The Hut Builder by Laurence Fearnley

Author:Laurence Fearnley
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781742287683
Publisher: Penguin Random House New Zealand
Published: 2010-11-19T00:00:00+00:00

The storm grew in strength. Unable to work the following morning, I decided to apply myself to my poetry and complete a few verses I had begun during the past week or so. In light of what Walter had said, I thought it might be a good idea to get five or six poems up to scratch. Any editor worth his salt would be able to assess my talent from that number. I decided to concentrate on a series of lyric poems I had been working on. These were not as long as some of the other poems in my notebook and they were held together by a common thread: the Mackenzie Basin. I knew that some of Brasch’s own poems dealt with the landscape of the South Island and I felt I might have more chance of gaining his attention if I submitted poems that were similar in subject to his own.

After some time I had achieved little besides moving a few words around the page before crossing them out entirely. I looked up from my exercise book and decided to engage Walter again on the subject of Brasch himself. I coughed to make sure he was listening and then said, ‘The thing I don’t like about Brasch is that he always seems unsure of himself, unsettled somehow. Just when you think he’s going to write about mountains, he switches to the sea. You can’t help feeling that something – or someone – is pushing him around, this way and that.’

Walter looked at me and calmly replied that he had no idea which poem I was talking about. He said he knew Brasch’s work quite well but I would need to be more specific. He paused, waiting for me to say something, and then added that he had been on several tramping trips with Brasch and that in his experience Brasch was a keen observer of his surroundings. He took a great deal of pleasure in the outdoors. He was the type of man, Walter said, who could sleep rough.

I wanted to keep the conversation going and so hastily flicked through my book of New Zealand verse trying to find a poem to support my earlier statement. I scanned the pages again but couldn’t find the passage I had in mind. I could recall images of the sea, bush and mountains all in the one poem but the poem in question eluded me. So I said, somewhat grumpily, that Brasch took a bit of getting used to. His work didn’t jump off the page.

In hindsight, I think Walter knew far more than he was letting on about Brasch. If I had been in his position I would not have managed to stay so quiet: I’d have wanted to display my knowledge. But he allowed me to babble on about Brasch’s perceived shortcomings before finally stopping me with a rather odd question: ‘Have you ever climbed a mountain?’

I shook my head, then added that I felt that I was in the mountains now, if that counted.

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