25th August 2018

Hi Sam, 

Hope you’ve stumbled well through the worst of winter. Almost there now, the onion weed’s in bloom. A beauty that can be overlooked, but not if you’re looking. I know you will be. 

A good description of your poems, if you don’t mind, like “onion weed.” Smallish, delicate, but hardy; bloody difficult to remove from the garden. Keep popping up amongst the C K Stead daffodils, the Hone Tuwhare orchids, the Fleur Adcock dahlias. A fine garden that.  

It’s a pity, don’t you think, that the kids aren’t digging R A K Mason anymore. Though mine really like Ella Yelich-O’Connor (aka Lorde). Poetry survives in one form or another. 

Evon rang me last week to tell me you had another book out. I went to the bookshop in my lunch break to have a look. Great title, Coming To It, double-edged.  

Another selection across the years I see, with some new ones thrown in. I like how you refuse to put them in their order of age, from earliest poem to most recent. Keeps you guessing that way, and the poetry fresh, like hanging out with young people can be good for old bones. 

How old are you now as the crow flies? Not counting all the detours, the ancient beginnings and past endings. Sappho, she was 2,648 this year. Yeats, would you believe it, 153. 

And what are you making of the common newsy world? I heard a new fibre optic cable came ashore at Mangawhai, on the opposite coast to you. (You’ve always known which coast to choose, what to avoid). 

This cable will be bringing us the world. Sometimes wish I could disconnect completely, go fishing. If I did maybe I’d catch more poems. We risk knowing too much to ever understand. 

I hope that for you the fishing on the Kaipara is good. The warmer weather will help, the big ones will come into the shallows. 

Just for fun, I’m writing on an old typewriter I found at the SPCA shop for $20. It really bangs. The apostrophes drop on to the page like bombs from an old B-52. 

With all the mistakes and banks of xxxxxxxxx building up, I feel like a Kerouac typing On The Road or a Dylan thumping out sleeve notes above the Café Espresso in Woodstock. Oh the delusion!  

He’s playing here again soon — are you going? I guess he’s turned himself into Ovid now, when he’s not doing Sinatra. I’m sure you’ve got Tempest. Have you seen the video of Early Roman Kings? It’s such a dag. 

Well, I’ll sign off now. Please excuse this public note. There is a back road to you, but I no longer know it.

It’s enough that these lines of yours mean something to me today: “When one of the Greats/ comes in amongst us/ Then we—guests/ eating from paper plates—/ Stand at the outmost circle,/ thank them for calling./ We have our Gods, and Fates:/ we honour them all;/ when we’re not out killing,/ we’re a humble people.”  

Written on the occasion of Sam Hunt’s latest collection of poems, Coming To It, being released to the world. Published by Potton & Burton.