Keith Westwater's poetry arises from his appreciation and love of the New Zealand landscape. Well-travelled throughout the land, the poet evokes memories as he revisits places invested with emotion, history and spirituality.
Winner, IP Picks Best First Book, 2011.
Keith Westwater began writing poetry in 2003 while attending the International Institute of Modern Letters' Writing the Landscape course at Victoria University of Wellington. Since then his work has appeared in a number of literary publications and has received or been short-listed for awards in New Zealand, Australia, and Ireland.
Prizes for his poetry include an equal first place in the 2006 Yellow Moon Spirit of Place competition, first place in the International Tertiary Student Poetry section of the 2009 Bauhinia Literary Awards, and Best First Book in the 2011 IP Picks competition. In 2009 he completed a Master of Letters in creative writing through Central Queensland University.
Keith currently lives in Lower Hutt, New Zealand. Before joining the New Zealand Army as a Regular Force Cadet in 1964, he went to school in Northland and Auckland. During his time in the Army and after leaving it in 1985, he has lived in many places in New Zealand and travelled extensively throughout the country and overseas. His working life has centred on teaching and learning and development in the workplace.
ISBN 9781921869266 (PB, 92pp)
140mm x 216mm
Tongues of Ash stands out and stands firm because almost all the poems are embedded in, but also arise from, specific places in the landscape. They are trustworthy poems, where personal response to place is observant, clear and thoughtful. They tell no more or less than is needed to make a good poem and the telling is consistently light-toned and respectful.
– Dinah Hawken
There's a no-nonsense specificity about Keith Westwater's poems, a refusal to privilege the smooth over the roughnesses of human experience. He provides a chart of his significant spaces - literally as well as figuratively: the book begins with an annotated map of New Zealand, with Wellington as a special insert – which has room for romantic and family love, weather, landscapes, rocks and history.
– Dr Jack Ross
Keith Westwater lives in Lower Hutt and has been writing poems since 2003.
Westwater has been around for quite a few years and these poems Tongues of Ash have been bubbling up inside him for a while. An annotated map of New Zealand, with Wellington as a special inset, is set up as a guide to these poems.
Westwater's poems roam around New Zealand and hit on themes of romance, family, love, weather and landscape. The centre of this little book explores his army days at Waiouru and presents his strongest poems.
"Navigation point on the Desert Road for Greg Hill":
... We're halfway through
Greg said in his quiet way
pointing out the trees.
During Vietnam, Uncle Sam
licked Greg with orange rain.
Later, his life was cut in two.
He showed us how to get to
further yet, helped us with the pain
of that, made sure we all got home.
Westwater does not quite have the light touches of Bush, Jones and Fleming, but he refuses to be boring. Statues talk to each other in a small town and a field trip is not always a place of learning.
Westwater admits in "Canterbury Visit, Winter 1982" "I have to fumble my way". At times things seem a little clumsy, but there is still something good about Tongues of Ash. Westwater writes poems that make you want to believe the guy will eventually get his stuff together. I am looking forward to his next shot.
– Hamish Wyatt, Otago Daily Times
The poems in Tongues of Ash testify to Keith Westwater's long, honest and loving relationship with the New Zealand landscape. They're 'memories of place' and people, evoked and explored (often with wry humour) through closely observed detail and unexpected but apt metaphor.
– Kerry Popplewell
I have found much to appreciate: a humanistic vision that encompasses nature and culture, the personal and universal. With the wisdom of age comes empathy, irony, humour, ideological critique, love and affection. His work has an identity and strength that is unique.
– Stephen Butler, Central Queensland University
Links
Sample
Canterbury Visit, Winter 1982
You clasp a shabby quilt
of dun and brown.
Memories from years before
at first stay locked away
like the snow water
in your mountains
marching north and south.
No storms call to your Port Hills,
which are as bare as the trees
that trellis your sky.
But then, they always did.
Even as I enter the city
of my first true love
you get coy
clutch up a skirt of fog.
Once again
I have to fumble my way.
Rivers that feud with the sea
The Haast rages at the sea
when in flood
rips boulders big as trucks
from the knees and feet of giants
hurls them in the ditch.
The Waiho runs to the sea
from the nose of a river of ice
which very slowly pokes its tongue in – and
out, as it bench-presses
mountains of snow.
The Grey races for the sea
but, barred from its prize
wins instead
the bones of boats and ships
and the tears of fishermen's widows.
Winds and time
Throughout our lives blow many winds and gales.
Tomorrow's forecast is for dangerous gales.
Loved ones and their dreams are drowned at sea
when storms cause ships on shoals to sail.
At night, the moon is lashed by trees
while men go mad from days of nor'west gales.
Wind on sand makes seas of crescent moons
and sand on winds of time all life assails.
Take my hand, Margret my love, we'll climb the tops
lean forward, yell, push back tomorrow's gales.
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