Author(s): Michael Jackson

NZ Poetry

New Zealand poet and anthropologist Michael Jackson has been described by Martin Edmond as "one of our most astute, humane, idiosyncratic, neglected and perdurable writers." His poetry is characterised by its cosmopolitan range, its conceptual depth, lyrical concision, and craftsmanship. Jackson writes, "I have always felt the need to refer my poems, as Basho does, to a place, time or event that brought it into being; to acknowledge that poems are not just texts, but have contexts. Poems are like windows that give us a glimpse of a world we travel through all too quickly. I think of Colin McCahon's Northland Panels; the paintings stop you in your tracks, each one transcending time and circumstance while firmly rooted in mundane realities."Jackson's vocation as a world-class anthropologist, and his spending so much of his life away from his own country, are shaping forces on his oeuvre. 'Expatriate' is not quite the word for one, any more than the tag 'intellectual' will suffice for the other. But the notion of 'home', with its stir of resonances, is at the core of all he writes. It is both the well and the hearth his poetry circles, draws from, celebrates, mourns.It is what experience impresses and myth confirms. His poetry reads as a constant unearthing, the shaped and responding artifact confirming where it is found." -Vincent O'Sullivan