Cricket Poetry Award 2011 announced

I just received the following media release about the Cricket Poetry Award 2011. Congratulations to the winner Cecilia White, her poem is included below:

Media Release Friday, 7 October 2010

Over one hundred entries were received from the UK, South Africa, New Zealand and Australia for the Cricket Poetry Award competition in 2011.

The last four poems were selected and publicly read at the Cricket Art Prize opening event - Members Pavilion, Sydney Cricket Ground on October 6th.

The judges, Louise Wakeling and Amanda Shalala felt that a majority of the poems were of a very high standard and as such, they had a challenging time refining the collection down to twenty for the first public reading; then at the live readings night, the general public voted for the last four to be re-read at the Cricket Art Prize opening.

Louise and Amanda affirmed “…we chose our top twenty in terms of what worked for us as poetry; based on a skilled fusion of technical skills and conventions, including phonics, insights and emotion.”

‘Boxing Day Test’ by Cecilia White won the Cricket Poetry award for 2011.

Her poem powerfully describes the retrospective, compassionate thoughts and feelings we feel when watching a test match on television on a hot summers day…

CECILIA WHITE

Boxing Day Test

twelfth man leaves the field, we tumble back to our places

sitting cross-legged below a semi-circle of lanky shinned uncles.

men, exhausted by another year’s hard labour

and christmas day.

our skin sticks to itself on boxing day in new south wales.

the geography of each body is irrigated by sweat

it is impossible to imagine standing outside

for each over, and over again.

the cork and willow clap in the dry summer heat 

of another state.

our uncles lean into the room,

lean forward towards the box, as if they were next bat.

tensing muscles deep in bare redbrowned arms

they are in the memory position,

revisiting lives they dreamed as boys when

they could imagine up a roaring crowd

that would lift them high above the drudgery

of normal men.

© Cecilia White 2011

Ronald Castle’s NZ cricket related poem

A poem I found recently with cricket in it is by the late New Zealand poet Ronald Castle (1907-1984), a local Wellington chemist, writer and musician, who created a pharmacy museum in the 1970s. He was an old boy of Wellington College.

Castle’s poem is an elegant evocation of school days at Wellington College, where ‘On summery days on the green, white-flannelled cricketers batted’. As an old boy of the school, I very much enjoyed Castle’s poem.

I’ll share the poem with you here:

RONALD CASTLE

Man in the Faded Blazer

Weary, kindly old gentleman ambling slowly the pavement,

   That black blazer you wear speaks of collegiate days;

Lamp that eternally burns, in orange embroidery gleaming,

   Still have you treasured from youth, braving the fugitive years.

Know that I, too, at the back of some drawer filled with odd trifles,

   Found my tattered old cap, fronted by orange lamp.

What are your memories, leaping the chasm of the relentless

   Onward-hastening days? Sit you again at the desk

Watching the black board where geometric angles and circles

   Drawn with chalk-scratching sound, kind ‘Garry’ Lomas defined?

Or under Welsh Mr. Jones gowned in immaculate neatness,

   Drilled with phonetic symbols, could we ‘assassinate’ spell?

Learnt we from sad Alexander the rich Ovidian sweetness

   Ere he, dying too soon, boarded Charonian barge?

And what shall be said of the Master declaiming passionate verses,

   Still ignoring his wound, late from the trenches returned?

Lover of beauty immortal, and England’s sonorous language,

   Fired he many a youth, taught him poetical craft.

Now unremembered be good Monsieur Balham, tutor,

   With Gallic accent pure, gesticulating hands,

Coaxing unlikely lads from that ‘plume de ma tante’, still missing,

   On to noble Racine, chansons of dark Baudelaire.

What nauseous fumes emitted the attic science research room!

   Bubbled the glass retorts, Bunsen burners up-flared,

Dangerous phosphorous retrieved from water exploded like fireworks;

   Through the microscope tube we viewed the structure of worlds.

Still stands the observatory dome on the hillock behind the college,

   Where Doctor Gifford grave, his counter-poised telescope swung,

Sweeping the heavens antipodean, to pupils revealing

   Stars in endless space, galactic Milky Ways?

On summery days on the green, white-flannelled cricketers batted,

   Or on the tennis courts with resonant racquets smote:

While in the blue-tiled baths naked forms were swimming,

   And from the music-room came brass and cymbals sound.

This we knew and revered, O man in the faded blazer

   Black with the orange badge bearing the deathless lamp

Over its Latin script, motto engraved in our bosoms,

   ‘LUMEN ACCIPE ET IMPERTI’, from age to age.

Poem © Ronald Castle, 1983

(From The Select Poetry of Ronald Castle, Wellington, 1983).

Publications by Ronald Castle:

Fleeting Music, Wright & Carman, 1937

Arcadian Grove, Wright & Carman, 1939

Psaltery and Trumpet, Chapbook Publications, 1948

Old Instruments in New Zealand: a short survey of the Zillah and Ronald Castle collection of early and unusual musical instruments, Z & R Castle, 1969

Verses for Music, R B Castle, 1981

The Select Poetry of Ronald Castle, Castle Publications, 1983

Further reading: A Reading of the Poetry of Ronald Brian Castle by F W Nielsen Wright, Cultural and Political Booklets, 2001

Classic Reads: Merv Wallace by Joseph Romanos

During the winter off-season in New Zealand, I’ve been reading a book about New Zealand’s hugely under-rated batsman Merv Wallace. Wallace was a member of the 1937 and 1949 New Zealand touring teams to England. Wallace receives considerable attention in Rod Nye’s Martin Donnelly biography and Richard Boock’s recent Bert Sutcliffe biography. The respectful mentions of him in these books made me want to read further.

Merv Wallace: A Cricket Master (Joel Publishing, 2000) is researched and written by Joseph Romanos in discussion with the late Merv himself, and is, I feel, an important addition to New Zealand’s cricket history. Much has been said and written about other members of the ’49ers such as Walter Hadlee, Martin Donnelly, John R Reid and Bert Sutcliffe, but till this book appeared little was known about the extent of Wallace’s contribution to New Zealand cricket.

Romanos expertly fills in the gaps with enthusiasm and energy. He is an ardent admirer of all sports but cricket is a large part of his focus. Romanos has again produced an excellent biography with impressive knowledge, artful use of photos and memorabilia, comprehensive research and a humanist empathy for the subject and his life. I must thank too the benefactor Sir Ron Brierley’s financial commitment to the publication of this book.

The story about Merv begins in Grey Lynn, Auckland, where he was born and raised. It follows his early advances into cricket as a schoolboy and later as a young man playing his club cricket for Point Chevalier (which amalgamated with Parnell) and his First Class cricket for Auckland (captaining them 23 times from 1939-1958). Wallace’s final First Class match was for Lord Cobham’s Governor-General’s XI in the 1960-61 season.

The two main chapters of interest (as a player) are the tours of England in 1937 and 1949 where he was among New Zealand’s best batsmen on both tours. In 1937, under Curly Page’s captaincy, it’s safe to say he was the leading New Zealand batsmen of the period (between Stewie Dempster and Bert Sutcliffe) and was well written up by the English cricket writers. Pelham Warner wrote in The Cricketer: ‘Wallace has, so far, proved himself the best batsman … Short in height, Wallace is strongly built and times the ball beautifully. He has a very good eye, is quick on his feet and seems to possess all the strokes.’

He topped the 1937 tour averages in England and Australia with 1887 runs at 41.02 but, as Romanos points out, never fulfilled his Test potential, losing his best years of Test cricket to the Second World War. Wallace’s contribution as a player could’ve been greater at Test level marking him out clearly as one of our greats. Instead, he finished with a modest Test average of 20.90, no Test century, and sadly a mostly forgotten player status in the game.

The other side to Wallace’s story is his role as a coach and selector and his influential job as a sporting goods proprietor. Wallace spent a good deal of time, after retiring as a player, coaching and selecting teams, both at international and domestic level. His major success came when he coached New Zealand to their first ever Test victory over the West Indies in 1956-57. Yet, as Romanos notes for reasons unknown, Wallace was not used often as a coach and selector by the New Zealand Cricket Council. It’s baffling to know why. Walter Hadlee and other members were clearly friends of Wallace’s with no axe to grind and who respected Wallace’s ability. Wallace’s input as a coach and selector for New Zealand should’ve been greater at international level but instead, as with his batting, we only had tantalising glimpses of what he could’ve done for New Zealand cricket.

Despite this, Wallace was always involved one way or another. For years, he ran a sporting shop in Auckland: Wallace and Webb Ltd. There are delightful chapters here on Wallace’s influence through the shop, his passing on of tips to players, coaches, fathers and schoolboys who visited. As well, Romanos captures the essence of Wallace by presenting a whole chapter of Wallace’s views on cricket giving out his handy tips. Some of these appear dated now, but it seems a nice way to preserve Wallace’s mind and thoughts on the game throughout the period where he made his largest contribution.

This book proved hard to track down but was worth the effort. I searched local book fairs, second hand shops and the Wellington Public Library and could find no copy. It wasn’t until I stopped by the New Zealand Cricket Museum’s Library at the Basin Reserve, Wellington, that I was able to borrow a copy and it was well worth the wait.

Merv Wallace: A Cricket Master is a must read for those interested in the key figures who’ve developed the game here as well as New Zealand’s reputation as a cricketing nation over the past century. As John R Reid writes on the cover: “Merv Wallace was the most under-rated player to have worn the Silver Fern. This long overdue book pays eloquent tribute to a great cricketer.”

Merv Wallace: A Cricket Master
by Joseph Romanos
(Joel Publishing, Wellington, 2000)

Article © Mark Pirie 2011

Anne French’s new NZ cricket poem

The latest issue of Poetry NZ, New Zealand’s foremost poetry magazine, arrived in my mailbox this week. It’s available from most independent bookshops in New Zealand such as Unity Books in Wellington.

Issue 43 is another smorgasbord of the best of local poetry writing along with some overseas poets from the US, South Africa, Canada, Australia and Italy. It’s guest edited by Nicholas Reid.

Of particular interest to readers of this blog is a poem by the featured New Zealand poet Anne French that is an elegy for her Aunt using cricket metaphors. French is also a contributor to A Tingling Catch, but I haven’t seen the poem before, so it’s possible it’s a new cricket inspired poem. It’s a moving poem. Many readers with older relatives passing away can relate to it.

I’ll share it with you here:

ANNE FRENCH

Aunty Paddy’s Innings

Aunty Paddy died today

after a long innings at the crease.

at 96 not out she could still read

googlies a mile off. Always one

for observing the proprieties,

she wasn’t stumped caught wide

or run out. She hadn’t stepped out

of her crease for about 18 months;

it was no life really, none at all;

but she stayed in, stonewalling,

and her score just kept going up

and up. Her heart ticked on long after

she’d stopped eating, talking, or looking

forward to anything but the walk

back to the pavilion, shadows long

on the grass, and a roar of appreciation

carrying her up out of the ground and on

on through the blue summer afternoon.

Poem © Anne French 2011

(From Poetry NZ 43, September 2011)

More information at Poetry NZ’s website: http://www.poetrynz.net/

Poetry NZ 43 (Puriri Press & Brick Row, 2011)

A Tingling Catch contributor David Mitchell dies

David Mitchell (1940-2011), well-known New Zealand poet, performer, and cricketer, died in June this year. I’ve written a tribute for him on the Poetry Archive website and another Tingling Catch contributor, Michael O'Leary, has written a personal memoir for David on Beattie’s Book Blog.

David’s poem ‘gasometer/ ponsonby’ in A Tingling Catch (a cricket ballad focusing on some hardened meths drinkers on the boundary) was one of the most mentioned poems in reviews of the book. Terry Locke's favourite poem was Mitchell's and he noted further in English in Aotearoa that: ‘Mitchell has quite a presence in this book. He is the most significant cricketer/poet in our little pantheon.’ Michael Morrissey also praised David’s poem in Investigate as ‘a vivid exploration of what’s going on just wide of the field’.
Ron Riddell’s poem for David Mitchell as a poet/cricketer also featured in the Winter/Spring 2011 New Zealand Cricket Museum Newsletter. It’s true to say David was a significant New Zealand poet/cricketer. To my knowledge we haven’t had any international poet/cricketers in New Zealand. In England poet/cricketers like bowler John Snow or Hubert Doggart represented England at Test level. David played senior club cricket, however, at a high level and opened the batting. I know that J H E Schroder, Harry Ricketts, Robert J Pope and Brian Turner also played senior club cricket at a good level. I did not see David bat but New Zealand captain John Reid in the 1950s regarded him as one of five outstanding schoolboy cricketers while at Wellington College. David was an all-rounder and played mostly for the Grafton Club in Auckland until 2002 aged 62. His biographers Martin Edmond and Nigel Roberts note (in Steal Away Boy: The Selected Poems of David Mitchell, Auckland University Press, 2010): ‘Mitchell once took a hatrick bowling his little floaters on the Devonport #2 ground to win the game for North Shore: off the last three balls of the last over of the last match of his last season in Auckland.’ David’s penultimate ball was described as a ‘geometric figure of mythical significance’. Lovely.

David’s friend Ron Riddell also wrote a recent poem called ‘The Day Room’ which he kindly sent in to share here in memory of David:

RON RIDDELL

The Day Room

for David Mitchell

 

I’m dropping off again, but waking to the view

waiting in the day room, for what, for who?

a man with a walking stick, another with a bag –

a flower, a book, a bunch of fruit.

 

Waiting and waking, always the same view:

a bird bath, a plot of roses, a bench or two –

once more there are no visitors, only the light

that comes and goes under the door

 

a soft breeze, a dove cooing from the garden.

Once in a while, out of the light emerge

figures in white, so like the company of angels -

darlings that drift in and out of the day room -

 

my haven and my life - where pages idly flap

by an open window - the wind my part-time

reader leafs through the sunlit sheets.

So, we’re here, waiting for the moment.

 

We’re here in the green room, cream or is it blue?

With the TV cricket no-one watches;

mood music from the foyer passing

awaiting the moment of Great Awakening –

 

perhaps the tea cart or the dinner gong?

a visit from a friend, a bit of hot gossip

what the papers say – or don’t - about

the role of poets in Woman’s Day.

 

I should pay more attention I suppose.

It’s not that I’m losing interest –

the comings and goings have their attentions

ghosts to consider and to surrender.

 

Who knows what is waiting;

whether in the skyscrapers of Sydney

the clouds or waves of Darling Harbour

or last sweeps, squeaks and bleeps of day?

 

Let the sirens wail; jets drone overhead –

say I’m content as I’ll ever be

in the day room that keeps its promises

where I rise and fly on wings of poetry.

Poem © Ron Riddell, 2011

Thanks Ron.

David Mitchell

Cricket Poetry Award 2011

A reminder that the annual Cricket Poetry Award deadline in Australia looms: 31 August 2011. Get your entries in now along with your entry fee of $A20.00. Check out the official website for full details and conditions of entry: http://www.cricketartprize.org/cricket-poetry-award/

This year’s theme is social cricket, beach cricket and club cricket.

Here’s an extract from last year’s winner, ‘Gentleman Jim’, by Matt Young:

He brings a certain dignity
Exudes a certain charm
He works with an integrity
No fuss and no alarm
A vestige of the golden age
He has those austere looks
Like timeless art and Shakespeare’s plays
Or well thumbed fav’rite books
His essence is humanity

…

And every summer Sat’day sees
Old Jim out at the ground
Impartial as the summer breeze
And judgment always sound
And every player loves old Jim
Respecting his good name
And for his passion they thank him
This doyen of the game

See also my blog post from last year: Cricket Poetry Award.

Bruce Mason’s cricket satire on Viscount Cobham

Another book I picked up at the recent Downtown Community Ministry Book Fair in Wellington is well-known New Zealand playwright Bruce Mason’s book of songs and parodies, We Don’t Want Your Sort Here (1963). Mason (1921-82) is the author of the classic New Zealand play, The End of the Golden Weather. I hadn't come across the book before. His satirical book, his only book of verse, certainly serves as a reminder of the ‘good old, bad old days of Kiwi culture’, however, it’s still a lively read.

One of the satires concerns English cricketer and former Governor-General of New Zealand, Charles Lyttelton (1909-1977), the 10th Viscount Cobham. Cobham played for Worcestershire and MCC and scored over 3,000 First Class runs, including a top score of 162 vs. Leicestershire in 1938. He played cricket between 1932 and 1961. By most accounts he was a popular Governor-General and was friends with the New Zealand cricketers of the period, for instance a number of "the '49ers" like Sutcliffe, Wallace, Donnelly and Reid played for Cobham's Governor-General's XI against MCC, a memorable match of the 1961 season.

If you’re a regular at book fairs in Wellington, you can still spot Lord Cobham’s Speeches (1962). The front cover features Viscount Cobham batting at No. 10 for his Governor-General’s XI and launching a shot down the ground for six at Eden Park, Auckland. Like Merv Wallace, it was Cobham's last First Class match and he made a surprising 44. Cobham in that photo seems to like attacking shots. Well, here’s a quick delivery from Mason which I suspect he might leave. It seems Mason took a note of Cobham’s dislike of abstract art and thought to send up Cobham’s traditional taste a little. It’s a light-hearted piece which does raise salient points about the arrival of modern and modernist art and literature in New Zealand:

BRUCE MASON

An Ordinary Man

CHARACTER: A Governor-General. A few notes on this number,

performed privately, but for obvious reasons, never publicly. In

1958, the author sat two seats away from the Governor-General of

New Zealand, His Excellency the Viscount Cobham, at the opening

of the Auckland Festival. He listened with respect and admiration

to His Excellency’s address, which showed a knowledge of and

sympathy with the visual arts never before, to his knowledge,

evinced and expressed by a Queen’s representative in this country.

His Excellency referred more than once to the duty of modern

artists to recall that their vision must be communicated to and be

above all, intelligible to, the Ordinary Man. He then drew from

his own experience as an ordinary man in being surrounded as a

boy in his Worcestershire home, by the great masters of the past,

an experience, however valuable and nourishing to the spirit, not

generally available, one would have thought, to the ordinary man.

His Excellency returned in the later days of his term of office, to

this theme again and again. He could be heard at Art Exhibitions,

talking of abstract art in a manner which suggested that its area

was not one that the ordinary man need concern himself with, and

he made similar pronouncements upon modern music and literature.

The author devised the following parody as a good-humoured

tease of His Excellency’s attitude, and it is to be thought of as

being performed at the opening of the New Zealand Academy

of Fine Arts Winter Exhibition, or at the formal opening of the

Kelliher Prize landscapes.

AIR: I’m an ordinary man, from My Fair Lady.

I’m an ordinary man,

Who desires nothing more

Than to see your work in paint

Charming landscapes by the score

Freed from any modern taint.

An average man am I

And though I hold vice-regal reins,

In my veins

There is nothing but decorum and restraint.

A very ordinary man.

But

Let

An

Abstract in your house,

And your peace of mind is through!

Its parabolas and curves

Will affect your optic nerves

And the colour combinations

Will result in complications

Too!

Oh let an abstract in your house

See it gibber on the wall!

You can glare at it or frown

Turn it round or upside down

Try and search for inner meaning

From this chaos overweening:

None at all!

You want to think of Tintoretto

Of a Rubens or Vermeer,

Of Titian, Canaletto,

Where at least the meaning’s clear!

But have an abstract in your house,

And you’ve the judgment of a louse!

There’ll be no vice-regal truck

With this stupefying muck

I would find it just as thrilling

To be trussed and sent for killing

As to ever have an abstract in my house!

I’m a decent sort of man,

Who will find himself in clover

Stalking grouse behind a thicket

Or an off-spin googly over

Bowled upon a sticky wicket.

A simple chap am I

Of very plain and simple joys

Who likes to fish a bit

Dish a bit

Of commonsense towards my girls and boys!

A very decent sort of man.

But

Let

An

Abstract in your house

And you declare yourself a clown!

I hate men of talent flimsy

Who display their latest whimsy

And erupting arty jargon

Will declare that it’s a bargain

Upside down!

There’ll be a slosh of deep vermilion

And a mess of purple bars

A nose on the Wellington carillon

And a tuft of tussock grass!

Oh!

Let an abstract in your house

You might as well divorce your spouse!

I will not be a subscriber

Nor my patronage will bribe a

Single clot, betraying sense

With the heady recompense

Of my benison vice-regal

For an art that’s barely legal!

No!

I will

Never

Have

An

Abstract

In

My

House!

© Bruce Mason 1962

(Sources: Wikipedia; We Don’t Want Your Sort Here by Bruce Mason (Auckland/Hamilton: Paul’s Book Arcade, 1963); Merv Wallace: A Cricket Master by Joseph Romanos (Joel Publishing, Wellington, 2000); and Lord Cobham’s speeches: a selection from the speeches made by the Rt. Hon. the Viscount Cobham, G.C.M.G., T.D., during his term of office as Governor-General of New Zealand, 1957-1962, edited by O.S. Hintz (Auckland: Wilson and Horton, 1962).

We Don't Want Your Sort Here
by Bruce Mason
(Paul's Book Arcade, 1963)