Lyrical Ballads by Bill Manhire

Sometimes it is very hard to put your finger on exactly what it is about Bill Manhire’s poetry that makes it so enjoyable. There has been so much and there is such variety. But then I reflected on which poems from Lyrical Ballads that I enjoyed the most and found myself left with a single line – a whole poem in fact, reduced to a single line:

No one should come to the door dressed like that.

That is all you have, nothing else in the poems around to give any context or background, nothing to warn you that it is approaching. Just that single line. It’s the humour. The great good humour of it. And the fact that more is left out of the poem than is put into it. Who is the speaker, exactly what did they see, and how bad could it have been to prompt that level of outrage? Was it a quiet back street or a bustling main road? I have so many questions, none of which will ever be answered. So there is the joy, it is left entirely up to my own torrid imagination to paint the scene in as many terrible ways as I wish.

There are five sections to this new collection. Only two of them have titles; the second called ‘The Tobacco Tin’, and the fourth called ‘Tell You What’. The contents do not list the names of the individual poems in these sections, even though there are lots in each.

The tobacco tin of the title belonged to a grandfather and is referenced in one of my favourite poems ‘I always approached’:

I always approached my grandfather cautiously. One time

he was sitting in a tent by the river which said, ‘This is a

relax product.’ The tent, that is. My grandfather was rolling

a cigarette.

‘Never take up this smoking thing,’ he said to me. ‘It’s a

filthy habit.’ He spat on the ground. ‘And try not to spit

either. Women don’t like it.’

He gave me his old tobacco tin. He said if I opened it, I

would be in serious trouble. Of course I did open it, a few

days after he died. Just some rather sad old nails.

Titles can be misleading for a moment, as with the poem called ‘Shining Cuckoo’, which did not head in the direction I was expecting at all:

But now it is time to visit the Shining Cuckoo rest home,

where a man called Eric is always taking off his trousers.

When the staff see this, they lead him away to his room.

Probably they beat him there. Probably he only takes off

his trousers to show his bruises. They are black and blue,

like bruises in a story. When the staff see this, they lead

him to his room. That is how a pattern gets established. His

underpants are green. They lead him to his room. Eric, they

say, we tell you and tell you. A dog barks in the distance.

Yes probably they beat him there.

If you could see a twinkle in the eye of the poet, then there it is, as the mischievous Mr Manhire pops this poem out in front of us.

Alexander appears several times in this section, as though it is the name of the poet, or the author. ‘Whenever my grandfather saw me coming, he knelt and called, Alexander! That was never my name – but I always ran to his arms anyway.’ While at the start of the section we hear him again in ‘That might be Alexander’:

The phone rang.

Billo said: That might be Alexander. Quick answer it.

Hello, said Nana. Is that Alexander?

A voice said: Hello, I am a giant monkey who likes to ring

people up!

Goodbye, said Nana.

By the end of the section there is a different response:

Nana said. That is entirely wrong Alexander. I would

always want to talk to a giant monkey who likes to ring

people up.

I just love the sense of mischief and fun, just like we are being messed about by a small boy. Perhaps one that is called Alexander.

I recall Bill Manhire being interviewed in Christchurch in 2020, just after the publication of his last collection Wow. He made a number of comments about his and poetry readers’ relationship with the first person pronoun. For Bill, the I is not always him, and for readers this is not always easy to navigate. Paula Green, in her review of Wow, called Bill a ‘roving speaker’ and I think this remains just as true in Lyrical Ballads. There are certainly a couple of poems where the poet is not entirely on the same side as his subject. This, for example, is called ‘The Party’:

Over in the far corner is the man whose wife disappeared

when she went for a pedicure. She had saved for months,

and the last time anyone saw Iris Croake she was standing

on an escalator in a tall building in the mercantile district,

rising up to … where? Well, we all ask ourselves that now.

Croake has written many poems about this moment, all

rejected by sympathetic editors, who commonly attach a

handwritten note. He keeps referring to ‘the whole sorry episode’. None of us want to talk to him.

A similarly infuriating acquaintance can be found in the poems called ‘Double Honk’:

My annoying friend no longer has the energy to be a pain

in the neck. He is tired. When he gets to his feet to go

home, he looks exhausted. We have known each other

for years and he has always annoyed me. Yet now I am

beginning to feel sorry for him. I wish I did not find him

so annoying, I wish I were a more generous person. My

poor friend can barely get into his car. Now he gives a

chirpy double honk on the horn. This is typical. Not the

honk so much as the double honk. I will be glad to see the

back of him.

And finally, just to show exactly what to expect, here are the five little couplets to be found in ‘Tell You What’:

One bird explains the sky to another.

That’s the way they operate.

 +

In the 1950s all the boys had big ears.

Those were embarrassing years.

+

Every boy with his book.

Every sheep with its showground.

+

We used to call the stove the range.

I don’t see why that should have to change.

+

Raewyn keeps in touch.

I never liked her much.

Lovely little hints of nostalgia, the big ears and the sheep in showgrounds, the kitchen range, and always that sense of humour. Poor old Raewyn.

Reviewer: Marcus Hobson

Te Herenga Waka University Press