Leaving the tableland Kerry Popplewell (Steele Roberts, 2010) ISBN: 978-1-877448-95-9

Liz Breslin

Notes in a poetry collection are a good sign of meatiness, along with the need to reach for a dictionary. Leaving the Tableland has both these attributes going for it. Encomiums, anyone?

This book is separated into four sections: Acclimatisation, The Constancy of Water, Making It and Leaving the Tableland. It's Kerry Popplewell's first collection, which she acknowledges "would have happened sooner had she not been distracted by grandchildren and her interest in tramping." These twin loves make their way into her recollections and recreations of the everyday throughout the pages.

‘Harvest' sits next to the title poem of the first section. There's something of the Seamus Heaney about it, and not just the digging, the potatoes and the Irish ancestors. Popplewell writes,

In the past I have noodled -
with stealth - for undersized loot,
the leaves still juicy and green.
 
But today I am digging potatoes

 

The words of the Offertory work neatly as her conclusion - "the fruit of the earth,/ the work of human hands. "

‘Portrait: Paihiatua 1942' is more than just that; deeper than the snapshot the husband carries. The war is absent/ present also in the pregnant tones of ‘Summer, 1943' and makes a guest appearance in ‘Curve', dedicated, presumably, to a granddaughter, Ava. ‘Gifts for a Granddaughter, for Grace' muses on the gifts passed on through the generations. Genes, heirlooms, jewellery? And, more personally,

 

                                    my copy of Dorothy
Wordsworth's journal? This was a present
from a dear friend who died ten years ago.
But how explain the solace given me
by those unguarded entries, so translucent
and brief? I have read them over and over.

 

The second section - The Constancy of Water - runs from the light-hearted (if over-blown) title poem, through the light intrigue of ‘Ghost child' to the bleak strength of ‘After the funeral':

Now the necessary estrangement begins;
and, though we would resist,
the sun insists on rising,
the cat on being fed.

 

(That, incidentally, was the poem that necessitated the dictionary. Encomiums. They're eulogies. )

A couple of other nice discoveries happen in this section. The ‘Princessa della Medici', found in the Uffizi, and a quiet grave found in the ‘Cimitero Acattolico', quoted here in full:

 

I went, of course,
to see the other graves:
 
Keats first, then Shelley -
Severn and Trelawny
 
in seemly proximity;
and the cats, the wonderful pines...
 
Then, Diane Rosemary Hardimann,
I discovered you.
 
When you died in 1967
you had just reached thirty-two.
 
Paul preached in this city:
he called for commitment.
 
Your stone stated yours
in a single word.
 
‘Artist,' it said.
No more.

 

Nice. But why the dot dot dot after pines? It distracts a few times through this collection. Aren't ellipses assumed in poetry anyway?

Making it seems a more constructed section. ‘Legacy' is nice, and the women standing strong against the wind in ‘Grit' could be the Pahiatua wife many years on and freed from her headscarf:

 

White hair awry, the women
are thrust forward by a tail wind.
They cannot turn around
 
and it will not stop blowing.
They brace, dig in their heels.
They refuse to be moved.

‘Letter for Juliet' stands out as an exercise in catharsis; a personal tale told.

The final section contains fifteen poems from "memory's ragtag store" (‘Leaving the Tableland'). ‘Seeing the Red Hills again' is a lament for these Fiordland hills,

 

irresistible
irrefragable rock,
bare resonance of red,
their ultramafic slopes held no
            snow grass or herb bed.

 

As a girl of seventeen, she meant to climb them "some later day" but now they are

 

            ...only for others to cross.
This loss I must wear
 
as emblem of all things
            once possible, now
not. How fugitive
those futures, stowed with care
in some high attic of the mind's
            cold, unkind, dry air.
 

‘On Pakihore Ridge' and ‘This moment' provide some short, sweet windy vistas.          

‘Outback' contains some memorable descriptions - "Roads straight as a perspective line...a hoarse ululation...a magpie provides national coverage". Lovely.

‘Memory, for John', is, well, memorable; the uncertainty of different recollections juxtaposed with death on the tops and a collapsed bridge. It says a lot more than it says, and doesn't need that ellipsis again to emphasise that.

The final poem, ‘Song in another country', may,

 

dream on the lenient sand
where gum trees guard, tall sentinels,
the margins of the land.

 

but the voice is the familiar same, recognisable through the collection. Tender, earthy, grounded. Nice.

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