New Zealand Listener – August 24, 2019

46 LISTENER AUGUST 24 2019

Books & Culture

A

more cautious antholo-

gist would have delivered

a chronological selection

of women’s poetry. A less

imaginative academic would

have charted the history of

women’s invisibility in our

literary canon.

Instead, in her groundbreaking new

book, Wild Honey, award-winning poet,

critic, anthologist, judge and all-round

poetry champion Paula Green has built

a house, a metaphorical open home

crammed with 201 poets from the past

150 years grouped in different “rooms” of

shared themes, techniques and interests.

Milling about in the kitchen, for example,

we find Cilla McQueen, Morgan Bach and

Jill Chan. In the nursery, Emma Neale,

Margaret Mahy, Joy Cowley and Tayi

Tibble; in the music room, Aldous Hard-

ing, Jenny Bornholdt and Bernadette Hall;

in the lounge, Karen Zelas, Ruth Carr and

Helen Rickerby; wandering through the

garden, Ursula Bethell, Anna Smaill, Sue

Wootton and Dinah Hawken.

It is noisy, refreshing and proudly

anchored in the domestic.

“When I was looking back to the

20th century, I was feeling troubled

by the way women were shunted

into the shade, undermined and

devalued and criticised for writing

domestic poems,” says Green, at

the home near Te Henga (Bethells

Beach) that she shares with

her husband, artist Michael

Hight. She points to Eileen

Duggan, neglected by Allen

Curnow in his anthology

A Book of New Zealand Verse 1923-45,

vanishing into the shadows after publish-

ing five remarkable collections of poems

“with only a trail of disparaging criticism

to mark her passing”.

“And it still goes on. You still see

women – and men – being criticised for

the tedium of domestic poetry, where I

feel this is a subject that is never redun-

dant. So I wanted to write a book that

brought women into the light. I didn’t

want the book to be theoretical – I so

often see women poets being hijacked

to back theory – but I wanted it to show

there are no rules when it comes to

poetry, that there are many pathways into

that house. I wanted to open all the win-

dows and all the doors to create as much

movement as possible. Poetry is so open

and that is what makes it glorious for

me – the openness and open-spiritedness

of it.”

Green is an engaging host, throw-

ing open the curtains, whisking off the

dust sheets, coursing through different

poetic traditions in animated homage to

women’s writing. She describes Hannah

Mettner’s poem about her father, a man

who “scuttles between cut grass and God,

two dedications that shape her father’s

day”. She explores the tension between

“distance and intimacy” in Ingrid Hor-

rocks’ second collection of poetry, the rich

layering in Anne Kennedy’s words that

“tracks like a narrative yet sidetracks like a

baroque painting”, the “musical intensity”

of Neale, the “sonic fluency” of Bornholdt,

the political ferocity and poetic daring of

Blanche Baughan and Jessie Mackay, the

raw untamedness implicit in the book’s

title.

“Honey has that sense of sweet-

ness but it is also bitter and rough

and textured. And it is out there

in the wild – that is where

women’s poetry began.”

Green avoids the “toxic

anecdotes” on what men

have done to the detriment

of women poets, includ-

ing her own experience of

being “sidelined and belit-

tled”. Rather, she says, “I

am laying down a challenge

Poetic justice

Paula Green’s epic collection of 150 years of NZ women’s poetry

puts a new spotlight on writers once derided for their domestic

focus and includes figures from outside literature. by SALLY BLUNDELL

“I wanted it to show

there are no rules when

it comes to poetry, that

there are many pathways

into that house ... Poetry

is so open and that is

what makes it glorious.”

BOOKS • MUSIC • CLASSICAL • FILM

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