Nov/Dec 2009 Issue

Karl Stead, Emeritus Professor of English at Auckland University, poet, academic, critic and novelist, is one of the most internationally acclaimed New Zealand writers of his generation. This weighty volume, which won the Anthology Section at the 2009 Montana New Zealand Book Awards, charts the evolution of Stead’s creative endeavours in the field of poetry, covering a span of fifty-five years. Although awarded many prizes in various literary genres during his lifetime, Stead considers himself first and foremost a poet; he started his career writing poetry and it is the literary medium in which he feels most comfortable and which affords him the most pleasure. I counted 448 poems in this volume, spanning fourteen published collections (together with a selection of earlier uncollected pieces from the years 1951-1961), roughly equating to eight publishable poems a year for fifty-five years – a prodigious output by any standard. The book affords many delights when opened at random, but also repays a slower, chronological read.


Scrutinising the development of a poetic voice over half a century provides many insights into the processes of creative writing. Stead’s detailed annotations chart with honesty his own evolution as poet – the failures as well as the triumphs – providing an indispensable reference guide for any future scholars of his work. As he notes in the foreword, “I have tried [. . .] to represent my own history as it occurred, and not make it look better, or myself wiser, more mature, more adroit, than I was at the time” (xv).

'a prodigious output by any standard'

Much of Stead’s work as a poet can be said to concern his own notion of national identity and what it means to be both a New Zealander and a citizen of the world. His has always been a sceptical voice, with an occasional sense of disconnection and separation. Many of his early poems, written in Europe, are a reflection on the dichotomy of the New World versus the Old, the poems being the immediate creative issue of that conjunction. For a fifth generation New Zealander, the Mediterranean provides constant reminders of Europe’s ancient history, so different from what he chooses to call “home”. Parts of his collection, such as “Walking Westward”, written on a trip to the south of France towards the end of the ’70s, exemplify the above statement, moving from the sounds and smells of San Remo to Auckland Art Gallery, in Stead’s metaphorical long walk west: “Mediterranean / a room with southern light / [. . .] Picasso’s horned figure brows in leaf / [. . .] and at the Auckland Art Gallery / I stood breathless before it” (109). Stead’s humour surfaces throughout the entire volume, as in the poem “C.K”, which acknowledges his own notorious reputation for irascibility: “One day I’ll meet / the bastard, surprise / him, introduce / myself. ‘Hullo, C.K. / I’m Karl. We haven’t / met’. ‘Let’s / keep it like that,’ / he says, unfriendly, and turns away” (493).

No student of postcolonial poetry can afford not to read this exemplary volume, with its almost autobiographical remit, charting as it does, the genesis and development of an outstanding postcolonial poetic voice.