Poetry
Jerusalem Sonnets: Poems for Colin Durning
Jerusalem Sonnets
James K. Baxter · 1970
Synopsis
A sequence of sonnets addressed to a friend and written at Jerusalem, Hiruhārama in Māori, on the Whanganui River, where the poet is trying to found a community. He calls himself mad and less than nothing; awake at night, he crosses the wet grass to kneel before the tabernacle lamp and speaks to God in a familiar, often comic tone. There pass the bees lodged above the church porch, prayer, doubt, the young people passing through; Māori words stand alongside Bible stories.
Context
In April 1968, a revelation, a dream according to other accounts, turned its author toward Jerusalem, a former Whanganui mission; he settled there in 1969. The poems are addressed to his friend Colin Durning, and their language, freer than in his earlier collections, takes on the tone of conversation. The Bibliography Room of Otago, a university workshop, printed them in 1970, under a cover designed by the painter Ralph Hotere.
Who it is for
Short poems, never translated into French, which can be read one by one; Māori words are mixed with the English.
Prizes and reception
Counted by several critics among his best poems; Ralph Hotere's cover drawing illustrates the 2001 anthology Best New Zealand Poems.
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