A Brief Biography

Here is a quick summary of Baxter's life. I wonder if these experiences in his life will be reflected in the images he uses (and also the major themes of his poetry)?

Baxter was born in Dunedin to Archibald Baxter and Millicent Brown and grew up near Brighton. He was named after James Keir Hardie, a founder of the British Labour Party. His father had been a conscientious objector during the First World War. His mother had studied at the Presbyterian Ladies' College, Sydney, the University of Sydney and Newnham College.

Baxter claims to have begun writing poetry at the age of seven, and it is certain that he accumulated a large body of technically-accomplished work both before and during his teenage years. He continued to write throughout his lifetime, although his frequent shifts of religion and lifestyle were the center of much controversy and speculation.

Baxter typically wrote short lyrical poems or cycles of the same rather than longer poems.
In 1944, at age seventeen he joined the University of Otago and that year he published his first collection of poetry, Beyond the Palisades, to much critical acclaim. His work during this time was largely influenced by the modernist works of Dylan Thomas. He was a member of the so-called "Wellington Group" of writers that also included Louis Johnson, W.H. Oliver and Alistair Campbell.

Baxter failed to complete his course work at the University of Otago and was forced to take a range of odd jobs, most notably a cleaner at Chelsea Sugar Refinery, which inspired the poem "Ballad of the Stonegut Sugar Works". In 1948 he married Jacqueline Sturm, and at about the same time his interest in Christianity culminated in his joining the Anglican church.

In February 1951 Baxter enrolled at Wellington Teachers’ College. In 1952 his son, John, was born and a selection of poems in a collaborative volume, Poems unpleasant, was published. Having completed his course at teachers’ college in December, Baxter spent 1953 in full-time study at Victoria University College and published his third major collection, The fallen house. In 1954 he was appointed assistant master at Epuni School, Lower Hutt. He received a BA in 1956.

While at the University of Otago Baxter began drinking heavily, but by 1954 he had joined Alcoholics Anonymous. In 1955 he had garnered a substantial legacy and could afford a comfortable house in Ngaio, Wellington. He left Epuni School early in 1956 to write and edit primary school bulletins for the Department of Education’s School Publications Branch. This period is likely to have influenced his writing providing material for numerous attacks on bureaucracy.

In 1957 Baxter took a course in Roman Catholicism, and his collection of poems In Fires of No Return, published in 1958, was influenced by his new faith. This was his first work to be published internationally, though English critics were largely nonplussed. His wife, a committed Anglican, was dismayed by his Catholicism, and they divorced in 1957.

The following year, 1958, Baxter received a UNESCO stipend and began an extended journey through Asia, and especially India, whose Rabindranath Tagore's university Shantiniketan was one of the inspirations for Baxter's later community at Jerusalem. Here he was reconciled with his wife, but contracted dysentery. His writing after returning from India was more overtly critical of New Zealand society. In the 1960s he became a powerful and prolific writer of both poems and drama, and it was through his radio play Jack Winter's dream that he became internationally known.

The first half of the 1960s saw Baxter struggling to make ends meet on his postman's wage, having refused to take work as a schoolmaster. However, it was at this time that the collection of poems Pig Island Letters was published in which his writing found a new level of clarity. In 1966, Baxter took up the Robert Burns Fellowship at the University of Otago.

In 1968 Baxter claimed that he had been instructed in a dream to 'Go to Jerusalem'. Jerusalem was a small Māori settlement (known by its Māori transliteration, Hiruharama) on the Wanganui River. He left his University position and a job composing catechetical material for the Catholic Education Board, with nothing but a bible. This was the culmination of a short period in which he struggled with family life and his vocation as a poet.

Baxter spent some time in Grafton, Auckland where he set up a centre for drug addicts acting on the same principles as Alcoholics Anonymous. In 1969 he adopted the Māori version of his name, Hemi, and moved to Jerusalem. He lived a sparse existence and made frequent trips to the nearby cities where he worked with the poor and spoke out against what he perceived as a social order that sanctions poverty. His poems of this time have a conversational style but speak strongly of his social and political convictions.

The harsh deprivations Baxter adopted at this time took their toll on his health. By 1972 he was too ill to continue living at Jerusalem and moved to a commune near Auckland. On October 22, 1972 he suffered a coronary thrombosis in the street and died in a nearby house, aged 46. He was buried at Jerusalem on Māori land in front of "the Top House" where he had lived, in a ceremony combining Māori and Catholic traditions.

Year 13 - Level 3- Critical analysis.

The key to success at Level 3 NCEA, is this new phrase: Critically analyse.

That means:

1. For any text you need to know the technical term of either the words, or visual, techniques used by the author, poet, director, etc.
2. Then you need the quote.
3. Then you need to know what the author's purpose was in using that technique.
4. Then you need to know how the technique achieves that purpose.
5. Then you need a personal response to the author's purpose. this needs to be linked to the text overall, or another text, or a critic's response.

Therefore, our paragraph, based on one of Baxter's technique, may be:

Baxter uses the metaphor, Old Samurai" to describe the tomcat. The reason he does this is because he wants to honour the fighting ways of the cat. A Samurai was an honourable fighting warrior in traditional Japanese society, and if a samuari did not fight, then their life lacked purpose. The fact that the cat is old means that it is a successful fighter, because there were no old bad samurai, and Baxter honours this part of the cat's personality. This relates to the scars and stitches that others may think make the cat look scruffy and ugly, but Baxter calls them, "badges of bouts and fights" which makes us think of the medals we give soldiers to honour them when they survive a battle.

Practise the steps with all techniques, and then the paragraphs need to be cobbled together to make a successful essay.

Year 13 - James K. Baxter Poems

This year, in Level 3 NCEA, we are staring by studying the poetry of James K. Baxter. Baxter is one of New Zealand's, and my, favourite poets.

We start by studying his poems Tomcat and The Maori Jesus.











Tomcat

This tomcat cuts across the
zones of the respectable
through fences, walls, following
other routes, his own. I see
The sad whiskered skull-mouth fall
wide, complainingly, asking

to be picked up and fed, when
I thump up the steps through bush
at 4 p.m. He has no
dignity, thank God! Has grown
older, scruffier, the ash-
black coat sporting one or two

flowers like round stars, badges
of bouts and fights. The snake head
is seamed on top with rough scars:
Old Samurai! He lodges
in cellars, and the tight furred
scrotum drives him into wars

as if mad, yet tumbling on
the rug looks female, Turkish-
trousered. His bagpipe shriek at
sluggish dawn dragged me out in
pyjamas to comb the bush
(he being under the vet

for septic bites): the old fool
stood, body hard as a board,
heart thudding, hair on end, at
the house corner, terrible,
yelling at something. They said,
‘Get him doctored.’ I think not.

James K. Baxter

The Maori Jesus

I saw the Maori Jesus
Walking on Wellington Harbour.
He wore blue dungarees,
His beard and hair were long.
His breath smelled of mussels and paraoa.
When he smiled it looked like the dawn.
When he broke wind the little fishes trembled.
When he frowned the ground shook.
When he laughed everybody got drunk.

The Maori Jesus came on shore
And picked out his twelve disciples.
One cleaned toilets in the railway station;
His hands were scrubbed red to get the shit out of the pores.
One was a call-girl who turned it up for nothing.
One was a housewife who had forgotten the Pill
And stuck her TV set in the rubbish can.
One was a little office clerk
Who'd tried to set fire to the Government Buldings.
Yes, and there were several others;
One was a sad old quean;
One was an alcoholic priest
Going slowly mad in a respectable parish.

The Maori Jesus said, 'Man,
From now on the sun will shine.'

He did no miracles;
He played the guitar sitting on the ground.

The first day he was arrested
For having no lawful means of support.
The second day he was beaten up by the cops
For telling a dee his house was not in order.
The third day he was charged with being a Maori
And given a month in Mt Crawford.
The fourth day he was sent to Porirua
For telling a screw the sun would stop rising.
The fifth day lasted seven years
While he worked in the Asylum laundry
Never out of the steam.
The sixth day he told the head doctor,
'I am the Light in the Void;
I am who I am.'
The seventh day he was lobotomised;
The brain of God was cut in half.

On the eighth day the sun did not rise.
It did not rise the day after.
God was neither alive nor dead.
The darkness of the Void,
Mountainous, mile-deep, civilised darkness
Sat on the earth from then till now.

JKB