POETS ANSWER THE CALL

New Zealand Listener, Volume 4, Issue 96, 24 April 1941, Page 20

POETS ANSWER THE CALL

Big Chance For New Zealand's "Mute Inglorious Miltons"

F the amount of poetic energy I expended by New Zealand poets in the P.E.N.’s Jessie Mackay Memorial Poetry Contest could be translated into kilowatt hours it would. probably be sufficient to light a small electric bulb for an indefinite period. . Apparently every man, woman and child in the country who has ever rubbed two lines of verse together, has entered for the contest. It closed a week or two ago, but Eric Bradwell, P.E.N.’s secretary, still hasn’t had time to count the

entries. At a rough guess, he says there are six or eight hundred. They fill a small suitcase. When the New Zealand centre of P.E.N. establisted an annual poetry prize in memory of the New Zealand poetess Jessie Mackay, the first contest of its kind which P.E.N. has ever sponsored in this country-it anticipated that the prestige attached would attract a fair number of entries from more or less recognised poets. But the contest was so well publicised, and the conditions so flexible, that it seems as if almost every poet in the Dominion has’ sent in an entry. With a nice sense of the peculiar fascination which the writing of verse has for people who seldom put pen to paper, P.E.N. invited entries from "writers or anyone interested." No restrictions, the preliminary announcement went on, would be placed ‘on the entrants, but various factors such as length and subject matter would be taken into con- | sideration before an award was made. Work already published was eligible, provided it had been published between October 1, 1939, and March 31, 1941. The judges for the first award would be Professor W. A. Sewell, Professor of English‘at Auckland University College, and:

W. F. Alexander, editor of the Evening Star, Dunedin, and co-editor of A Treasury of New Zealand Verse. Who could ask for more tempting conditions? Throughout New Zealand, in cities and in townships, in mansions and in’ humble shacks, poets sprang to their pens. Hard on the Post Office A few days after the contest was announced, the Wellington Post Office box number to which entries were to be sent was. changed, which meant that letters had to be readdressed individually by the Post Office. It was

not long before an official *phoned the P.E.N. secretary and complained that if it didn’t stop shortly, they would have to put extra staff on to readdressing letters. But still they poured in. Just before the contest closed, many anxious poets spent good money registering their entries. Long after closing day, entries still arrived. While the P.E.N. people have not yet had a chance to study the vast heap of literature that has arrived, they have no hesitation in acclaiming it as the literary phenomenon of the century. Entries vary from long _ narrative poems of 40 _ foolscap

pages to minute fragments of five or six lines. Some poets have been content to send one entry; others have sent 20 or 30. Published work not being barred, all sorts of collections. have turned up, from "slim volumes" bearing the imprint of exclusive London publishing houses to brochures turned out on country printing presses, Many of the poets whose verse has been printed in recognised journals overseas are almost unknown in New Zealand. Hope Springs Eternal As any newspaper editor knows to his sorrow, hope springs eternal -in the poetic breast. Many entrants remarked "This poem has not been published"; the greater percentage, though, said "This. poem has not been published yet." Covering letters, in fact, contained a variety of strange comments. Some were modest:-"This is my first attempt at writing poetry, and I am sure it is not good enough, but I am sending it in all the same." Others had a fine, healthy confidence-"I feel that this is a remarkably fine poem," or "My friends call me the John Keats of New Zealand." | A large proportion of the entries are handwritten. This in no way disqualifies them, thought it is generally admitted that a judge’s enthusiasm is. liable- to

suffer from the effort of reading through untidy handwriting. Subject matter varies almost as much as length. Many poems contain elegiac references to Jessie Mackay; the war is another prominent theme; and there are the usual exclamations of delight over tuis, creeks, tree ferns, and the New Zealand bush, Form is also varied, though apparently the great bulk of New Zealand poets have not been influenced deeply by free verse, sprung rhythm, symbolism, or, indeed, any of the numberless latterday cults. To most New Zealanders, poetry is still a regular number of regularly accented lines divided regularly into regularly rhyming verses. But who knows what undiscovered genius lies among those hundreds of poems? The P.E.N. is thinking of adopting as a battle cry on occasions like this, the slogan: If there are mute inglorious Miltons in New Zealand, P.E.N. will find them."