A SHETLAND POET

Sun (Auckland), Volume II, Issue 589, 15 February 1929, Page 14

A SHETLAND POET

(Written for THS SUN) ’ A revenue officer stationed at Lerwick, in the Shetland Islands, John Peterson, has two slim volumes of verse to his credit —“Roads and Ditches'' and “Streets and Starlight.” My acquaintance with Peterson dates back to the time when he was a boy at high school and I was either a policeman or a bar-tender, 1 forget which. My acquaintance with his poetry began in the early days of the war. I was on a Q-boat in the English Channel. Peterson was “somewhere in France,” writing poems for the London “Clarion” under the name ©f “Private Pat.” “Private Pat”—l wonder which occupation Peterson’s soul takes most delight In —composing verses or chopping logic? 1 remember him on one occasion translating the “Materialistic Interpretation of History” into Shetlandic for the benefit of an Idealistic taxi-driver. I remember him trying to convince a school teacher that it is better to raise all humanity one rung on the ladder of social betterment

than raise a few Individuals to the pinnacles of high heaven. I remember him explaining to the members of the Lerwick Economics Club how k "songs are wed, not only to the singer, but to the surroundings of the singer —to the hills and to the streets; to the •hips that sail and to the stars which guide them; to the squalor of life and