A Tingling Catch contributor's memorial service

On Friday I spoke at the memorial service for Harvey McQueen, a contributor and advisor to A Tingling Catch.
Here's a link to the eulogy I read that I posted on my personal website:
http://www.markpirie.com/blog/2011/1/28/eulogy-for-harvey-mcqueen-by-mark-pirie
See also my related blog posts: 'A Tingling Catch contributor Harvey McQueen dies' and 'Harvey McQueen's These I Have Loved'.

Mark Pirie discusses A Tingling Catch

I was interviewed by Kathryn Ryan on 9 to Noon, Tuesday, 25 January 2011.
Here's a link to the discussion on A Tingling Catch, my publishing company HeadworX, and the Poetry Archive of New Zealand Aotearoa that I'm involved in setting up:
http://www.radionz.co.nz/national/programmes/ninetonoon/20110125
It's a 20 minute interview so it could take a while before I can make a transcript available.

Mark Pirie's new poem At the Basin

The following poem of mine appeared in The Wellingtonian, Letters section, 27 January 2011:

MARK PIRIE

At the Basin

For Daniel Vettori

At the Basin
Guptill’s out caught behind.
Ryder’s in,
then gone, wrong frame of mind.

Who’ll steady the ship,
bail us out? Vettori’s in
ready to shoot from the hip
at the Basin.

NZ v Pakistan, Basin Reserve, Test Match, 15-19 January 2011

Poem © Mark Pirie 2011

A week later Ryder redeemed himself ahead of the World Cup with a quick-fire 50 in the first ODI against Pakistan. Vettori made 110 at the Basin in the New Zealand first innings of 356, his 6th Test century.

Waikato Times review of A Tingling Catch

The following review by Jeff Neems appeared in the Waikato Times, 14 January 2011, Leisure supplement, p. 15.

JEFF NEEMS

Verses for the Summer Game

Review of A Tingling Catch: A Century of New Zealand Cricket Poems 1864-2009, edited by Mark Pirie (HeadworX, RRP $34.99)

In the 17 years since I completed an English Literature degree at Waikato University, I’ve barely read a single poem.

  Three years of literary study and more than a decade of journalism largely burnt out my desire for recreational reading, except for the odd music book or quirky non-fiction work.

  Mark Pirie’s collection of New Zealand cricket poetry sat on my shelves for several weeks until, with the summer heating up and the cricket season under way, I gave it a closer look.

  What a terrific volume it is. It’s surprising, firstly, to discover just how much poetry has been written about the national summer game – as the title indicates, some of the verses included date back more than a century – and cricketing material traversed include everything from Lord’s (the London ground considered the home of the game) to songs sung by club cricketers, backyard cricket, and peculiar bat-and-ball moments few actually remember. Foreign tours, run-outs, first-ball ducks, famous players’ failures – all the vagaries of cricket are included.

  Admittedly a handful of poems have only the most tenuous connection to cricket, but it’s enough to see them included. A line here or there on the game makes them worthy in the compiler’s view.

  Some of the poems spread across several pages, with numerous complicated verse which at times can be slightly difficult to follow. These are generally the older poems, and some may require a second reading to gain full comprehension – although, thankfully, in many cases, the context of the poems is briefly detailed in helpful footnotes.

  Several of Michael O’Leary’s cricket-based poems are included, based on popular songs from the likes of The Doors and Bob Marley.

  I’m now into my late 30s, so it’s the material from the late 1970s onwards which was of most interest to me.

  Pirie’s own ‘The Record’ – just two verses – details Martin Crowe’s failure to complete a triple-century at the Basin Reserve in 1991 (he was caught behind on 299). There’s an excellent homage to veteran New Zealand all-rounder Chris Harris, ‘Ode to Harry’, from an anonymous author who demands Harris’s inclusion in the national team. There’s a similar feel to ‘A Tribute to RJ Hadlee’ by Ian Donnelly, which praises the great seam and swing bowler over eight four-line verses. The book's most poignant entry is just two lines long from Harry Ricketts – his ‘Epitaph for an old cricketer’.

It goes:

Death’s sharp offcutter

has bowled you through the gate.

Touching stuff, and the words I’d like inscribed on my headstone.

  If the crack of leather ball on willow bat soundtracks your summer, and you’ve a taste for well-chosen words, Pirie’s anthology will delight you, and while away many hours between deliveries.

Jeff Neems is a Waikato Times feature writer and club cricketer.

Review © Jeff Neems 2011

Liam Ferney’s Australian cricket poem

When I was in Brisbane for Subverse: Queensland Poetry Festival in 2000 and 2001, I met the young Australian poet Liam Ferney.

I can’t remember now how cricket came up but it soon entered our conversation. Liam was talking about having seen the New Zealand cricket team practicing in Brisbane. He liked Stephen Fleming of the New Zealand batsmen. Liam had the task of introducing my session at Subverse 2001. He also had the task of picking my fellow colleagues and me up from the airport. It's nice to get a ride when you don't know where you're going.

When I was editing JAAM magazine, I published a cricket-related poem by Liam. It’s an unusual poem. It plays with history using baseball and cricket. Baseball star Babe Ruth has an epigraph at the start and with mythical cricket figures Don Bradman and Harold Larwood (from the Ashes’ Bodyline series) appearing as baseball players recreating history:

LIAM FERNEY

The Sultan of Swat

‘Why don’t you read the papers?

 It’s all right there in the papers.’

                                    — Babe Ruth

Waking, wiping the

sleep from his eye, he

reaches for his pills.

Reading the label on the bottle:

it seems to say:            

‘don’t try too hard just

             let it carry you’ –

             like… a river, he finishes,

                        the sentence and his pills.

It’s prescribed like this

because mythology inadvertently

gets mixed up in the games

of chinese whispers

                                    we play with our history.

Drunk on fairy floss and beer

the story they’re telling in

Sideshow Alley is that Don Bradman,

fulfilling a promise to a

terminally ill child,

points straight back over

            Larwood’s head at a spot

      somewhere in centre field.

Winding up Larwood

          gives it everything he’s got,

   to the screaming ecstasy and

spilt beer of the Chicago fans,

            but  even as the ball leaves his hand

      Bradman’s eyes are fixed upon it and,

                  with a flick of his wrist,

            he sends it soaring out of

                          Wrigley Field.

Larwood, sticky with humiliation,

imagines a ball rocketing into

the soft-flesh of the batsman’s

helmetless head as he walks

back to his mark.

Bradman, luxuriating in the profanities

and abuse he has evoked

watches an angry fan hurl a cup

of beer onto left field and spits

nonchalantly just missing the fielder

at short leg.

Larwood turns and Bradman, like

            a brave Achaen points back

      prophetically to the same spot.

    The bowler runs in like a fierce

       bull charging through the streets

  of Pamplona and digs it in short,

              a spear jagging up sharply,

    but our Achilles has wiser eyes than this

         stepping backward and away,

                        hooking awesomely

the ball

                seems to climb

to the sun.        

                       

The news story is packaged thus:

The footage of the shot

from a variety of angles,

an interview with humble Bradman,

fans saying how he’s the greatest

the world has ever seen and

then the fadeout:

the small child smiling from

his hospital bed,

this miracle breaks hearts

for joy at dinner tables

nationwide.

A kid finds one of the balls out in the street.

He hides it away in a box,

and forgets about it for years

until one day, for no reason

     that he can name,

  he starts to take it out at nights

and let its elegant stitching

   take him back to the cutgrass

    summer twilight that now

seems so important.

It is a fact:

    The Bambino grows in deed and

    stature with every passing year.

Poem © Liam Ferney

Liam went on to publish his debut poetry collection, Popular Mechanics, through Interactive Publications in Brisbane, 2004. He appeared in Best Australian Poems 2010 and was editor of Cordite Poetry Review 17-23 in Melbourne and guest editor of issue 34.

Cricket historian Don Neely once commented to me that if it wasn’t for rounders which became baseball, cricket would’ve swept across America in the 19th century. This makes Liam’s poem even more interesting. The US played Canada in 1844, the first ever international cricket match at the St George’s Cricket Club, Bloomingdale Park, Manhattan.

Baseball became popular during the American Civil War and cricket waned. Americans have never really gotten the gist of cricket since that time though more Americans today play cricket thanks to Indian and Sri Lankan communities in America. NZ played Sri Lanka in a one-day series in Florida recently. In LA, the Compton Cricket Club (“the Homies and the Pops”) has a colourful history since the mid-90s. They have even released cricket rap singles. Check out their page on Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compton_Cricket_Club

In Jan-Feb 2011, Compton Cricket Club will tour Australia, the first American cricket club to tour there.

There is now an American cricket magazine, American Cricketer, worth checking out as well: http://www.americancricketer.com/

Article © Mark Pirie 2010

(Sources: Wikipedia – the free encyclopedia; conversation with Don Neely; JAAM 15 (JAAM Publishing Collective, May 2001))

Dominion Post – Jack Perkins’s The Basin

The Basin Test petered out to a predictable draw on Wednesday evening with Pakistan not willing to push for victory. Fair enough, they had secured the series 1-0. NZ bowled two needless extra overs to make matters worse for frustrated spectators. A cricket law made play run till 6.15pm as the last hour started at 5.15pm, so two overs were bowled to make play finish at 6.15pm.

Jack Perkins’s poem from A Tingling Catch appeared in The Dominion Post’s “Thursday Poem” page today. The poem is a fine poetic portrait of the Basin Reserve. The poem like this week’s game ends in a draw.

JACK PERKINS

The Basin

Alchemy of sun, rain, grass and soil

the ground staff’s patient weeks of toil

will test two countries on a wicket

pampered by water and roller

prepared to be neither paradise

nor purgatory for batsman or bowler.

First morning of the Test Match sees

a flash of shiny red impact on green

and the ball like a rapier flick off the seam

to feather the edge and the catch is held

and so is the crowd by this eye-blink drama.

But – oh the surprise – the umpire’s finger

fails to rise.

Afternoon brings an easier pitch, the pace

more leisurely, measured by a century.

Looped between lunch and tea

the slow bowler’s web is finely spun

two batsmen ensnared for not many runs.

In the Long Room members watch players

enter and exit but recall a different cast

from earlier plays: Crowe’s majestic cut and hook

Sutcliffe’s grace or Hadlee’s record-breaking feat

all mixed with tonic or savoured neat.

The eastern bank’s bared-torso fans

toast boundaries and bouncers with cans

of beer and cheer women bravely parading

or salute a fieldsman’s diving save

arms upraised in Mexican wave.

A nor’wester gatecrashes the third day’s play

and dresses players in long-sleeved sweaters.

Into the bail-scattering gale

buffeted bowlers lean their shoulders.

Wind, gusting swirling twists their stride

balls misguided down leg side.

On the fifth, final day, the Test

proves no match for Wellington’s weather.

Curtains of rain, the stumps and the game

all drawn together.

January 2002

Poem © Jack Perkins 2009

(The poem was first published in Jack Perkins’s collection of blogs, Not Out! No Ball! Over!, Cricket Mystery, Wellington, 2009)

David Mealing's Edible XI

Curator of the New Zealand Cricket Museum, David Mealing, gave me a number of thematic cricket XIs he has compiled. I'll share one with you today. The Second Test at the Basin Reserve, NZ v Pakistan, has just started and David will no doubt be busy receiving visitors to the New Zealand Cricket Museum where he is also selling A Tingling Catch. Get down to the Basin, visit the museum and buy a copy if you live in Wellington. They also have a bookstall selling cricket books outside the museum. David tells me it is the only national cricket museum in the world. Another first for Kiwiland.
Here's David's Edible XI using historical cricketing names with cooking connections:

DAVID MEALING

Edible XI

Duff, Alan, Oxford, Worcestershire 1959-1968
Roebuck, Peter, Cambridge, Devon, Somerset, 1974-1991
Place, Winston, England, Lancashire - Test debut 1948, 1937-1955
Legge, Geoffrey, England, Kent - Tests 1927-30, 1924-1931
Lamb, Allan, England, Northants, OFS Western Province, 1972-1995
Martyn, Damien, Australia, Leicester, WA, Yorkshire, 1990/91-
Rice, Clive (capt), Scotland, SA, Natal. Notts, Transvaal 1969/70-1993/94
Mustard, Phil (wk), England, Durham 2002-2007
Onions, Graham, England, Durham 2004-
Hogg, Rodney, Australia, SA, Victoria 1975/76-1984/85
Berry, Les, Leicestershire, 1924-1951
Partridge, Reginald, Northamptonshire, 1929-1948

Woodcock, John (reporter), The Times 1954-1988, Wisden editor, 1981-1986
Hair, Darryl (umpire), 1992-06
Pepper, Cecil (umpire), NSW 1938/39-1950s
Brain, Brian, Gloucestershire, Minor Countries, Worcestershire, 1959-1981
Hazell, Horace, Somerset, 1929-1952
Garlick, Gordon, Lancashire, Northamptonshire, 1938-1950

© David Mealing

For those who might not know: 'duff' is a flour pudding; 'place' is plaice: a European flatfish; 'Martyn' is martin: a bird; 'roebuck' is a deer; 'hair' is a hare; 'woodcock' is an old game bird; 'legge' is a leg of meat; the others seem more obvious.
Thanks David