I’ve got anthologies on my mind this week. Best NZ Poems 2007 is about to be launched online and the closing date for entering the third Six Pack has come and gone. What amazed me with the Six Pack was how secretive everyone became. Many of us are writing on similar, even identical topics, but when it came to discussing what we were going to submit, even the most convivial writer clammed up. Five grand is five grand. Think of how many power bills you can pay with that!

Paula Green edited Best NZ Poems 2007 (Institute of Modern Letters). She’s heartened that there’s “a poetry community that is alive and kicking” in Aotearoa. Paula says, “What makes a good poem is whatever it takes to lift the words beyond the sum of their parts, beyond formula or well intentioned recipe. A good poem may be loud or quiet, traditional or innovative, complex or simple.”

I like how Paula recognises that poems have a life force. That energy creates entities. I must run this past the cast of Outrageous Fortune next time they camp on the lawn beside my office for lunch and a bit of privacy. Wonder what Munter would say?

It seems that Maori, Pasifika and Asian voices remain under represented ‘per capita’ in mainstream written poetry. Paula mentions Huia and the Earl of Seacliff Art Workshop as publishers of these other voices. Then there are online anthologies such as Trout and BMP. There should be more. At this point I’d like to acknowledge Bernard Gadd who edited Pacific Voices: An Anthology of Maori and Pacific Writing (Macmillan 1989), Other Voices (Brick Row/Hallard, 1989) and Other Voices 2 (Brick Row/Hallard 1991). These books were valuable outlets for people like me who were looking for mentors and trying to get published in the 1980s and 1990s.

I’ve sniffed a few changes in the publishing wind but I’d really welcome public discussion, perhaps at a literary festival, about what makes a poem a good poem, the form and function of poetry in different cultures (including socio-economic cultures), how oral cultures are adapting their storytelling heritage to the written word and what happens when these poems are experienced beyond their original geographic and cultural context. What is lost during the process of cultural translation? Does this matter or are the readers of poetry entitled to derive their own meaning from this art form?

 A simple example of the tension that can arise over ‘what makes a good poem’ emerged in my previous life as a school teacher. I was working through a unit standard and talking to my class about avoiding clichés and being original. Keep in mind that the students at this school spoke more than 30 languages between them and were a cross section of Maori, Pasifika, European, Asian, Balkan and Middle Eastern cultures… plus others. An uproar ensued. One of the discussion points I vividly remember was the rejection of the English department’s negative perception of clichés.
    “What’s wrong with words or ideas or expressions that are time worn?”
    “How can you overuse good words and expressions?”
    “If they’re used heaps then they have to be good.”
    “If those words say what we think and feel and everyone uses them, then I will too because then everyone knows what I mean.”

I came to the conclusion that the class valued clichés and responded to the familiar and what they could make familiar. They didn’t see the point of innovation for the sake of being different when something already existed and worked. New things replace things that are no longer useful or interesting or make life easier.

The reality was that they would be internally assessed by an English department who derided clichés and considered them evidence of a student’s lack of imagination or externally assessed by a carefully selected panel of markers. No doubt, these experienced teachers wouldn’t be too keen on clichés appearing in a ‘good’ poem or a ‘good’ piece of prose. They wouldn’t earn my students any marks for originality.

A time worn phrase has a history, a moment of birth, a life of its own. It can be passed on and inherited. It’s a cultural reference point as powerful and enduring as any established visual motif.

In French cliché refers to a stereotyped phrase or expression. But I’ve also heard the word used in relation to old time photography. It’s the impression on the negative or plate that’s developed into the final photograph. It’s something full of potential and life.

I say, “Long live clichés!” And by the way, my love is a red, red hibiscus.

Book titles are meant to be meaningful and capable of luring the eyes and ears of potential readers. Tapa Talk (Huia:2007) the title of my poetry collection is derived from a poem within the book. But more importantly, the title will forever remind me of what it’s like for someone addicted to the printed word to wake up one morning and be unable to decode written text. Quite simply – I could no longer read or write.

I’d been a secondary school teacher for many years and was finding the demands of classroom teaching unbearable. One February morning I walked into my room, looked at the class and knew I wouldn’t be there long enough to remember a single face or name.  They were lovely children and apparently my look of horror cast a shadow over them for the rest of the week. I’d finally run out of the type of energy you need to create and sustain engagement with 100-150 students a day and then return home to your own children and be an effective parent.  

I felt trapped within the role of ‘performing seal’ and didn’t want to bark for rewards, dance on cue or clap my flippers any more. I’d had it! I resented the fact that other people’s children got the best of me while my own children got the drained ‘mummy-husk’.

A trip to the family doctor, another sleepless night and the dawning of a world in which the written word, once the staple of my enjoyment and livelihood, became an agent of torment. Have you ever tried to keep an appointment when you can’t read street signs, maps or names on doors? How about getting your own money out of a cashflow machine, filling in insurance forms, writing a letter of resignation or trying to ring a number when numerals no longer having meaningful associations.

I’ve been fine for a long time now, but words and books have become even more precious to me. The turning point was when I looked outside at hibiscus and banana trees flourishing in my garden and realised that I could find traces of them in the visual text of a tapa work hanging on my wall. I could also locate constellations in the sky and showed Sirius (my dog) his namesake. And when I looked at my partner, I associated all aspects of him with tapa motifs. I was back on the communication bandwagon and the ability to decode books flooded back into my life. It’s hard to describe the joy I felt when I read my own book – Tapa Talk.