In The Temple: thoughtful  poems and the wistful illustrations

Reviewed by John Daly-Peoples

In The Temple

By Catherine Bagnell and Jane Sayle

Massey University Press

RRP $35.00

Reviewed by John Daly-Peoples

“In The Temple” is a new collaboration between artist Catherine Bagnell and poet L. Jane Sayle which follows on from their previous work “On We Go” published two years ago.

The small pocket-sized book of 26 poems and 21 watercolours is like a breviary or book of the hours, to be referred to for inspiration and reflection. Both the thoughtful  poems and the wistful illustrations have much to offer.

The Temple of the title is no man-made structure but is situated in the natural world, and where poet and artist find solace and tranquillity. It is a place which holds memories and ideas, both transient and enduring. Both the poems and the illustrations are a mix of the observed and the imagined, evoking both the physical and contemplative aspects of encountering the environment.

One of the poems, “The Singing Tree” is something of  an advisory to the reader about the accessibility and understanding of poetry.

Thank you for your poem

I think I understand it

Its just with the watermarks

The old buff paper

Your scrawl

This image of the handwritten poem is given form in “John Weeks” and “Englischer Garten” where watermarks or tears blot some of the words.

The poems range from the haiku-like “Scroll White”

And when I close my eyes

black shagreen

Through to the longer pieces such as  “GPS” describing  actual place and event.

Many of the poetic images Sayle creates have a slight surreal quality as with “In Camellia Time” with the image of “a puppy drowning” oddly matched with Bagnall’s watercolour of a mourning figure that has shed formal gloves while the tears or petals of a camellia float down.

The words and pictures touch each other lightly and there is a sense of the visual and poetic images being in parallel dream worlds where  images and ideas flicker and merge.

In some cases there could be the need for  a footnote and explanation as Sayle says of the lines

I can’t hear myself think  

for the whales 

singing in the harbour

That they are based on comments made by early English settlers to the Wellington area about how noisy the whales in the harbour were, and she wonders whether such an event would ever happen again.

Some of these images exist in a dreamlike world while others are rooted in real, natural places such Paradise Valley or the Makara coast but once there the reader is deftly transported past glimpses of exotic locations such as Florence or Nablus.

Catherine Bagnell’s watercolours are a cross between a nineteenth century children’s book and a set of symbolist, colour experiments where figures flit through wooded places .These figures include humans, rabbits and black birds, all suggesting loss, remembrance and discovery.

Jane Sayle says of the title poem , that it “ honours the act of sacred daydreaming in specially consecrated feminine places. And these places are to be found everywhere: special clearings in a forest or where a stream runs out of the bush, a stone ruin from antiquity or a home that suddenly shines when everyone else has gone out, a bay at dusk. And, crucially, this work is not to be interrupted.”

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