New Zealand Poetry Society Te Hunga Tito Ruri o Aotearoa
Villon in Millerton
Villon in Millerton James Norcliffe. (Auckland University Press, 2007) ISBN 9781869403836
Harvey Molloy
James Norcliffe's sixth volume opens with ‘Villon in Millerton', a long poem in which the fifteenth century troubadour Villon, exiled from France for his crimes, hides out in the West Coast town of Millerton. Villon - who has been translated into English by Rossetti and Pound - is perhaps best known for his 'Ballade des dames du temps jadis' (‘Ballad of yesterday's women') which ends with the line "Mais ou sont les neiges d'antan?" ("Where are the snows of yesteryear?") and for the imaginary wills (bequeathing his soul, his stolen wine, his love etc) of his Testaments.
Norcliffe's Villon is the kiwi man alone; "tired of screechy voices/of brotherhood and sisterhood"; he's "tired of chipped Formica" and "sick of the Feltex floors." He's in exile from domestic life and on the run from the cops. Employing the imaginary wills of Villon's Testament, he bequeaths a "thundering yellow fart" to the helicopters, "astigmatism arthritis" to the cops and the "crock of shit that is the past" to the future. Like Vincent O'Sullivan, Norcliffe has a great ear for New Zealand English and like O'Sullivan's, Norcliffe's poetry combines intellectual concerns with visceral impact. It's a staggeringly good poem: bitter, humorous, middle-aged and angry.
The book ends with another long poem 'Samuel Marsden in Glory.' Marsden is Villon's opposite or other. If Villon is the condemned criminal, Marsden is the judge (in a vital note to the poem, Norcliffe focuses on Marsden's reputation in Australia "as the 'flogging parson', a man of violence, prejudice and cupidity" who "despised the Irish and looked down particularly on women convicts.") If Villon is bohemian then Norcliffe's Marsden reminds us that in the catalogue of bastards there might be no bigger bastard than a respectable one. And whilst Marsden sees himself and his life experience in Biblical terms comparing himself to Daniel and Noah, the Villon personae has a less grandiose view of his own life as "just a mad ripple." What Villon gains from lacking Marsden's sense of order and purpose (and brutal conviction) is a sharpness of perception and a more imaginative way of thinking about his own experience through - dare I say it? -poetry.
Between these two engaging long poems are shorter works of many delights. I especially enjoyed the Anglo-Saxon half-lined alliteration of 'Boiled Sweets' and the prose poem 'Squeegee.' Villon in Millerton is an accomplished work by an established poet who continues to entertain and delight. The simple, striking jacket design by Christine Hansen perfectly complements the poems.
