Holy Moly! I've got a reader!

The lovely and talented Helen Rickerby has found my blog. That means I actually need to post on it occasionally. I went to Helen's book launch on Friday night (My Iron Spine, HeadworX), and bought my first book of poetry in a year (the last one was Sue Wootton's hourglass). I get sent heaps of poetry books, in my role as Editor of the NZ Poetry Society's bimonthly magazine a fine line. I usually skim through them before I send them out to reviewers, though I don't have time to read them all. For the most part I find them unmemorable, but a few have caught my attention. This is, of course, a very personal appraisal. I like poetry that I can read and enjoy the first time I read it, then come back and read it again and feel like I'm having a cup of tea with an old friend. I don't mind the currently fashionable way of approaching poetry as a multi-layered text with meanings that don't jump up and hit you in the face until after several readings. I just think that some poets make it possible to see in new ways without making you have to work for the privilege. And they are still poetic in their use of language and structure. In that list I include Billy Collins, Glenn Colquhoun, Sue Wootton, Claire Beynon, Lewis Scott and now Helen Rickerby. Jenny Bornholdt has very strong moments, but isn't consistenly accessible. I've heard Richard Langston read only once, at this year's Winter Readings at the Wellington City Gallery, and I think he might be in that list as well. They are all what I would describe as lyrical story-tellers: amazing choice of words and arrangements thereof in a narrative that leaves enough to the reader's imagination to be interactive, but not so much as to be better told as a prose story. I guess I'm not a fan of the Poem as Mystery. I like surrealism better in real life than in literature. So I'm probably out of step with current practice. Too bad.