Re-verse

INTRODUCED BY CHRIS TSE

Response

When you wrote your letter it was April, And you were glad that it was spring weather, And that the sun shone out in turn with showers of rain.

I write in waning May and it is autumn, And I am glad that my chrysanthemums Are tied up fast to strong posts, So that the south winds cannot beat them down. I am glad that they are tawny coloured, And fiery in the low west evening light. And I am glad that one bush warbler Still sings in the honey-scented wattle . . .

About the author: Mary Ursula Bethell (1874–1945) was a social worker and poet who is considered one of the pioneers of modern New Zealand poetry. Bethell spent most of her life living between England and New Zealand before settling in Christchurch permanently in 1924. She was a mentor to younger local poets, including Allen Curnow and Denis Glover.

In brief: Bethell was a latecomer to poetry, writing her first poems around the age of 50. Those first poems were intended to be simply “metrical messages” included in letters to friends in London – she had no plans to publish them for a wider audience. Her friends eventually persuaded her to collect them in a manuscript for publication. In a letter to her publisher, she explained her reasons for publishing under the pseudonym Evelyn Hayes: “in provincial New Zealand ... publicity is a really painful affair”. When choosing the title for her first book, Bethell insisted that it contain the word “from” to emphasise the original intent of her poems as dispatches from New Zealand to the motherland. The title of this poem immediately signals that Bethell is replying to correspondence she has received, although she omits any indication of who she is addressing.