Time Traveller

Time Traveller, Robin Fry (Earl of Seacliff Art Workshop) ISBN 978-186942-118-2. RRP $28

Liz Breslin

This collection is Robin Fry's fourth, after Weather Report (Inkweed, 2002), Daymoon (HeadworX, 2005) and Inside it (ESAW mini book series No. 2, 2006). It's a very conscious collection, which commences with a poetic explanation of the ‘Sand boat' that graces the front cover - an overgrown sand pit boat "smothered in the leaves of fall" and "too precious by far to throw away/ it lives again on my book's cover - Sydney's sand boat - the time traveller/ with its cargo of dreams."

The collection is split into five collections, with more than forty poems spanning Amor Vincit Omnia, Time Traveller, Ako Tahi Tatou, Abroad and Homebodies. Across this breadth, there is much noticing. Of detail, history, fact, anecdote, connection, shape and form. There's even noticing of noticing!

Noticing

The man stood in the carpark

smiling at his thoughts -

so rarely glimpsed,

the inner life of a stranger -

like a flash of gold

in the lining of a waistcoat,

the blue of a kingfisher's wing.

As to the organisation of the work, the first section holds kisses, roses, dreams and rain. The repetition of "kiss him" in Hurry has a playful urgency and there is poignancy in the rusty emotion in ‘The servant'. Time Travellers contains histories, as well as an uncomfortable present day in Rave. The title of the third section is the motto of Wilford School in Petone - ‘We all learn as one.' Learning leaks in everywhere and there are some funny moments in ‘Finding Poems' -

Lunchtime diners find strings of senryu

among their sushi rolls.

At a birthday, children drink lemonade

while an orchard grows up around them

complete with party hats of oranges and lemons

and spondees thudding to the ground.

A trout swimming downstream

is observed from the Ewen Bridge

with a sprightly ballad caught in its teeth.

‘Abroad' and ‘Homebodies' need no translation as section titles and show respectively a breadth of travel observations and a playful love of home. It's in these sections, however, that a couple of the formal poems are also distracting. In ‘Ballad of the witch' Fry gives us her memories of the movies - ice-cream and a scary witch. The chance to hear this read aloud may mitigate some perceived rhythmic anomalies, but the forced rhyme endings grated against some of the more sophisticated poems in the collection. Likewise, in the villanelle ‘Whence Gaza mourns', an emotional modern rendering of Milton's words from Sampson Agonistes is marred by the obvious bow to form. Elsewhere, syntax and vertical/ horizontal patterning can be distracting, for example in ‘Out to it', charting a history of anaesthesia.

There is much to love, though. In the notes on the back cover, Fry writes "this collection encapsulates my thoughts and feelings about our beautiful planet; my beloved family and my many activities and interests". There's a playful love of life and language apparent in California haiku and Stencils. Here's the first of the' Stencils' -

(For Thomas)

children's concert

parents' worried eyes

in little tummies

b u t t e r f l i e s

'The high mysteries' is endearing in its dedication - For Hazel whose pre-school painting has a green wave - and builds from this simple wave to,

the dance of life

that weaves the scarves of silver

through the seas

the sounds and rhythms of an order

fashioned in the mind of some god,

older than creation,

solitary, terrifying,

whose voice is in the thunder

whose dance is in the storm.

Shakespeare plays an inspirational role in a couple of works here. The isle is full of noises takes its title from The Tempest and harks to the legendary place where there's

no right & wrong way

public - private

permission - password

alarms & keys

‘The literary wall' traces the history of Pyramus and Thisbe's kissing wall -

They have been kissing through the ages

since Shakespeare filched them from Ovid

who nabbed them from the Greeks

who stole them from the gods

who lost the plot...

no one remembers when.

Fry's love of words is obvious throughout this collection, along with her enthusiasm for her family and surrounds. Her penultimate poem, ‘Climate change', is almost a hymn to this.

New Zealand Poetry Society Te Hunga Tito Ruri o Aotearoa