Leicester Kyle, Five Anzac Liturgies. c/o Postal Agency, Ngakawau, Buller, 2000.
It’s a strange experience to drive across the Canterbury Plains, and to pass through, or see signposts pointing to, the five interlinked communities (Hawarden, Waikari, Rotherham, Culverden, Waiau) described and mapped (both literally and figuratively) in Leicester Kyle’s set of Anzac Day poems. The plains are dry, and flat, and monotonous – save for such occasional oases as Hamner Springs, or the Easter Island rock formations of the Weka Pass – but Leicester’s careful, loving celebration of the lives of their inhabitants lends them a kind of vicarious life accessible even to the outsider. As an Aucklander, I guess that’s what I’ll always be (or be perceived as), but it’s nice to feel the veil drop for a time, to feel privy to these dignified, though sometimes tormented and introverted lives. This volume contains some of Leicester’s finest poetry to date, particularly in the sections of chorus and response which punctuate each section:
Far from the shining sound:
Of the grey-blue water.
Where the one is so like the other:
Of the many-braided stream.
A longer extract may be found on page 38 of this magazine.
(3-4/3/2001)
Spin 39 (2001): 66.
[Available at: Leicester Kyle: Index (2011)]
[195 wds]
Spin 39 (2001)
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