Golden Weather (2004)

Cover illustration: Tony Ogle / Cover design: Kate Greenaway

Golden Weather: North Shore Writers Past and Present. Poems edited by Jack Ross / Prose edited by Graeme Lay. ISBN 0-908561-96-2. Auckland: Cape Catley, 2004. 244 pp.

Contents:

• Graeme Lay – Golden Weather: Prose Preface
• Jack Ross – Pure Enterprise: The Poetry of the North Shore

Baches

• Mary Stanley – Householder
• D’Arcy Cresswell – from Dear Lady Ginger
• –– from The Forest
• Stu Bagby – The Writing Holiday

Michael King - The Harmony of the Sea

Castor Bay

• Robin Hyde – from At Castor Bay
• –– The Verb
• Sam Hunt – At Castor Bay
• Wystan Curnow – from Castor Bay

Janet Frame - from An Angel at my Table

Rangitoto

• Charles Brasch – from Indirections
• –– A View of Rangitoto
• Keith Sinclair – The Bomb is Made

Jean Bartlett - Rahopara Pa

Maurice Duggan - A Small Story

Peter. A. Smith - from 1951

Devonport

• Lee Dowrick – remember
• A. R. D. Fairburn – Poem on the Advantages of Living at the Remuera End of the North Shore
• Kevin Ireland – Anzac Day, Devonport

Graeme Lay - The Island

Noel Virtue - from The Transfiguration of Martha Friend

Boats

• Mark Richards – Heading Home
• Jacqueline Crompton Ottaway – ghost ships beckon
• Jan Kemp – Sailing boats
• Michele Leggott – Bean Rock & Mr Whistler

Frank Sargeson - from More Than Enough

Sargeson

• Maurice Duggan – Calling on F. S. (1945)
• Riemke Ensing – lighthouse
• Janet Charman – Courtney Love and ‘The Hole That Jack Dug’
• Kevin Ireland – Ash Tuesday

Frank Sargeson - A Great Day

Fairburn

• A. R. D. Fairburn – The Cave
• A. R. D. Fairburn – La Belle Dame Sans Merci

A. R. D. Fairburn - Letters

Mason

• R. A. K. Mason – Old Memories of Earth
• R. A. K. Mason – Sonnet to MacArthur’s Eyes
• A. R. D. Fairburn – On R. A. K. Mason
• Hone Tuwhare – Ron Mason

Shonagh Koea - from Yet Another Ghastly Christmas

The Ferry

• C. K. Stead – 1932 The Student
• Michele Leggott – omphalos
• –– from Girls With Roses Being Carried On Tables To The Inn
• Bob Orr – Rimbaud’s Devonport Ferry
• Kendrick Smithyman – Mr Moriarty and the Ferry

Kevin Ireland - My Late Father

Growing Up

• Stu Bagby – First Dance
• Nick Williamson – Broken Light
• Alice Hooton – Going Spare
• Jacqueline Crompton Ottaway – At the top of the stairs

Barbara Anderson - from All the Nice Girls

Inhabitants

• Kevin Ireland – An ode to social members
• Alistair Paterson – from Qu’appelle
• Tony Green – Walking: 14 May 2002
• Barry Southam – An Anzac Town like Ours

Chad Taylor - from Electric

Commuters

• Kendrick Smithyman – About Setting a Jar on a Hill
• Jack Ross – Antipodes
• Michele Leggott – Keeping Warm

C. K. Stead - from All Visitors Ashore

Poets

• James K. Baxter – Ode to Auckland
• Frank McKay – from The Life of James K. Baxter
• Allen Curnow – A Small Room with Large Windows
• Kendrick Smithyman – If I Stepped Outside, in May ‘93
• C. K. Stead – K.S. (1922-95)

Maurice Gee - from In My Father’s Den

Beaches

• Nick Williamson – Home Movie
• Sonja Yelich – narrow neck from the boat ramp
• Kevin Ireland – Pity about the Gulls

Anna Kavan - Two New Zealand Pieces

Exiles

• Maurice Duggan – Letter from Gaul
• Kendrick Smithyman – Near Mahurangi
• Richard von Sturmer – from Sentient Dreams, 1, 2 & 5
• Lee Dowrick – somewhere else
• Karl Wolfskehl – Vor Ausfahrt, die Alten
• [trans J. R.] – Before Exodus: The Elders

Christine Cole Catley - Kindness, Death and Hope

Requiems

• A. R. D. Fairburn – Full Fathom Five
• Sam Hunt – My Father Today
• Wensley Willcox – Conversation with my Mother
• Jack Ross – Except Once

Bruce Mason - from The End of the Golden Weather

Epilogue

• Kendrick Smithyman – Just One April Morning by the Channel

Alphabetical List of Contributors

Samples:

Cape Catley Books

Available:

Christine Cole Catley
Cape Catley Ltd
Ngataringa Rd
PO Box 32-622
Devonport
North Shore City
Auckland
cape.catley@xtra.co.nz
www.capecatleybooks.co.nz

RRP: $NZ 34.99

Reviews & Comments:

1. Warwick Rogers. North & South 225 (December 2004): 109.
   

   
   Prose editor Graeme Lay, characterises the Shore as “Auckland’s Left Bank”. So, choosing whose work to include and whose to leave out would have been quite a task, but he has chosen well.
   
   The same can’t be said for the book’s poetry editor, Jack Ross of Massey University’s Albany campus. Call me a philistine if you like — and many of you will — but to me most of the poems in this collection, particularly those of the young contemporary poets, are utterly incomprehensible.



2. Scott Hamilton. "After the Golden Weather: Jack Ross and the New New Zealand." brief 32 (2005): 115-19.
   

   
   I wish that Jack and Graeme had thrown a few of the stories in Jack’s book into their anthology, because Monkey Miss Her Now is a determined attempt to come to grips with the place Michael King rejected. Jack’s unusual achievement is to treat the subject matter of this ‘new’, if not improved, New Zealand – language schools, suburban swing parties, boy racers, text message pests, and the rest – using a style and sensibility that hark back to the ‘classical’ New Zealand literary tradition that the best writers of the Old Shore did so much to establish.

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