Geoff Barlow’s 2004 NZ cricket poem

Geoff Barlow (d. 2024) was an Auckland poet. He was active as a poet in his younger years at Wellington Teachers’ Training College appearing alongside James K Baxter and Louis Johnson in several Glenco anthologies in the early 1950s. A poem of his also appeared in the New Zealand Poetry Yearbook 1953.

He became a secondary school teacher specialising in English, Poetry and Drama, and lived his later years in Auckland.

He continued to write poetry and was a member of the Titirangi Poets since the 1980s and the Chevron Poets publishing his work from 2000-2010 in their annual collection Scriptio published by John Martin Press. He never published a book of his poetry.

In one of the editions of Scriptio I discovered he had written a cricket poem. I’ll include it in the Tingling Catch archive.

GEOFF BARLOW

Watching the Cricket or Different Strokes

Two old men sit in front of the TV
rapt from the mantra of runs,
overs and wickets,
reminiscing on first eleven glory.
This while keen young men
hide in cheap rooms
on the other side of the world
and with elaborate secrecy
plan a litany of deception.

They will not grow old to watch the cricket.
They lust for their burst of deadly glory
and entry to an alien heaven.

Poem © Geoff Barlow

(From Scriptio: Auckland Chevron Poets, No. 8, 2004)