Sunday night, Port Chalmers
Willie Nelson singing, ‘Why not take all of me.’
Eleven p.m., almost. A southerly predicted.
I’ll wake about three, if I’m lucky,
to hear the cold front battering in,
flaring the wall a few inches from where
I lie, hearing the constant drive
of one thing towards another: as earlier
this week, one o’clock church bells ringing,
and an old man at home with a small green bell
as though ringing for tea, because an albatross,
the first of the royal albatrosses, has majestied
in at the Heads for the breeding season:
one, so we’re told, who may have ridden
and skimmed the oceans twelve months
without touching down. Bells have rung for so much
less. Riding the calm and the storm and the gift
of high persistence, like weather itself, to survive.
I hope I wake at three to hear life barrelling in.
Vincent O’Sullivan
from Still Is, Te Herenga Waka University Press, 2024
Vincent Sullivan’s poem ‘Sunday night, Port Chalmers’ is the penultimate poem in his last collection, Still Is. The poem appears understated, almost homely, opening as it does with a line from one of Country singer Willie Nelson’s songs that you imagine as being played on the radio as he writes. It is a poem that places us in the poet’s home, on a Sunday night, as he snatches a moment in time. It even tells us what time Sunday night. It is a poem recording at surface level. Or so it seems. However, things slowly emerge from a deeper level to prove how much Vincent O’Sullivan was the epitome of the everyman; capable of holding his own whether in the echelons of higher learning, or conversing on a bus. Scattered throughout this poem, as indeed throughout all his poetry, are idiosyncratic O’Sullivan turns of phrase. For example, describing the ability of an albatross’s year-long journey of constant flight as a ‘gift of high persistence’.
We gather that there is something vital and important is to be found among these conversational musings, written down at the end of a day by a man thinking ahead to that night’s sleep; a sleep sure to be interrupted by waking up ‘about three, if I’m lucky, / to hear the cold front battering in, / flaring the wall a few inches from where / I lie, hearing the constant drive / of one thing towards another.’ And if we look hard enough, we are rewarded as we discover that dance between what verges on the insubstantial nature of an ordinary specific, and a deeper, universal truth
The familiarity of the scene of a man getting ready for bed, preparing to face with some anticipation the sound of a predicted southerly’s brunt, is interlaced with the wonder and majesty of the recent (‘earlier this week’) return of some Royal Albatrosses to the colony at Taiaroa Head, not far from his home (as the albatross flies) in Port Chalmers.
There is a hidden humour—that 3.00 a.m. interruption that is so familiar to those of us of a certain age, Vincent turns into something to celebrate, rather than dread.
The mention of what time it is, ‘Eleven p.m., almost’ as well as the title of the poem itself, hints at this poem being about time. But the dogged optimism of the final line points to the poet actually addressing life itself. ‘I hope I wake at three to hear life barrelling in.’ The final line could well co-join with the poem’s introductory line about Willie Nelson singing, ‘Why not take all of me.’
When looked at properly, this deceptively light poem wields a heft worthy of any southerly’s cold front. It sets in amber a moment, a mood, time, sleep, seasons, weather. The return flight of the albatross. Of celebration in the middle of life.
It speaks of the ordinary routines of a man who, sadly, is no longer with us. A man who took great care over what was important and who had the ability to discern what was worthy of notice. It says that sometimes what is majestical is to be celebrated with ‘church bells’ as well as ‘an old man at home with a small green bell / as though ringing for tea.’
We sure do miss people when they are no longer around and Ōtepoti misses Vincent O’Sullivan. For a good ten years and until his death he graced us with his presence here, connecting and engaging with those of us in this southern city’s writing community. He went out of his way to support, befriend and encourage. Before he and Helen moved out to Port, I was lucky enough to be something of a neighbour. But after they moved, it meant I no longer came across Vincent in the neighbourhood—which was actually mainly at the bus stop. We’d share a seat as the bus rolled into town and we’d chat about ordinary stuff; family, grandchildren, travel. And writing. He’d ask what I was working on and tell me what he was currently doing—which was usually going to the library to research. The McNab Room was great for writing in, he reckoned. Quiet. He recommended it as somewhere to write.
I cherished his kind regard and the down to earth conversations we had, always laced with dry humour in wry, erudite comments and thoughts. I hold especially dear one particular encouragement of his which more or less went along the lines of, ’Don’t worry about cookie-cutter, current trends and modern styles. You have your own story which has its own worth.’ I told him that meant a lot. I wasn’t kidding, it did mean a lot. To this day, this considered advice continues to arm me with confidence.
I like bells. I even collect them. Kind of. Not in a hoarder way. My Cockney great-grandfather was born within the sound of Bow Bells. My childhood nickname was Kaybells. Sunday night, Port Chalmers mentions bells three times. I also enjoy Country music – a product of my Southland upbringing and having a father who could sing C&W as good as accomplished singers on the radio – yodelling included. He just preferred to keep this ability close to home.
Personal points of interest in a poem tend to embellish that poem, making it even more precious. For many reasons, not just the mention of bells or Willie Nelson, this poem of Vincent’ O’Sullivan’s is one such poem for me. ‘Bells have rung for so much / less. Riding the calm and the storm.’
Kay McKenzie Cooke
Nowhere further from Belgium
My grandmother used to say
‘Just do your best now’
when a drawing came out smudgy,
a list of words for spelling
crossed out here and there.
I thought of that this morning
when the sea at Orepuki
banged like a hundred bibles
angrily shut, a place
no more this morning
than its few dead shops, a pub,
a maimed main street, a cemetery
on a dirt road and a white
blunt column among local
graves; a boy it remembers,
someone’s boy in his early
twenties, dead somewhere
in Belgium, where bits
of the distant boy were gathered,
one hopes, by mates.
One thinks of him here, ‘signed up’,
his spruce regimental number
in the street where so much happened,
a uniform doing wonders
whatever the wind, the sea,
the sand graining the text
on the marble plinth, his telling
the girls, ‘Yeah try to do
my best’, his cobbers’ pissed
shiyacking, ‘Glamorous bugger!’
Vincent O’Sullivan
from Us, Then, Te Herenga Waka University Press, 2013
I also wanted to talk to Vincent’s poem ‘Nowhere further from Belguim’ from his collection Us, Then. It is special to me because it is a poem placed squarely in the heart of my tūrakawaewae—the small town of Orepuki in Murihiku Southland.
Without even trying, I can spool back to the past and to myself as a child running down a crunchy gravel road, down the un-maimed main street, dropping into one of the shops which at that time was very much alive with local characters and the stuff of life.
I can also place myself there as an adult, with my whānau, visiting the graves of both my maternal and paternal ancestors; my tīpuna; visiting the grave of my maternal great-grandmother, who lost not one, but two sons to the First World War.
I can also place Vincent there, visiting Orepuki cemetery one day, reading the marble plinth, ‘sand graining the text’ and hearing the sea as it ‘banged like a hundred bibles / angrily shut’.
I can’t actually recall doing so, but I like to think that on one of our conversations on the bus into town, I did remember to tell him just how much this poem meant to me.
Kay McKenzie Cooke
Born in Auckland in 1937, Vincent O’Sullivan was one of New Zealand’s leading writers, acclaimed for his poetry, plays, short stories, and novels, which include Let the River Stand, Believers to the Bright Coast, and the Ockham-shortlisted All This By Chance. He was joint editor with Margaret Scott of the internationally acclaimed five-volume Letters of Katherine Mansfield, edited a number of major anthologies, and was the author of widely praised biographies of John Mulgan and Ralph Hotere. He taught at Waikato University and Te Herenga Waka—Victoria University of Wellington, and was the New Zealand Poet Laureate for 2013–2015. In 2000, Vincent was made a Distinguished Companion of the New Zealand Order of Merit, and in 2021 he was redesignated as a Knight Companion of the New Zealand Order of Merit. He died in April 2024.
Kay McKenzie Cooke (Waitaha, Kāti Māmoe, Kāi Tahu) lives in Ōtepoti Dunedin. She continues to hold a deep connection to Murihiku Southland, the province where she was brought up. She has recently become a Trustee for Arts Murihiku. She is the author of four poetry collections and three novels. These days she’s flat tack writing stuff for a memoir (for whānau) as well working on her fifth poetry collection and sporadically tackling a fourth novel. As well there are the regular updates to her blog 11th Letter In on her website.
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