At Home in the Bay – review

First published in Ngā Ākau ki te Tonga Southern Bays number 14 2019

Colin Feslier

There is poetry and poetry. There’s the poetry they teach you at school, and the poetry your strange uncle reads at your wedding. There is the poetry young people declaim in pubs (does this still happen?) and the poetry of greeting cards. Limericks, sonnets, doggerel – it’s all poetry.

One form is what might be called the New Zealand place-referential style of poetry which is marked by observations of, and reflections on, the New Zealand landscape and those that live in it.

A sub-genre of this is the poetry of the Southern Bays produced since the time Pākehā first began visiting and settling in the area which have featured from time to time in Southern Bays.

The publication of Home in the Bay, a collection of poems of Island Bay by the late Mary Logan with paintings by her husband John Logan and her son Ian Logan is a welcome addition to the published poetry of the area. It probably represents the work of many local poets whose family have not been so artistic or so enterprising as to publish their work. Who knows what lies in old boxes, waiting to be born?

At Home in the Bay - Poems of Island Bay by Mary Logan, with paintings by John Logan and Ian Logan

Mary Logan was the author of a significant political biography of Sir Arnold Nordmeyer, another resident. She also wrote short stories and non-fiction for radio. She and John Logan was English by birth and met John, an Aucklander, in Manchester. They settled in Island Bay; one writing and one painting. The book brings their art of Island Bay together.

Mary’s poetry is founded on experiences familiar to southern bays locals. The view of Tauputeranga. The Wind. The fishing boats. The hills. The impossibility of a successful garden:

A salt wind swept cliff

Soil leached by rain

Or parched by summer sun,

Is no place for a garden…

Struggling roses

Now are carpeted with ferns

Lilies of the valley

Nod beside the hebe…

Tenacious roots ensure

Something of the past endures.

Sometimes her poetry reflects our local experiences all too well:

…It rains again

Cold and tied,

I huddle by the heater

Drinking coffee.

But there is also much about what we love here in the south

…calm sea like watered silk

white Kaikōura peaks

rising from the dark horizon

gulls watching from the sea wall

coloured dinghies propped below.

At Home in the Bay reflects our environment and local feeling. It provides, also, a valuable insight to an important person and family in our community.

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