Elemental: Central Otago Poems

by Brian Turner, Gilbert van Reenen (Photographer)

A very special book for everyone who loves those two rugged New Zealand icons: Poet Brian Turner and the Central Otago he so loves and defends. For much of his distinguished career Turner has been a lucid and lyrical interpreter of this special part of New Zealand. About half of this collection of over 100 poems have been previously published – the other half are new. The book has an introduction written by the author, and the poems are grouped into four sections – Earth, Fire, Water and Wind; hence the title Elemental.

Turner's evocative, affecting poems are accompanied by photographs by the well-known Central Otago photographer Gilbert van Reenen .

Genres: Poetry

212 pages, Hardcover

First published August 3, 2012

About the author

Brian Lindsay Turner was a New Zealand poet, author, environmental campaigner and field hockey player. He was New Zealand Poet Laureate between 2003 and 2005.

Reviews

[Jill · Rating 5 out of 5]

Now this is what a poetry book should look like – lovely cover (because we all judge books by them), lots of poems (to give the book substance, or presence on the shelf – not that we’re sizeist or anything but wee thin poetry books tend to get lost amongst the fat ones) and lots of pictures or photographs that complement the overall theme of the book. In Elemental: Central Otago Poems, Turner’s evocative poetry, (actually more than 100 poems selected from over 30 years of writing) is accompanied by beautiful images of the Central Otago region by well-known photographer Gilbert van Reenen. Thus, a beautifully packaged volume that will stand out from the rest of the books on your shelf.
Poet Brian Turner lives, breathes and interprets this very special part of New Zealand that is Central Otago. A great read and a book to treasure – the epitome of perfect poetry.

[Jared Gulian · Rating 3 out of 5]

I liked this collection, and two of the poems here are so good that they make the entire collection worthwhile. I'll share those below.

I came to Brian Turner because I was told he's the NZ version of American 'nature poets' Mary Oliver and Wendell Berry. He's not, but that's okay. He's a keen observer of nature, lacks pretension for the most part, and occasionally shows a nice humor. Sometimes he also hits that thing that 'nature poets' do so well: showing nature and then pulling something from it that illuminates our lives. He won the Commonwealth Poetry Prize (1978), the NZ Book Award for Poetry (1993), and NZ Post Book Award for Poetry (2010).

Here are my two absolute favorite poems from this book.

PLACE

Once in a whle
you may come across a place
where everything
is as close to perfection
as you will ever need.
And striving to be faultless
the air on its knees
holds the trees apart,
yet nothing is categorically
this, or that, and before the dusk
mellows and fails
the light is like honey
on the stems of tussock grass,
and the shadows
are mauve birthmarks
on the the hills.

'Place' is both so beautiful and strange that I love it. And the sense of being so close to perfection is transcendent.

REMEMBERING SUMMER

The memory of what you'd love to do again
is on the rise. You'd run bare foot
over the grass on a summer's evening.

The sky like candy in the west
where the wind and the sun die down,
watch light flickering in the bounce

of water flowing over a cobbly bed
of gorgeous yellow, green and brown stones,
your mother's voice calling you home.

'Remembering summer' feels like it could be remembering childhood, but it could also be feeling called toward death. It's fabulous.

And lastly, here is a fragment which stopped me in my tracks, from the long poem 'Between Kokonga and Kyeburn':

Yet again, you're aware
That living one's life

isn't as simple as crossing
an open field...

I can't say why that fragment feels so insightful and profound to me, but it does.

Unfortunately, there a few poems in this collection that I found terribly sentimental (such as 'Somewhere, over the rainbow'), and there are some that feel like they only describe nature without the much-needed insight into life that makes for truly good poetry. There are also some really horrible rhyming poems where the rhymes feel forced and, I hate to say it, juvenile (such as 'Matakanui'). However, as I say, I liked the collection overall, and those standout poems above elevated the entire thing for me.

Also, the photographs of Central Otago are stunning!!!

[Sienna · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is the sort of poetry you want to read in a cushioned Adirondack chair on the porch, a dewy tumbler of whisky on the arm, admiring the familiar territory of home: feathery hills like sleeping giants, glassy lakes reflecting the uncomplaining blue of an empty sky, golden grassland. And livestock, but you can't see the sheep or cow droppings, can't smell the mingled scents of burnished leather and horse sweat. Still, they're there, too, in your mind. Maybe you're wearing a cowboy hat (there is a hole in the ozone, after all) and you tilt it down to ruminate, for a moment or three, upon the past, to feel sorrow and relief and gratitude for the backdrop of a life lived. "What matters most can't be attended to now / in a place where guilt and sincerity // are determined to merge as self-indulgence" ("In the Hill's Creek Cemetery").

I wish I loved Elemental's contents as thoroughly as I love the concept. The photography and design are gorgeous, the book a pleasure to see and hold. Do remove the jacket: another exquisite image lies beneath, billowing blue-lilac clouds hovering above a glacier-colored sky. The pages within are heavy, lustrous, and the words have been printed in a mixture of serif (poems and pagination) and sans serif (titles). You can mark your place with a brown ribbon stitched into the binding.

Turner comes across as astute, sincere, funny. The most successful pieces in this decades-spanning collection combine the three. The least successful rhyme awkwardly, taking the reader out of the moment and into a strange world where poetry is a little boy dressed up in his dad's work clothes, speaking in a voice not his own. I found the Water section surprisingly, uninspiringly predictable, consistent, and Air currents didn't fare much better. The final piece's repeated use of "further" where "farther" was needed meant it ended on a low note; I expect poets, who trade in words, to take greater care with them. But the good poems are very good indeed, complementing Gilbert van Reenen's photos of the Central Otago landscape so that, together, they give us a richer understanding of both the words and the place that inspired them. I just wish I had a creaking chair on the porch of a mainland house in the 'middle of nowhere' at the heart of this collection.

As a teaser, here are some of my favorites, mostly from the first (and stronger) half of the book. Enjoy.

Keep It Up

A farmer asked me
if I was working
and added
he didn't mean
writing.
I said
I was sawing
and stacking wood,
tidying the shed,
pruning the hedge.
'Is that work?'

'Yes,' he said,
'keep it up.'

Deserts, for Instance

The loveliest places of all
are those that look as if
there's nothing there
to those still learning to look

July, Maniototo

There are mountains
   everywhere
and the snow's trying
   to hide them.

You don't have to
   climb a mountain
to find yourself
   climbing one.

There's always another
   and another, and
to think some fools
   used to say

they went out and
   conquered them.

And

Here's a story. Our spirits
are fleeter than deer,
they live in the summer house
by the lake
that's jouncy in the sun.

They play in the moonlight,
a breeze like catkins
at our faces, and sing
of whatever will be,
and to hell with the past.

But we can't do that.
We're here. In the late afternoon
I stare into the sun,
not quite lost,
not quite found.

Sky

If the sky knew half
of what we're doing
down here

it would be stricken,
inconsolable,
and we would have

nothing but rain

Exit

I'll go down quickly one day in autumn I hope
without fanfare   when there's a few traces only
of stringy white cloud in the great sweep of blue
I've loved so long   and the grand slumbering
high hills and burly brown ranges
will be flaunting their shadows
the ridge lines like pleats diving to the valleys

There'll be a hawk circling in slow-motion
a falcon arrowing   plovers and magpies
niggly in paddocks   mallards idling on ponds
and far above geese spearing north

The sun will be strong and bright   the grasses
bleached pale yellow and tinged with red
and the river a vivacious blue-green
where it spurts from the gorge

And friends who've stuck with me
will gather by the river
and listen to the eddying past
and my son will have come home not long before
to tell me not to fret anymore
to slow down
and to affirm how much we enjoyed our times together

And I'll have burnt the notes I made
saying how sad I was to have found
I liked some friends more than they liked me
years ago   and that I wished
I'd found it easier to live with the mistakes
I made   and not to have been stripped bare
by the mismanagement of my personal life
and the way in which it was highlighted
by the circumstances of others

Say I was a lover
of the wide-open spaces   of empty lands
that aren't empty   of silence
that isn't silent

Say I meant well most of the time