Ted Jenner was a friend of mine. I guess one of the things I appreciated most about Ted was his unfailing cheerfulness and unflappability even when things appeared to be going very, very wrong indeed. Perhaps it was his long years working as a Classics lecturer in Malawi that accustomed him to sudden emergencies, or perhaps it was the hand-to-mouth nature of his life as a writer and teacher in New Zealand, but I never saw him at a loss for a wise and witty thing to say.
I had heard that he was ill, and even in hospital, but I'm sorry to say that the news of his death from cancer in the early hours of Friday morning still came as a shock. He wore his years lightly. He was one of that group of baby-boomer New Zealand poets, all born in 1946, at the close of World War II – Sam Hunt, Bill Manhire, Ian Wedde prominent among them – who've been so influential on our literature.
Much though I always enjoyed chatting to Ted – he was a marvellously learned man, a trained classicist with an expertise in Ancient Greek – I suppose it would be true to say that most of my knowledge of him came through his books. The below is probably not a complete list, but it includes all the titles I myself own:
- A Memorial Brass. Eastbourne, Wellington: Hawk Press, 1980.
- Dedications. Auckland: Omphalos Press, 1991.
- The Love-Songs of Ibykos: 22 Fragments. Images by John Reynolds. Auckland: Holloway Press, 1997.
- Sappho Triptych. Auckland: Puriri Press, 2007.
- Writers in Residence and Other Captive Fauna. Auckland: Titus Books, 2009.
- [Ed.] brief the fortieth (July 2010). Auckland: Titus Books, 2010.
- The Gold Leaves (Being an Account and Translation from the Ancient Greek of the 'So-Called' Orphic Tablets). Pokeno: Atuanui Press, 2014.
- ‘Complete Gold Leaves: Transcriptions of Sixteen Ancient Greek Gold Lamellae. Compiled with English Translations.’ In Bill Direen, ed. Percutio 10: A Special Issue devoted to two projects by Classicist and poet Edward Jenner. Dunedin: Percutio Publications, 2016.
- The Arrow that Missed. Lyttelton: Cold Hub Press, 2017.
Looking back, I seem to have written quite a lot about Ted's work over the years:
- There's a brief introduction to it here: ‘Hooked on Classics.’ The Imaginary Museum (3/11/09). http://mairangibay.blogspot.com/2009/11/hooked-on-classics.html.
- Then there's my review-essay of his book Writers in Residence, ‘Troubling Our Sleep: Ted Jenner’s Postmodern Classicism,” in Ka Mate Ka Ora #8 (September 2009): 46-66. http://www.nzepc.auckland.ac.nz/kmko/08/ka_mate08_ross.asp.
- And, more recently, there's my review of The Arrow that Missed in Poetry New Zealand Yearbook 2018 (March 2018): 308-10. https://jackrossopinions.blogspot.com/2017/02/the-arrow-that-missed-2018.html.
I'm not sure that there's any need to repeat all that here. In any case, it’s readily available online. Suffice it to say that for me, Ted Jenner combined the twin virtues of precise, scrupulous scholarship with an equally strong taste for experimental fiction and poetry – not that I think he saw much difference between the two genres – and the way he wrote, there really wasn't.
I recall being quite concerned when I heard that Ted was planning to review my chapbook Papyri: Love poems & fragments from Sappho & elsewhere (2007) for brief 36. Knowing no Greek, I’d adapted my versions from a literal French translation I’d picked up in a second-hand shop. I knew that he himself, adept at ancient Greek, had done his own translations in the beautiful small-press Sappho Triptych.
It came as a huge surprise when he praised my book. I suppose a true scholar has far less need to be picky and pedantic than those with a half-knowledge of the field. In any case, it certainly showed the breadth of his sympathies with unusual takes on the classics!
I’ve borrowed the title for this piece from his first collection, A Memorial Brass, exquisitely printed by Alan Loney at the Hawk Press in 1980. It seems best to conclude with some more of Ted's own words, taken from the title poem in that book:
My dear, they call us bourgeoisMy profoundest condolences to Ted's wife, Vasalua. If he were here I'm sure he could find the perfect words to thank her for making the last years of his life perhaps the happiest of all.
But it was essentially
A bourgeois thing to do –
An image of conjugal
Faith – to cross the hands over chest
And breast and stand on
The goblin pups, a monumental
Brass patent
For the bloodstream-fevers.
I remember it was cold
That May with added expense, upkeep
of allotment, and late
Spring blooms falling fierce as
Snow on the gale-lashed
Oats. Very soon a priest mumbled eight
Sacrificia patriarchae nostri
Above us. Commenting now on the
Canon of his mass, I
Like to think it was
Easy in Abraham's time –
Knowledge and fear were deliberate
Then, total, without cover; but
As for us, we lie awake
Until the sleeping's over.
As for me, I'd like to say once more Ave atque vale: Hail and farewell, to one of the finest scholars and poets I've ever known. Perhaps we'll meet again some day, when the sleeping's over.
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(8-13/7/21)
brief 57, ed. Olivia Macassey (Pokeno: Titus Books, tba)
[857 wds]
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