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James K. Baxter (1926-1972) | |
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Poet, playwright, critic, a Christian guru, one of the central figures in New Zealand's literature after World War II. Baxter published more than 30 books of poetry before his death at the age of 46. Baxter opposed Western materialism, and advocated social change and the spiritual values of Catholic faith and Maori culture. To be deceived is human; but till deception end James Keir Baxter was born in Dunedin. His father, Archibald Baxter, was a Scots farmer, who gave an account of his pacifist convictions and persecution during World War I in We Will Not Cease (1939). Millicent Baxter, James's mother, was the daughter of the eminent Canterbury College professor J. Macmillan Brown. His early years Baxter lived at Kuri Bush, south of Brighton. He was educated in Quaker schools in New Zealand and in England, where he spent nearly two years in the 1930s. Baxter began writing poetry at the age of seven. As a poet Baxter established his reputation with Beyond the Palisade (1944) - he was eighteen. His second book, Blow, Wind of Fruitfulness, appeared two years later. In these early collection Baxter demonstrated his sensitive and melancholic moods when confronted by the rural landscapes of New Zealand. In the mid-1940s Baxter worked in odd jobs. During this period he became interested in Jungian psychology. The Welsh poet and playwright Dylan Thomas especially influenced Baxter's work, which is seen in his second play, Jack Winter's Dream (1959). The script was filmed in 1979. Baxter studied in 1944 at Otango University, Dunedin. In 1948 he married Jacqueline Cecilia Sturm, a Maori woman, and converted to Anglicanism. Baxter moved with his family to Wellington where he worked in a slaughterhouse and as a postman before entering Teacher's College. Among his friends were the poet Louis Johnson with whom he published Poems Unpleasant (1952). Other members of the Wellington Group of writers included W.H. Oliver and Alistair Campbell. In 1956 he received his B.A. from Victoria University. Baxter worked for the School Publications Branch of the Department of Education and from 1954 to 1960 he edited the Wellington magazine Numbers. Baxter had suffered years from drinking problems and in the late 1954 he joined Alcoholics Anonymous. In 1958 Baxter became a Roman Catholic and was re-baptized - a decision reflected in his collection In Fires No Return (1958). He subsequently founded in the late 1960s a religious commune at Jerusalem on the Wanganui River. Howrah Bridge (1961) collected together Baxter's earlier pieces, but also charted his reactions from the short period in the late 1950s when he was in India on a UNESCO Fellowship. Prayer of priest or nun I cannot use, In 1966 Baxter was awarded the Burns Fellowship at the University of Otago. This ended his relatively uneven period. In his later work Baxter examined with ascetic style his religious conviction. Poetry was a link between confession and small observations of the world created by God: "The small grey cloudy louse that nests in my beard / Is not, as some have called it, "a pearl of God" - / No, it is a fiery tormentor / Waking me at two a.m." (from Jerusalem Sonnets: Poems for Colin Durning, 1970) In Pig Island Letters (1966) - the title referring to the South Island of New Zealand - Baxter used Christian and classical mythology to examine the human condition and the landscape of his native islands. Jerusalem Sonnets (1970) and Jerusalem Daybook (1971) deal with Baxter's experiences in the Maori village of Jerusalem, where he had established a refuge for alcoholics, young drug addicts, and society's rejects. These works also witness his own life of hard work and material deprivation: "My belly is content enough / With two cups of tea and two bits of cake / Wehe gave me today as I sat on her doorstep, / But the night comes like a hammer cracking on an anvil" (from Jerusalem Sonnets). " When the fragility and shortness of human life comes into focus, material values have no importance: "In great dryness of mind I heard the voice of the sea / Reverberating, and thought: As a man / Grows older he does not want beer, bread, or the prancing flesh, / But the arms of the eater of life, Hine-nui-te-po." (from 'East Coast Journey', 1966) Although Baxter had started to write plays in the late 1950s, it was not until the late 1960s, when he received recognition. Among his plays performed in Dunedin were The Band Rotunda (1967), The Sore-Footed Man (1967), The Devil and Mr Mulcahy (1967), and The Temptation of Oedipus (1970). Baxter died of a coronary thrombosis in Auckland on October 22, 1972. His funeral included both a requiem mass and a Maori tangi. Baxter's work has inspired among others the poet Stephen Oliver, whose Letter To James K. Baxter appeared in 1980. Its narrator realizes that he is married and has "given over the itch / For travel, for the foreign scenery." In a mist, thick as a hallucination, is a boat, river, crew, and dog. He sees Baxter, an old hippe and his Virgil, starting his last journey down the River Styx. "As distance diminishes Charon's boat / And the pilot light burns red on the mast, / And the bollard trails on the waters a rope... / Once, twice, the chant for somebody missed: / Heart-dead in Auckland: you answered." Stephen Oliver, a radio journalist, production voice, and features writer, made his debut as a poet in 1972 with A Chance to Laugh. It was followed by Henwise (1975), & Interviews (1978), Autumn Songs (1978), Letter To James. K. Baxter (1980), Earthbound Mirrors (1984), Guardians, Not Angels (1993), Islands of Wilderness - A Romance (1996), Election Year Blues (1999), and Unmanned (1999). Night of Warehouses: Poems 1978-2000 (2001), was published by HeadworX. It is a selection of Stephen Oliver's work from a period of 20 years and covers five collections. For further reading: James K. Baxter by Vincent O'Sullivan (1976); James K. Baxter by Charles Doyle (1976); The Two Baxters: diary notes: with an essay by Vincent O'Sullivan by P. Lawlor (1979); Letter to James K. Baxter by Stephen Oliver (1980); James K. Baxter: A Portrait by W.H. Oliver (1983); Introducing James K. Baxter by C. Parr (1983); The Life of James K. Baxter by F. McKay (1990); Encyclopedia of World Literature in the 20th Century, vol. 1, ed. by Steven R. Serafin (1999) - For further information: James Keir Baxter 1926 - 1972 - James K. Baxter - About James K. Baxter - BAXTER, James K. Selected works:
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