar.

It continues to explore the movement and feelings around the transition between Autumn and Winter very effectively:

"The body slackens, loosens its resolve
to renege on the loan. All mottles and curls,
it's autumn. 

A gull drifts like a cinder
Over the cold anvil of harbour...

Suburbs rest in weak sun
on rumpled, dressing-gown hills... 

Her mind fills and drains like a rock pool.
It clouds, it abandons her..."

In the third section of this poem, ‘A Demi-deity's New Diet', he brings together obesity, Plato's chariot, Rachel Hunter and the restoration of celebrity on achieving a media regulated body size.

"Fat is the new four-letter word;
Fat is the new Fall.
Now a fat black horse plunges
before Plato's chariot.

Transformed, Rachel visits us
as a younger woman.
She's been lifted
by the slim white horse of celery

to her rightful height
on the Mt Olympus of celebrity..."

‘Proverbs from Down Under', after Blake's ‘Proverbs from Hell', is thought-provoking and had the additional effect of driving me back to read Blake's original (or at least some of it.) McNaughton's version is a little more depressing than Blake's, however:

"The road to excess
is paved with credit cards. The nakedness
of women is a biological imperative....
Without man nature is glorious.....
Many shall starve so that one stands on Mars.
As the priest lays his curse on the fairest joys, he lays his hands on the most trusting
boys..."

Some are a little lighter :

"The New Zealander is human
The plough demands gratitude from the cut worm.
Crooked roads without improvement are public roads.
On Sunday bury your head between death and sports.
Conservation hurts business, Judgement Day will end pollution..."

In part II we find ‘Immense Festival from ‘The Magic Mountain''. This poem celebrates the human form in a style similar to Neruda although I suspect  that McNaughton is being ironic. You can take it either way.

"What an immense festival to cherish them,
These delicious places of the body.
Which celebrates to die without complaint
afterwards. Yes, my god, I want to breath
the odour of the skin, of your kneecap,
under which the clever articular
capsule secretes all its slipping oil.
Let me touch my mouth devoutly to your
femoral artery, which beats with the face
of your thigh and which is divided low
into the arteries of the tibia..."

‘Mekong Moon', written in Laos, and ‘Cicadas', written in Japan, both give a sense of those places.

Part III  consists of a single poem in 8 parts called ‘Colours'. It's languid, relaxed, conversational and  stimulating. It centres on a dive in the Maldives, but branches out into relationships - father/daughter, husband/wife, the physical properties of light and evolution amongst other things. ‘Feathers' is the first part:

"This patient voice in my mind as I lie
floating on my back thirty metres down,
encased in ocean, neutrally buoyant,
breathing bubbles into the silent blue.
And now a living, twisting cloud of fish
Above me make a tunnel to the sun.

Red
It's not uncommon here in the Maldives:
it rains, the streets become a blazing sauna.
Beyond the turquoise harbour, a rainbow

charts the progression of seven colours
as they are lost in an ocean descent,
according to my Chinese dive master."

In part IV the author returns to New Zealand in Spring/Summer and celebrates those seasons in ‘Face':

"The sun opens its palms
and a fleet of black ships
are launched on Wellington's sundials"

and in ‘Summer Time':

"Summer time is recorded
by the cooling
Lawn Master 4000. It's ticking
becomes drowsy and lengthens
 

like the days,
like shadows lengthen.......

Birdsong is plucked from the trees
and pressed into dark blue wine."

Thus the poet comes full circle from a dismal Autumn, with similar thoughts about the human condition, through an Asian summer and back to Summer in New Zealand with a focused concentration on the celebration of life and nature.

Overall this is a very enjoyable, well crafted book of poetry which I would encourage people to buy for themselves or others as a gift. Visually it is attractive; the book cover illustration  is taken from a photo (by the author) of multi-coloured Prayer flags in a blue-skied Tibet. The printing, alignment and paper quality are perfect .

When the MetService is advising me to wear four layers of clothing to remain comfortable, ‘Colours' is the poem that I will curl up with again and again. 

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