Hiruharama Odyssey

Stepping from the bus that Friday, at the start of my Hiruharama (Jerusalem) Odyssey I felt tense. I’d traveled by bus so I could enjoy reading a book. As it turned out, I read the same paragraph twelve times and finally gave the book reading up as a bad choice in distraction! I can’t explain the tenseness even now, perhaps it was merely a stand-to-attention anticipation that finally ‘it’ had begun.

I think you can observe more when you’re not driving, one of the reasons I chose to travel by bus that day. From the bus window I looked out over the paddocks and hills along the Takapau Plains here in the Central Hawke’s Bay and I felt a deeper sense of this land being my tūrangawaewae again (literally tūranga is standing place, waewae is feet), it is often translated as ‘a place to stand’.

Tūrangawaewae

Tūrangawaewae are places where I feel especially connected. They are my earthly foundation, my place in the world, my earthbound home. In the concept of tūrangawaewae, the external world is a reflection of an inner sense of security and foundation. The mountains, rivers and waterways to which I can claim a relationship also express this internal sense of foundation.

I stepped off the bus into the arms of my friend Craig. His were and felt like strong, safe arms. They needed to be. We were on our way up the awa (Whanganui river) and like Homer’s Odyssey that focused on Odysseus a ‘man of twists and turns’, I felt too as Craig stood before me, the early autumn sun kissing our faces, this modern day Odysseus was perhaps hewn from a similar rock.

This odyssey began away from the awa (river) over coffee in a bustling cafe in Palmerston North. The coffee was so-so but my about-to-be-travelling companion was sublimely attentive, animated and warm. It was a perfect start to the journey. Thirty-four years after the fact! Simpatico.

I first read James K Baxter’s ‘Jerusalem Sonnets’ as a teenager. He died young Baxter, he was only 46 years old. He’d published more than 30 books before his death. “He opposed Western materialism, and advocated social change and the spiritual values of Catholic faith and Maori culture.

Baxter began writing poetry at the age of seven, of course I wasn’t even a twinkle in my parent’s eyes but seven years old! Who does that? Gifted does! But come to think about it, I wrote short stories at a similar age and was having them read aloud in my primary school class. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t even consider myself in the same stratosphere, my comment here is simply vaporous conjecture.

As a poet he 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 collections Baxter demonstrated his sensitive and melancholic moods when confronted by the rural landscapes of New Zealand.

In the mid-1940s he 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.

Marriage to Jacqueline Cecilia Sturm

In 1944 at Baxter Studied at Otago 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. He worked for the School Publications Branch of the Department of Education and from 1954 to 1960 he edited the Wellington magazine Numbers.

For years he’d suffered from drinking problems and in the late 1954 he joined Alcoholics Anonymous. In 1958 Baxter became a Roman Catholic and was re-baptised, 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 Whanganui River. ‘Howrah Bridge’ (1961) brought 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.

Burns Fellowship

In 1966 Baxter was awarded the Burns Fellowship at the University of Otago. This ended his relatively uneven period. In his later work he 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 l Is not, as some have called it, “a pearl of God” – l No, it is a fiery tormentor l 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

Jerusalem Sonnets (1970) and Jerusalem Daybook (1971) dealt with Baxter’s experiences in the Maori village of Jerusalem (Hiruharama), where he had established a refuge for alcoholics, young drug addicts, and society’s rejects.

These works also witnessed his own life of hard work and material deprivation:

“My belly is content enough l With two cups of tea and two bits of cake l Wehe gave me today as I sat on her doorstep, l 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 l Reverberating, and thought: As a man l Grows older he does not want beer, bread, or the prancing flesh, l 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 that 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). He died of a coronary thrombosis in Auckland on October 22, 1972. His funeral included both a requiem mass and a Maori tangi.”

The thing about this Odyssey is that I’m not entirely sure it’s Baxter I’ve come to seek out. He was certainly a curiosity. The foot fall is softer. The drive out of Palmerston North feels oddly familiar and not.