As a Montana Poetry day special, LeafSalon is pleased, very very pleased to be able to bring you an e-interview, just in today, from Greg O’Brien, poetry’s man of the moment. And it wasn’t easy on the poor guy, because Greg is, in a monumental understatement, busy. He’s just got back from Moscow where he’s been helping to launch the new anthology of NZ poetry in Russian translation for which he wrote the introduction, and everyone wants to know how it went. They’re also keen to hear about the European tour of duty he and a bunch of other NZ poets participated in by reading at various poetry festivals.

Then there’s the on-going publicity for his own new anthology of poems: Afternoon of an evening train (VUP, $24.95) for which he did the cover art. Oh, and for his other recent book, Welcome to the South Seas: Contemporary NZ Art for Young People (AUP, $35) which has just won the Non-Fiction category in the NZ Post Book Awards.

What else? He and his partner, Jenny Bornholdt (the current Te Mata Poet Laureate) have been curating an exhibition about New Zealand poetry for the National Library Gallery – it opened last night in Wellington. The exhibition, entitled Main Trunk Lines will run to 30 October and is focused on tracing the lineage of NZ poetry: how it got to where it is today, the degrees of separation between generations of poets, long-term themes and changing ideas of what a poem is. They’ve pillaged the Turnbull Library for this Herculean task and have dug up books, manuscripts, broadcast materials and visual images that will make this a seminal exhibition.

Gregory is also a highly regarded painter, has a regular poetry slot on National with Kim Hill, and writes for the Australian Art Review He and Jenny have three young sons.

Leafsalon thought we’d wake him up and get him to answer a few questions.

Did I miss anything out, Greg?

That's most of what's going on. The only notable thing missing is the anthology Jenny Bornholdt and I have edited The Colour of Distance –NZ writers in France, French writers in NZ, which is being launched by the French ambassador at Unity Books next week. I'm still employed three days a week at City Gallery Wellington and recently installed a marvellous exhibition by the Sydney-based artist Noel McKenna. Included in the exhibition, 'Sheltered Life', is a series of ceramic vases around which McKenna has painted poems by Jenny [Bornholdt], who is an old friend of his. We published a catalogue to accompany that project.

Have you always been an overachiever or did all this just accidentally
happen at once?

I've always been pretty busy. It's a baffling fact of life that, while the amount of work I do is more-or-less constant, every now and again there is a big log-jam of material coming out. And suddenly, within the space of a few weeks a number of projects come to fruition. That's what I am in the midst of right now.

I have to ask how you and Jenny manage to fit everything in: wherever there are three small boys there must be chaos – one can only hope you find this inspiring?!

One of our 'small boys' is 19, so we really only have two smallish boys. The elder son, Jack-Marcel, is an adept minder of younger brothers. Maybe, eventually, The Three Sons will become a self-sustaining life-system... Of course it's a juggling act, but the boys are very much a part of the fabric of everything that's going on. Our cheer squad as well as our harshest critics.

Tell us about European poetry festivals.

The poetry festivals in Rotterdam (www.poetry.nl) and at Elzenveld were both terrific in their different ways. Very literary and 100% poetry-centred. This came as something of a relief as, in New Zealand, literary festivals seem very swayed and flavoured by the book trade – which means poetry ends up quite a long way down the food chain. Attending the festivals felt, to me, like a vindication for poetry. The art/craft was taken very seriously, with respect, with love and with much excitement. The audience, particularly in Rotterdam, was surprisingly young. And, at the conclusion of the readings each night, everyone stuck around, an alt-disco started up, and we all made our ways with stealth through the 280 varieties of Dutch beer on offer.

How did it go in Moscow? Funny stories?

Moscow was remarkable... in some respects a harsh place--but also tender and sad. Monumental in most things. I headed, by foot, out to the monastery where the icon-painter Andrey Rublyov is buried. There I sat on a green field beside the 14th century church as small poplar tufts floated in the air around me. Earlier, I'd been to Mass at the Kazan Cathedral off Red Square. That was completely and utterly beautiful.

Do you personally have any special links with Russia?

I wish I could boast some connection with Russia, but – alas, no. In the 1980s I went through a phase of being very interested in the Acmeist poets, particularly Osip Mandelstam and Anna Akhmatova. I wrote a poem called 'Anna Akhmatova's First Husband' which was included in my book Great Lake. I've always felt fond of that one. In the early 1990s I discovered Andrey Tarkovsky's films. Last week I re-watched his masterpiece Andrey Rublev. This time I was able to say: 'I've been there. I sat under that bell-tower.' I suspect that Tarkovsky's film Andrey Rublev will go down in history as the Sistine Chapel of the 20th century. We'll see. While in Moscow I also visited the two Tretyakov museums and paid my respects to Kazimir Malevich's Black Square. I passed on Ralph Hotere's regards to that great painting.

What exactly did Mark Williams mean when he said ‘Greg has also written a terrific foreword to the book, which brilliantly sets New Zealand in a context that Russians will find strangely familiar’?

I wasn't aware of Mark saying that. I'm really not sure. I only had one week in Russia so I can't claim to have any real understanding of Russian culture. Maybe Russians relate to New Zealanders – maybe they think we are weird... I have no idea.

Menton: one gets the feeling that this was a significant time in your lives?

Spending six months in the South of France in 2002 was a marvellous experience, indeed. Jenny was Mansfield Fellow and I was taken along for the ride, mainly because of my child-minding capabilities and generally sunny disposition. It was a revelation in lots of ways. I managed to write a few poems (these are in Afternoon of an Evening Train) and I also wrote a non-fiction book based around our experience. That book, entitled News of the Swimmer Reaches Shore, is being published next year by Carcanet in the UK and by Victoria University Press here. For some reason, Jenny's books usually appear soon after she has written them. My writing often sits around for years before it sees the light of day. This probably means my work has a timeless quality or else is deserving of a lukewarm reception, a general ambivalence. What the hell.

The title of your new book of poems, Afternoon of an evening train has other significance for you as well?

The title seemed to sum up where I am right now. In transit, but also parked somewhere. Maybe this is to do with being in my early forties (the 'afternoon'?). The evening train, as you can probably guess, is something to do with mortality. D. H. Lawrence's Dark Ship. There is an 'evening flight' in the book too.

As well as trains, maps seem to be an ongoing theme. The cover art for Evening Train includes maps, you say that the poems from Menton are your way of mapping the region, and more beautiful maps appear from your paintbrush on the endpapers of Welcome to the South Seas. Do you always like to have a map handy?

I've always loved maps – imaginative maps – and in the books you mention I've had a chance to indulge my enthusiasm. As a child, just about every book I was keen on had a map at the front: The Lord of the Rings, the Moomintroll books... and a little later Flann O'Brien's The Poor Mouth (illustrated and mapped by Ralph Steadman). I think that boys, in particular, like to begin with a map. The book, then, becomes a playing-out of the pre-existent map. For some reason this is very satisfying.

’What part of a man is a bookshelf’ – some words from your poem to Michael King and Dennis McEldowney, two of your closest friends, who were gone within months of each other. Did you find help at this time in words more than painting?

Dennis and I had a close, wonderful friendship over 20 years. It was Michael King who lined me up – in late 1986 – for the first non-fiction book I was ever involved in:Moments of Invention; Portraits of 21 New Zealand Writers (with photographs by Robert Cross). If I have an image still in mind of both Dennis and Michael it is of two men getting books off a high shelf. Their arms are outstretched above them. They are bringing the books, the poems, the words down. I finished the poem 'Where I Went' after Michael's death. It was begun two years earlier when Jenny's father died of a brain tumour. I can't really say any more.

Moving on to Welcome to the South Seas. It strikes me as an extremely accessible book with information that is simple but not patronizing for children. It is now blindingly obvious that this is something that was missing all along. What was the catalyst for this book?

Elizabeth Caffin at AUP asked me to do it. I prevaricated for a year or two (too much going on!). Then, at a certain point, the boys seemed to be at a good age for us to embark on this little adventure together. Off we went.

You work in the City Gallery – do you especially enjoy childrens’ reactions to art?

I'm interested and periodically exhilerated by the responses of all kinds of people to art. I love the response of elderly people. Let's not forget them! My friend Dennis McEldowney was always a good, wise commentator on art (as on poetry and life in general).

Do you feel that enough children see, or are exposed to it enough?

Maybe. Welcome to the South Seas suggests that children en masse could do with a little more exposure to art. The book has certainly been well-received (and with some degree of relief by many adults-it certainly has filled, or begun to fill, a gap). And children do get a kick out of it. I think children need to have the 'imaginative life' proposed to them. Margaret Mahy has been doing this for decades. Visual arts are another way of introducing the young to the idea that they can shape the world, both inside and outside their heads.

Now Main Trunk Lines: how does the title relate to the project?

Main Trunk Lines is basically a play on the Main Trunk Line that used to (and still does, although less noticeably) run through New Zealand. The exhibition suggests there are a great many channels of communication, routes to travel through this country. The 'lines' are, of course, the lines of poetry. They are the means of transport on offer in the exhibition.

Has it been manageable, or much bigger than you thought it would be?

Jenny did the lion's share of the archival work in at the National Library. It was a frantic year of chasing manuscripts, obscure publications and tracking down the art which we wanted to include in the exhibition (in the show there are fantastic 'poetic' works of art by Ralph Hotere, Saskia Leek, John Reynolds, Dennis O'Connor, Michael Shepherd, John Baxter, Michael Illingworth, Toss Woollaston, John Pule and others). It was certainly more work than we expected – but that is the case with pretty much everything we take on! We should have learnt by now.

How far back did you go, historically? How much has poetry changed since then?

The exhibition takes in some work from the 19th century, but it is not chronological and it does not attempt to sum up The History of New Zealand Poetry. Poems from the past coexist with recent/current work. Poetry is always changing. If it doesn't keep moving, like any living thing, it atrophies.

You and Jenny have been involved in quite a few projects together, especially if you count the children. You certainly must be the power couple in literature at the moment, and you only have to read Jenny’s entry in the Best NZ Poems of 2003 to know that you’ve had some good times together. Do you ever have handbags at dawn over who’s the best?

No, Jen's the best.

You’ll be part of the upcoming Montana Poetry Day celebrations of course, I mentioned that in an earlier article. But also appearing in…?

Next Monday I'm talking with Jan Lauwereyns [1pm, Wellington City Gallery, free] about the European Adventure. That'll be fun. Jan is a brilliant writer/academic and something of an unrecognised national treasure. He's Dutch. We should remove his passport from him so that he can never leave this country. He translated some of the NZ poets' work for the festivals in Belgium and Holland.

Any further upcoming projects on the burner?

A few things on the go, as ever.

Well there you go. Many thanks to Greg for taking some of his precious time out to answer our questions. He will also be on National Radio tomorrow talking with Kim Hill at 11.45am. Then after his Writers on Mondays gig at the City Gallery on Monday he and Jenny might actually have time to have a bit of a breather by the sound of it. How lucky we are to have such a tireless pair of bards doing the hard yards. And yes: that just there was my bit for Poetry Day.