Showing posts with label Leicester Kyle. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Leicester Kyle. Show all posts

Sunday

Letters to a Psychiatrist (2017)



Cover design: Lisa Baudry


Leicester Kyle. Letters to a Psychiatrist. Afterword by Jack Ross. ISBN 978-0-473-41327-9. Paper Table Novellas, 1. Auckland: Paper Table, 2017. iv + 87 pp.



Contents:

Leicester Kyle:
Letters to a Psychiatrist

Jack Ross:
Afterword: Welcome to Novella



Blurb:

What might happen if you decided to leave civilization behind and live rough on the West Coast of New Zealand’s South Island? Leicester Kyle’s intimate knowledge of the ecology of the region provides a solid underpinning to this compelling tale of a mid-life crisis that turns into a visionary quest.


Leicester by the longdrop
[photograph: Jack Ross (2000)]

Bio-note:

The Rev. Leicester Kyle (1937-2006) trained as a botanist before entering the Anglican Church in his twenties. He took early retirement in 1995 to devote himself to full-time writing. In pursuit of this, he moved to Millerton on the West Coast in the late 1990s. He is perhaps best known for his experiments in eco-poetics, but his prose work shows many of the same themes and concerns.

The twin websites set up by Leicester’s literary executors, David Howard and myself, have been designed to hold all of his extant work in electronic form, along with secondary and critical material.



Leicester in Millerton

Online Texts:

Leicester Kyle Index

Leicester Kyle Texts

Samples:

Paper Table



Available:

Paper Table
6 Hastings Rd
Mairangi Bay
Auckland 0630
New Zealand
Publisher's contact



Brand design: Lisa Baudry


Reviews & Comments:

  1. Stu Bagby, Launch speech for Leicester Kyle's Letters to a Psychiatrist (December 3, 2017):

    The book's blurb asks: “What might happen if you decided to leave civilization behind and live rough on the West Coast of New Zealand's South Island? ...”

    Or, perhaps we could say: It's a tale wherein the seventeenth century divine Norris of Bemerton, partly disguised as an unarmed Barry Crump/Robinson Crusoe, lets an omelette stand between him and sacrilege. (See Page 59).

    ... I wrote a small series of poems called “Letters to Leicester” one of which finishes by asking him: “perhaps you also saw The Secrets of the Great Illusionists Explained?” I was referring to a television programme, but over the years I've come to think I was onto something, that is, there was something of the shaman about him. Having said that, perhaps it is true of many priests.

    Reading Letters to a Psychiatrist sometimes reminded me of Graham Greene's whiskey priest, though I picture Leicester being more at ease with the sherry and fruit cake he once offered at a book launch

    ... Readers can be reassured that the writing employed in Letters to a Psychiatrist is not stilted or hard going. It is a beguiling read, written with skill and sureness. If today's publication could be described as a canoe with two outriggers, I have great pleasure in claiming that this third of the vessel has been launched.




•



Posted by at No comments:
Labels: , , , , , ,

The Millerton Sequences (2014)



Cover design: Ellen Portch

Leicester Kyle. The Millerton Sequences. Edited with an Introduction by Jack Ross. Poem by David Howard. ISBN 978-0-9922453-5-1. Pokeno, Auckland: Atuanui Press, 2014. 140 pp.



Contents:



Jack Ross:
Introducing Leicester Kyle
Chronology
Select Bibliography

David Howard:
Instead of, In Memory

    Prologue:
  1. Five Flowers at Millerton Mine [13/1/99]

  2. Picnic in the Mangatini [21/3/00]

  3. Rain [11/1/02]

  4. Death of a Landscape [Feb 2004]

  • So …
  • We argue …
  • Like Dresden, where …
  • Nature makes mistakes …
  • and then you die …
  • Aubade
  • An Aside: Advice to the Rehabilitator
  • [map]


  • The Catheter Club [20/12/04]


  • Rain Poems [19/1-2/2/06]

    • Epilogue:



    Colophon:

    This book is issued in memory of
    The Rev. Leicester Kyle
    poet, priest, ecologist

    in commemoration of his death
    on July 4th, 2006

    and to celebrate the publication
    of his online
    Collected Poems
    [http://leicesterkyle.blogspot.com/]
    between July 4th, 2011
    & January 9th, 2013



    Blurb:

    These six poetry sequences, previously uncollected, represent some of the very best work from the second half of Leicester Kyle’s writing career: the Millerton period, dating roughly from his departure from Auckland in April 1998, after the death of his first wife Miriel, to his own death in Christchurch Hospital in July 2006.

    Beginning with a short sequence grounded in Leicester’s expert knowledge of Botany, “Five Flowers at Millerton Mine”; the selection moves on to “Picnic In The Mangatini,” which is probably as close as Leicester ever got to a straightforward set of “nature” poems; thence to a meditative evocation of place, “Rain”; then to a work of ecological protest against the proposed strip-mining of the Millerton plateau, “Death of a Landscape”; then a searching personal confession, written towards the very end of his life, “The Catheter Club”; and lastly to “Rain Poems,” which, in aggregate, sound like a bittersweet farewell to the West Coast and its weather.


    Leicester by the longdrop
    [photograph: Jack Ross (2000)]

    Abstract:

    Leicester Kyle was born in Christchurch in 1937. After initial training as a botanist, he entered the Anglican Church in 1963, only to take early retirement in 1995 after his conversion to a new religion: poetry. His fascination with postmodern poetics was succeeded by a more relaxed sense of the indigenous and anecdotal in the work written after his move to Millerton on the West Coast in the late 1990s. He died of cancer in 2006.

    The twin websites set up by Leicester’s literary executors, David Howard and myself, have been designed to hold all of his extant work in electronic form, along with secondary and critical material.



    Leicester Kyle

    Online Texts:

    Leicester Kyle Index

    Leicester Kyle Texts

    Samples:

    Atuanui Press



    Available:

    Atuanui Press
    1416 Kaiaua Rd
    Pokeno 2473
    RD3
    New Zealand
    editor@atuanuipress.co.nz

    Atuanui Bookshop
    RRP: $NZ 30.00



    Reviews & Comments:

    1. Hamish Dewe, "An Introduction to the Millerton Sequences." Poetry NZ Yearbook 1 [Issue #49] (October, 2014): 216-20.

      Leicester Kyle’s latest book covers the final period of his life, after leaving Auckland to live in Millerton. In the context of these poems, this seems like a denial of the overly-human urban world in favour of the more mediated world of the human-in-nature, a rejection of the human as master in favour of the human whose mastery is conditional upon his place within the larger context of the natural world.

      The five central sequences of the book are presented in chronological order, bookended by two standalone pieces, “One Hundred Steps to Millerton Mine”, and “Red Dog/Brown”. “One Hundred Steps to Millerton Mine” serves as a great introduction to the core sequences, introducing most of the main themes.

      … the sequences, with the exception of “The Catheter Club”, have a remarkable consistency of reference. Parallel phrases and constructions crop up regularly. The hundred steps are an ascent, to “the paradise prepared”, the made world of the original mine, now in the final phase of reclamation by the bush. It’s the book’s first example of human endeavour on a human scale, a scale on which any damage wrought can be redeemed by natural processes within the span of a couple of generations. We ascend the steps through the teeming bush and ascend to our own realm of activity and commerce, without transcendence. Paradise is immanent in this life and does not need to be searched for anywhere else. Our acceptance of our place in a world which is larger than ourselves and has no concern for our well-being (see “Rain” and “Rain Poems”) leads to small epiphanic moments of grace. Notable by its absence is any attempt to paint this mine as “the Pit” [“Death of a Landscape”]. Kyle’s paradise is a fragile balance between human activity and that of the rest of the natural world of which he is part.



    •



    Posted by at No comments:
    Labels: , , , , , ,

    Saturday

    Koroneho (2011)


    Cover illustration & design: Ian St George

    Leicester Kyle. Koroneho: Joyful News Out Of The New Found World. Edited with a Introduction by Jack Ross. Preface by Ian St George. ISBN 978-0-9876604-0-4. Auckland: The Leicester Kyle Literary Estate / Wellington: The Colenso Society, 2011. ii + 110 pp.


    Title Page


    Contents:

    Ian St George: Preface

    Jack Ross: Introduction

    Koroneho:


    Leicester Kyle
    [photograph: Jack Ross]

    Blurb:



    Koroneho:
    Joyful News Out Of The New Found World.

    Leicester Kyle's Koroneho is an epic poem about botany. Taking as his subject matter the life and explorations of pioneer missionary, printer, and naturalist William Colenso (1811-1899) – whose Māori name was “Koroneho” – Kyle expertly weaves letters, historical details, and the language of botanical description into a strangely compelling mixture (a little like that other long Modernist poem “containing history”: Ezra Pound’s Cantos).



    •


    The Rev. Leicester Kyle (1937-2006) was in many ways a fitting match for the object of his fascination, Colenso. Trained as a botanist, he entered the Anglican Church in his twenties, only to take early retirement in his fifties after converting to a new religion: poetry. His fascination with L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E School poetics was succeeded by a more relaxed sense of the indigenous and anecdotal in the work written after his move to Millerton on the West Coast in the late 1990s.

    Edited by Jack Ross. Preface by Ian St George. ISBN 978-0-9876604-0-4. Auckland: The Leicester Kyle Literary Estate / Wellington: The Colenso Society, 2011.

    Abstract:

    When poet, priest and environmental activist Leicester Kyle died in 2006, he asked poet David Howard and myself to act as his literary executors. In accordance with the trust he placed in us, a website has now been set up which we hope will (eventually) contain all of his extant work in electronic form, together with critical material. The first major unpublished text I posted online was Kyle’s patchwork verse epic Koroneho, about the life and work of pioneering nineteenth-century botanist and missionary William Colenso.

    This print publication of the poem has been undertaken at the instigation of Ian St George of the Colenso Society, who has also contributed a preface and a cover design. It consists of a reading edition of the online text, edited with an introduction by me. The design of the book is intended to evoke Colenso’s own paperback publications, from his pioneer printing press in Paihia.

    Online Texts:

    Leicester Kyle Index

    Leicester Kyle Texts

    Samples:

    The Imaginary Museum

    Available:

    Leicester Kyle Literary Estate
    c/o 6A Hastings Rd
    Mairangi Bay
    Auckland 0630
    New Zealand

    The Colenso Society Inc.
    c/o 22 Orchard St.
    Wadestown
    Wellington 6012
    New Zealand



    Leicester Kyle

    Reviews & Comments:

    1. Debbie Ormsby, "News and Events." School of English and Media Studies Homepage (16/11/11):

      New Publication: Leicester Kyle. Koroneho: Joyful News Out Of The New Found World by Jack Ross

    2. Jen Crawford, "Transplanting Colenso: Taxonomy and Translocation in Leicester Kyle’s Koroneho: Joyful News Out of the New Found World." Cordite Poetry Review 51: Transtasman (1/8/15):

      Koroneho is dialogic, and also calls for a nuanced understanding of the nature of the linguistically creative act, tempering what might otherwise become the taxonomist’s hubris. In an imperative voice that can be read as the poet’s or Koroneho’s, but is most likely God’s, an earlier page enjoins the addressee to
      Remember this: the subject’s always right, in itself correct. All living things are accurate, with own centricity. … A name codes recognition, but does not make identity, nor signify lightly. (58)
      To mistake the taxonomist’s work – or the poet’s – as creative of identity ex nihilo is here posited as a spiritual error, a failure to recognise the quiddity or ‘centricity’ of individual identity. For Colenso, taxonomic genesis also often involved creating classifications for plants that already had a recognised identity in another language – either Te Reo Māori or botanical Latin. Although Colenso was, at times, naming and classifying plants that had not previously been identified in either language, he was also at times naming anew species that he had misidentified, or whose existing Linnaean classifications he was unaware of. Such errors of semiotic reinvention ‘can cause difficulties,’ writes Kyle.



    •

    Posted by at No comments:
    Labels: , , , , , , ,
    Subscribe to: Posts (Atom)