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| Bill Manhire |
Well, the All Blacks™ have won the Rugby World Cup™ and New Zealanders are a relieved and happy people. During the tournament, I've found myself wondering why a game that seems to define a whole nation has had so little impact on our literature.
There are plenty of books about rugby, including the usual range of ghost-written autobiographies. Elsewhere, you have to look quite hard. There are some good plays, in particular Greg McGee's Foreskin's Lament, along with work by David Geary, Hone Kouka, Roger Hall and others. There are also good novels by Lloyd Jones and Maurice Gee – there is even my own short story 'Cannibals' (in Carcanet's South Pacific). But there is very little poetry.
There are always a few wobbly poetical initiatives. According to the Stratford Press an 80-year-old poet, Trevor Rowe, presented several All Blacks with his 3000th poem, 'The Story of the Glory of the All Blacks':"This, I think is one of the best poems I have written. I put more thought, vision and effort into this poem because it had to be right,'' says Trevor. "It's the biggest thing that's happened since Jesus was here,'' he says, referring to the Rugby World Cup.
Mark Pirie, another local poet who is also a historian and anthologist of cricket poetry, unearthed some comic verse from the 1920s, and then himself added – perhaps unwisely – to our small stock of rugby poems with a tribute to Piri Weepu, the All Black halfback.
Still, if rugby generates doggerel, that may be because the game has always had a doggerel flavour. The break-down is called the break-down for good reason. There aren't very many opportunities to use a phrase like 'sheer poetry' to describe a backline move.
Which reminds me, I haven't heard the word stanza (borrowed from boxing?) very much this year: 'There was a lot of passion in the opening stanzas of the game..' Tries and victories go on being emphatic, however, and the noise most often in the mouths of sports commentators and ten-year-old boys just now is what I think of as the 'turnip-to-play' moment: 'Only one team turned up to play'; 'France certainly turned up on the day'; 'We'll have to wait and see if Scotland actually turn up.'
We had a REAL New Zealand cultural festival alongside the Rugby World Cup this year but no one thought to commission any poems, as the Welsh did back in 2007. It's hard to know who the organisers might have turned to. Possibly Lloyd Jones, whose novel The Book of Fame recreates the 1905 tour of Great Britain by the All Black team known as 'The Originals', and often breaks into free verse.
More likely the poet of choice would have been Brian Turner – the New Zealand Brian Turner, that is, who among other things is a good friend of and one-time mentor to ex-All Black skipper Anton Oliver. Here he is on YouTube imagining what it would be like to have the physique of a modern rugby player.
After Brian Turner, I'm at a loss. Maybe readers can sketch out a small anthology of rugby poems in the comments?
Bill Manhire's most recent publications are a poetry collection, The Victims of Lightning, and a jazz collaboration, Buddhist Rain. He directs the Creative Writing programme at Victoria University of Wellington.
South Pacific, his collection of short stories (pictured, below) is available from Carcanet Press. Click here to find out more and order a discount copy with free UK P&P.
Bill Manhire's most recent publications are a poetry collection, The Victims of Lightning, and a jazz collaboration, Buddhist Rain. He directs the Creative Writing programme at Victoria University of Wellington.
South Pacific, his collection of short stories (pictured, below) is available from Carcanet Press. Click here to find out more and order a discount copy with free UK P&P.
