Baxter, James K.

New Zealand, (1926-1972)

Jerusalem Sonnets

If Ngati-Hiruharama turns out to be no more than
A child’s dream in the night – well then,
I have a garden, a bed to lie on,
And various company – some clattering pigeons roost
At my back door, and when I meditate in the paddock
Under the apple tree two healthy dung-smeared pigs
Strike up a conversation, imagining, I think,
I am their benefactor – that should be quite enough
To keep the bowels moving and the mind thankful;
Yet when the sun rises my delusion hears him shout
Above the river fog – ‘This is the hill fort
Of our God; it is called Hiruharama!
‘The goat and the opossum will find a home
Among the rocks, and the river of joy will flow from it!’

James K. Baxter. Collected Poems. Edited By John Weir. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1980.

Beatrice

He who goes up a leafy path
From the abrasive, female town,
Her breadless, black, stepmothering streets,
Her holes and ladders of escape,
Wishes to find the voice of one
Pure waterfall among the boulders
In the high bush, pouring light on him,
Or a woman’s moon-bright, saving face,
But finds the image he has made,
One who holds the judgement prism,
Who sees the swinish bristle sprout
On his rough jowl in Circe’s cage,
And will accuse, and will accuse,
Till he can tear the heart out of his side.
1961-1976

James K. Baxter. Collected Poems. Edited By John Weir. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1980.

A Little Letter to Auckland Students

O you who dwell in halls of learning,
I think I smell the porridge burning;
The Philistines are at the gate,
The censors of the Welfare State –
With the jawbone of an ass I’ll whack ’em!
The story that I wrote for Craccum
In rhymed octosyllabic verse
Has fallen under the censor’s curse
Because Miss Glubb acquired no knowledge
Of sexual play at Training College,
And I left in to scare the birds,
The mildest of four-letter words.
Though I can’t tell you what goes on
In the holy hutch of Wellington
Where Gordon, Garrett, Blaiklock, each,
Gang-shag the Liberty of Speech
By saying my beatnik verses can’t
Be published with the usual grant,
Yet I can tell you this at least
Now that the wind is in the East:
Three moa-grey professors in a row
Most ably represent the status quo.
I shall not breathe a word of the agenda
Of that Committee of which I am a member;
But let me praise with a high heart
The burgeoning of Moral Art!
Those mighty odes by Holyoake,
That Departmental lightning-stroke
When eighteen poet-bureaucrats
Embroidered sonnets on their spats,
The epics that our lecturers write
With trembling fingers night by night,
The ballads by the League of Housewives
Who, though they lead most moral lives,
Describe with force the groans and yells
Of con men in Mount Crawford cells,
The local songs our wharfies sing
As they load mutton in a sling –
When all Pig Island sparks with song
And all of it is crystal-pure,
What right have I to call it wrong
That my coarse-gutted verse should be
Spaded away like hen-manure?
O wisdom of the bourgeoisie!
Should I get drunk or laugh like mad
When Mrs Grundy buckles on
The armour of her Galahad?
The threat to Moral Art has gone
And I will turn the other cheek;
The students, sensitive but weak,
Hearing a poet speak of sex,
Might buy a tube of Koromex;
Pig Island sows must guard their young
Who have not yet the mind mature
To sift out gold from their own dung;
Like an empty jug, the Varsity stays pure.
To Porirua, Avondale,
I’ll go whene’er my spirits fail,
And looking round those sparkling wards
Bless the sweet accident of birth
That dropped me on Pig Island earth
Which has no cranks or cops or bawds
Or drunks or queers, or any sorrow
Except that we will die tomorrow.
You Varsity maidens, sweet, refined,
Who do not sit on a behind
To answer questions lecturers set
From Romeo and Juliet,
O purest in a world that’s pure!
May you immaculate endure
Studying Milton’s poetry,
And when in Holy Matrimony
To another soul you link your fate,
May he be a servant of the State,
A man who’s led a blameless life
And well trimmed by the gelder’s knife.
May no vile mildew touch at all
The blue Picasso on your wall,
And if at times you wonder why
You wake at night and want to die,
Such little doubts you’ll swiftly cancel
Upon a Marriage Guidance Council.
But as for me, my doom is plain;
Outside the window I’ll remain
With callgirls, jockeys, spades and drunks,
Who read no Milton in their bunks,
Describing in barbaric verse
A non-Platonic universe
In which Pope Paul or I may be
The natural son of Cybele,
Digging in my private dunghill
Outside, outside the culture mill –
But soft! These verses will be read
When the inquisitors are dead.
1964-1976

James K. Baxter. Collected Poems. Edited By John Weir. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1980.

About the Poet:

James Keir Baxter, New Zealand (1926-1972), was a poet, educator and advocate for social reforms in New Zealand. While he wrote poetry and published throughout his lifetime, his alcoholism and frequent shifts of religion and lifestyle were the center of much controversy and speculation.

Called “one of the most precocious poets of the century” whose neglect outside of New Zealand is baffling. Baxter’s writing was affected by his alcoholism. His work drew upon Dylan Thomas and Yeats; then on MacNeice and Lowell, as well as native Māori atavisms.

Baxter’s later years were mostly spent in Jerusalem, a small Māori settlement (known by its Māori transliteration, Hiruharama) on the Whanganui River. Here Baxter lived a sparse existence and made frequent trips to the nearby cities where he worked with the poor and spoke out against what he perceived as a social order that sanctions poverty. [DES-03/18]

Additional information:

James K. Baxter from NZHistory
New Zealand Book Council on James K. Baxter