Review by Southern Ocean Review

by Trevor Reeves:

Feeding the Dogs. Kay McKenzie Cooke. Otago University Press, P.O. Box 56, Dunedin, NZ Poetry. $29.95.
This is Kay Cooke's first book of poems. Her work has been published in a number of magazines, including Trout, Sport, Jaam, All Together Now, Southern Ocean Review, Takahe, NZ Poetry Yearbook and NZ Listener. A lot of the poems are very domestic. Searching for sharp revelations can pay off though. 'A Rosy Future' reveals the ambiguous nightmare of the influence of the looney right on New Zealand. Cooke concludes this poem with "Held responsible / Boffins you see them / sometimes, when they venture / out, needing haircuts / and wearing fawn" A dumbing down and an intrusion of science into natural and normal things. A lot of subtlety here. Kay Cooke's poetry is very normal indeed. Not flashy, nor with stylistic quirks, it appears to me to be totally devoid of self-indulgence. What a relief. Many poets, even in the accepted "loop" run self-indulgence rife with never their word questioned. There's some good descriptive images here. A kind of animation or personification of nature perhaps, but always judiciously done. Never judgmental, as in 'Lawn Bowlers, Queenstown' where you may expect to see it happen. "free cradle / bowls the weight and shape / of babies heads" In the poem 'She Leans, Narrow…' I found the picture painted of the cancer victim was a bit too narrow, but this was more than made up in the somewhat distraught vagueness of 'he Triangle Shop'. This one had obviously been honed from raw material into a nicely tuned exression. I don't see Kay Cooke as an imagist poet who evokes surprising metaphors or images. The literalness of her poetry is her strength. You read, and it all fits into place. Careful craftsmanship. Really good work. This is a very rewarding book.

Lindsay Rabbitt's Review

For Lindsay Rabbitt's Listener review, August, 2002: Go HERE

Rosemarie Smith's Article

One windy but otherwise pleasant Sunday in September - October this year, Rosemarie Smith, a Southland Times reporter and a fellow ex-Gore High School pupil, interviewed me for the Gore newspaper. Rosemarie, a competent, experienced journalist with an understated, smooth style; yet satisfyingly meticulous for all that; has a relaxed manner and receptive ear. She took very few notes, yet the article (which relatives down there kindly saved for me) proved she had listened well and carefully. She took a photo of me as well (looking a mite windblown) down by the harbour outside 'The Customhouse Restaurant'. I was chuffed about gaining some kudos in my old hometown. I even got a proud phone call about it from my Southland-farmer brother. Thanks Rosemarie, and may your tireless quest to find succcessful, imaginative writers who used to attend GHS, field you nifty results! (Tim Jones of the blog Books In Trees is another writer who was interviewed by Rosemarie.)

Review by Katherine Liddy

WritinK
an open workbook -- welcome!
Friday, August 22, 2008
Made for Weather

I got Made for Weather last week with a note from Kay saying 'Hope it reminds you of Dunedin and the South and makes you a little homesick'. Well, it does and it did. I keep returning to it as the girl in 'each verandah' returns to a swimming hole, which:


with raspberry,
with its rope swing
and smell of mud --
gave off the smell of home


The South (of New Zealand's South Island) is a huge part of Kay's poetry. It's not a mere stage backdrop, it's a vital presence. It has its odd gentle moments like the expanding 'accordion of sun' in 'Alexandra'. More often, though, it is fierce: breakers 'rage', a 'wind on all fours' scatters a lake, a skylark 'wrestles with the sky' -- even wild mint 'might growl or suddenly leap'. In all its moods, the South is as much a part of her family as the Takitumu mountains ( 'Southland'), which stand

shoulder-to-shoulder
like brothers gathered
for a family snap

Plunked right smack in the roaring forties, subjected to harsh light, cold rain and antarctic hissy fits, the South Island is made for bad weather and whatever inhabits it has to be tough. The terse, stoic 'Southern Man' is a common stereotype in New Zealand culture but the Southern Woman is not mentioned much. Made for Weather tells her story -- the absorbing picture of a human being shaped by the bruising, bewildering business of life in the lower antipodes. A typically condensed image for this is that of her mother's favourite broom:

with its bristles all leaning to the left
towards the ocean, worn down from years
of sweeping.
('no new broom')

Or of a pine tree:

[...] when hard pressed
to ride the wind
and rain,

the pine
slugs it out.
('made for weather')

And anyone who knows Kay knows that this stoicism is not just words but deeply felt and a policy of personal courage. Not only that, but I think it lends her poetry a wide-lensed view, an almost epic frame, a 'blue and terrible' sky, that throws whatever is vulnerable, temporary and alive into sharp relief:

The apples were large
cookers, red smudged into yellow,
each with its own grub
that, when our teeth broke
the apple's flesh and let in light,
would fall to its knees,
beg for its life.
('Tom Dooley')


Thanks to Kay McKenzie Cook for permission to re-print poem extracts.

More about Kay:
Kay's debut volume, Feeding the Dogs, won New Zealand's Montana Best First Book of Poetry prize in 2002.
Visit Kay's website by clicking on the link 'Made for Weather' (on the right).
Read an interview with the author here
http://keeperofthesnails.blogspot.com/2007/11/made-for-weather-and-interview-with-kay_26.html
Posted by kd at 5:11 PM
Labels: Kay McKenzie Cook, made for weather

Review by Dougal McNeill in 'New Zealand Books'

This morning I met for a coffee with two writer friends and one of them said "Great review" and the other said, "I've got it here with me if you want to take it away with you." Which was good because I hadn't read it (actually didn't know anything about it, as my subscription with that lit. mag has lapsed.)
Anyway, it is a very nice - and in mho, rather insightful review - by Dougal McNeill from the University of Melbourne. He seems to have picked up on a few things other reviewers have never picked up with my poetry. e.g. In the introduction to the review, he writes that 'mfw' '... explores the difficulties in finding out what's happened and what never will... Casual readers might mistake the project for nostalgia, were it not for McKenzie Cooke's sharp eye, and wider patterns of social suffering the work gestures towards.' He also doesn't shy away from the question - (which I sum up here as -'Okay, Cooke's poetry uses place names that people in the south recognise, but what would an Aucklander make of it?' He wasn't sure but he said,'they're bound to be drawn to those carefully-drawn moments of luxurious excess which occasionally burst through otherwise extremely restrained verse.'
Along with the coffee and chat with dear friends, this review has bolstered me and given me heart. It was what I needed today.

Toheroa

If you go here my poem about toheroa is featured - I discovered it quite by accident, much to my surprise and delight.

From Penelope

Kay McKenzie Cooke’s new poems came out last night — Montana poetry night. Words used by poet and editor Richard Reeve to launch the stylish hard-backed production by OUP included ‘elemental’, ‘proud’, ‘unpretentious’, ‘gumboots’, ‘Dan Davin, Cilla McQueen and Ruth Dallas’. If poems, like dogs, resemble their owners, I’d say, ‘warm, wry, grounded, and humming with purpose — to put Southland on the page.’ (At our backs now a spine/of mountains:/the Takitimus/caught and puckered/shoulder to shoulder/like brothers gathered/for a family snap). Her new title — made for weather.

The lovely Penelope Todd wrote the above account about my book 'Made For Weather' - after she attended the launch. I am ashamed and embarrassed to admit that I forgot to go to her latest book's launch. (Even though I had the date ringed on my trusty calendar.) Ah. Full-time work - it has a lot to answer for. The title of her book is 'Digging for Spain - A Writer's Chronicle' and I am looking forward to buying it and reading it. I know it will be a fantastic read, she's a wonderful writer.