By Peter Simpson on The SpinOff…
Peter Simpson reads Around the Corners, Out to the Edges, a memoir released two months after the untimely death of his friend, Jonathan Besser.
The title of Jonathan’s memoir comes from the opening lines of a long poem by the American poet Robert Creeley, written during his second visit to Auckland, in 1995.
Curious coming again here
where I hadn’t known where I was ever,
following lead of provident strangers,
around the corners, out to the edges…
– The Dogs of Auckland
There is a multiple appropriateness to this choice of title and epigraph. Jonathan, like Creeley, was an American who came to New Zealand as a stranger and approached the country with openness and curiosity. But Creeley visited only twice for a few months in total, whereas Jonathan came in 1972 and (with a couple of breaks) stayed for 50 years, becoming a New Zealand citizen and establishing his rich career as a composer and musician largely in this country.
There is a further connection between Creeley and Jonathan. The Dogs of Auckland was published in 1998 by The Holloway Press, a letter-press operation at the University of Auckland. I was co-director with Alan Loney; we printed the poem along with seven highly expressive ink brush drawings of dogs by the New York-based New Zealand artist Max Gimblett.
In 2009 Jonathan turned the poem and Gimblett’s dog drawings into a multimedia Auckland Festival event with live music composed and performed by Jonathan (and others). There was a reading of the eight-part poem, accompanied by projected visuals featuring Gimblett’s drawings – not just those published in the book but more than 40 others. (You can watch a performance of the poem with Jonathan’s music and Gimblett’s visuals here.)
Read the full article on The SpinOff here.
