Verses
by Lola Ridge

ISBN: 978-1-935835-24-0
Perfect Bound, $18.00
January 2019
5 x 8 inches, 176 pages
POETRY

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Verses is a book-length collection of poems that Ridge wrote when she lived in New Zealand and Australia, before she came to the United States in 1907. Completed by 1905, Verses was submitted to the Sydney Bulletin's literary editor for possible book publication. It remained in the Mitchell Library of the State Library of New South Wales in Australia unpublished until now. These forty-six poems represent Ridge's earliest poetic output. Their spirit evokes, and is based in, the life of pioneer miners in New Zealand and Australia. Written in formal rhyming verse (except for one blank verse poem), these poems presage Ridge's grounding in the mystical forces of nature. They also reveal her nascent interest in social justice. And they portray, towards the end of the collection a humorous side to her work. Verses attends to Ridge's attention to person and place. Australasia in the late nineteenth century comes alive in these poems.

This book features an introduction by Michele Leggott, who situates Ridge's work
in fin de siècle New Zealand and Australia. Leggott also surveys Ridge's peripatetic
existence during the early part of her life and Ridge's development as a poet. Leggott is Professor of English at the University of Auckland and was the Inaugural New Zealand Poet Laureate 2007-09. She has published eight poetry collections, including Mirabile Dictu (2009), Heartland (2014) and Vanishing Points (2017). She edited Robin Hyde's long poem The Book of Nadath (1999) and Young Knowledge: The Poems of Robin Hyde (2003). With Martin Edmond, she co-edited Beyond the Ohlala Mountains: Alan Brunton Poems 1968-2002 (2013). A major project since 2001 has been the development of the New Zealand Electronic Poetry Centre (nzepc) at the University of Auckland. Leggott was made a Member of the New Zealand Order of Merit (MNZM) in the 2009 New Year Honours for services to poetry, and in 2013 she received the Prime Minister's Award for Literary Achievement in Poetry. In 2017 she was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of New Zealand.

From Verses...

Lake Kanieri

Blue veined & dimpling, dappled in the sun
Lies Lake Kanieri, like a tired child
Wide-eyed, close clinging to the spacious skirts
Of old Tuhua, the big brawny nurse
On whose broad lap I lie. All else is still.
A bird's near whistle is the only sound
That in the silence beats into my brain
Insistent, shrill. Now is no need to serve
Or suffer or regret: it seems life holds
No future & no past for me but this
Sun-lighted mountain & the brooding bush.

Nor art nor history nor written page
Could touch me now; it is enough to be
And feel the slow & rhythmic pulse of earth
Beat under me; & see the low red sun
Stoop o'er the massive shoulders of the range.
Oh, lone, heroic, melancholy Hills!
Your dim, gaunt peaks stand in the afterglow
Like Duty, stern, implacable & cold;
Remote from the harsh clamour of the plains,
And murmur of men's cities all unheard.
Oh, still & calm; Oh, pure & wise & strong!
My restless heart from your locked hearts shut out,
Leans on your strength & craves the peace you hold—
Peace born of conflict. Ye old Stoic Hills!
Yield up your secrets. On your furrowed fronts
Are scars of fierce upheavals; in your grave,
Deep breasts what dreams are shut? Ye seem to stand
Like pale, impassive monks, whose chill looks hide
Forbidden memories of clinging lips,
Of passion conquered & of pain repressed
Within their breasts congealed. With outlines dim
The hooded slopes, like meek nuns grouped in prayer,
Kneel in the screened cloister of the bush
Dark robed & secret; & the laughing lake,
Smoothed by the slow, cool fingers of the Dusk,
Has coiled herself to sleep. The light is gone,
Save on those heights where Day, grown weak & old,
Close by the dying embers of the sun
Sits like an old man musing on his past.