This collected volume follows the order of my published books of poems from the earliest to the latest, except in a few cases where there have been overlaps and repetitions. I have tried, on the whole, to represent my own history as it occurred, and not make it look better, or myself wiser, more mature, more adroit, than I was at the time. I recognise the truth in Paul Valéry’s ‘a poem is never finished, merely abandoned’; but revision after many years often produces, not a better poem of the same kind, but a poem (better or worse) of another kind.
Nothing is simple, however, and there are exceptions to the rough rule I made for myself, especially in the early work where some poems have been revised and a few deleted. These changes have been indicated in the notes at the back of the book.
In particular, in assembling the ‘Early Uncollected’ section, I did allow myself any number of revisions. These were poems which, for one reason or another, had not made it into my first book, Whether the Will is Free (1964); and in retrieving them here, mostly from periodicals, a few from manuscripts, I felt I had the distance, and the authority, to dress them better and tidy their hair. This does not conceal their (i.e. my) weaknesses; but it does overcome some matters of presentation.
One thing that interested me especially in looking back over so many decades was the recognition that I have been concerned (it might not be too much to say obsessed) with poetic form throughout; but that the forms I used to begin with were much more conventional, obvious and external than they later became. I am an ear person, and poetry, word by word, line by line, and equally in its larger structures, is, as I experience and conceive it, more closely related to music than to anything else. Language is what distinguishes us on our planet, and poetry pushes that everyday currency out into new territories of sense – sensory and semantic. I think of writing a poem as putting oneself in the moment at the moment – an action more comprehensive, intuitive and mysterious than mere thinking, governed partly by history (the poet works in a tradition), but equally by individual temperament and voice, and by a feeling for what is harmonious, fresh, surprising, and even, occasionally, wise.
Some of the notes and acknowledgements at the back of the book are taken from the original published collections; many more have been added. A particular acknowledgement is due to Creative New Zealand for the Michael King Fellowship, the work on this collected volume being the most important of the projects I undertook to do while holding that generous award. And finally, there is the huge acknowledgement to Kay, which the poems themselves make in so many different ways, overt and oblique, from Whether the Will is Free all the way through to The Black River.
C.K.S.