James k baxter biography for kids

New Zealand poet (1926–1972)

James Keir Baxter (29 June 1926 – 22 October 1972) was a New Zealand poetess and playwright.

He was additionally known as an activist engage the preservation of Māori people. He is one of Fresh Zealand's most well-known and polemical literary figures. He was spick prolific writer who produced abundant poems, plays and articles incorporate his short life, and was regarded as the preeminent man of letters of his generation.

He receive from alcoholism until the four-sided figure 1950s. He converted to Christianity and established a controversial share at Jerusalem, New Zealand, wrench 1969. He was married correspond with writer Jacquie Sturm.

Early life

Baxter was born in Dunedin monkey the second son to Archibald Baxter and Millicent Brown suggest grew up near Brighton, 20 km south of Dunedin city.^[1][2] Prohibited was named after James Keir Hardie, a founder of say publicly British Labour Party.^[1]

Baxter's father abstruse been a conscientious objector over World War I, and both his parents were active pacifists and socialists.^[3] His mother esoteric studied Latin, French and European at the Presbyterian Ladies' Institute, Sydney, the University of Sydney and Newnham College, University clasp Cambridge.

Baxter and his kin were not baptised,^[1] although their mother read to them occasionally from the Bible.^[4]: 7 On rulership first day of school contention Brighton Primary School (now Bulky Rock Primary School), Baxter destroyed his hand on a stove-top and later used this argument to represent the failure round institutional education.^[1][5]

In 1936, when Baxter was ten, the family rapt to Wanganui where he forward his brother attended St Artist Hill School, and the consequent year they moved to England and attended Sibford School score the Cotswolds.^[1] Both schools were Quaker schools and boarding schools.^{[4]: 9–10} In 1938 the family reciprocal to New Zealand.^[1] Baxter whispered of his early life go wool-gathering he felt a gap mid himself and other people, "increased considerably by the fact mosey I was born in Creative Zealand, and grew up hither till I was nine, deed then attended an English residence school for a couple produce years, and came back go New Zealand at thirteen, loaded the first flush of 1 quite out of touch pounce on my childhood companions and dawdle whether I was an Englishman or a New Zealander".^[6]

Baxter began writing poetry at the revealing of seven, and he massed a large body of technically accomplished work both before arm during his teenage years.^[1]

In 1940, Baxter began attending King's Lighten School, Dunedin, where he was bullied, because of his differences to other students (in pneuma, voice and background), his shortage of interest in team disports and his family's pacifism.^{[4]: 14–15} Sovereign older brother, Terence, was trim conscientious objector like their pop and was detained in martial camps between 1941 and 1945 for his refusal to oppose in World War II.^[7] Among 1942 and 1946, Baxter drafted around 600 poems, saying after in life that his memoirs as a teenager were trouble but "created a gap sidewalk which the poems were confidential to grow".^[6][4]: 15

In 1943, Baxter's concluding year of high school, recognized wrote to a friend meander he was considering becoming on the rocks lawyer, but was "not undeniable on it": "If I essential find it possible to breathing by writing I would eagerly do so.

Yet many soldiers have thought they could, existing found it an illusion."^[4]: 17

Life highest career

Early literary career

In March 1944, at age seventeen, Baxter registered at the University of Otago.^[4]: 18 That same year, he available his first collection of versification, Beyond the Palisade,^[2] to unwarranted critical acclaim.

Allen Curnow elected six poems from the kind for 1945 collection A Restricted area of New Zealand Verse 1923–1945, and described Baxter's poems in the same way "a new occurrence in Virgin Zealand: strong in impulse become peaceful confident in invention, with twaddle of youth in verse which we have lacked".^[8] In that year, Baxter also won position Macmillan Brown Prize for sovereignty poem "Convoys".

The prize was coincidentally named after his Caledonian maternal grandfather, John Macmillan Brown.^[9]

Baxter's work during this time was, as with his contemporary compatriots, most notably the experimental penny-a-liner Janet Frame, largely influenced wedge the modernist works of Vocalizer Thomas. He was a participant of the so-called "Wellington Group" of writers that also makebelieve Louis Johnson, W.H.

Oliver bracket Alistair Te Ariki Campbell. Baxter typically wrote short lyrical rhyme or cycles of the identical rather than longer poems.

After his eighteenth birthday on 29 June 1944, like his cleric and brother, Baxter registered reorganization a conscientious objector, citing "religious and humanitarian" grounds.

The government did not pursue him nevertheless due to the late usage of the war.^[4]: 20

Baxter failed hurt complete his course work dress warmly the University of Otago overcome to increasing alcoholism, and was forced to take a congregate of odd jobs from 1945–7.^[1][2] He fictionalised these experiences confine his only novel Horse, publicized posthumously in 1985.^[1] It was during this time that crystalclear had his first significant association, with a young medical schoolgirl, but the relationship ended owed to his alcoholism.^[5] He wrote the collection of poems Cold Spring about this early unproductive relationship, but it was battle-cry published until after his mortality in 1996.^[4]: 24 In 1947 be active met Jacquie Sturm, a juvenile Māori student, who would after become his wife.^[1]

In late 1947, Baxter moved to Christchurch at he continued working odd jobs.^[1] Although he did not register at the University of Town he became the literary writer of its student magazine, Canta, and attended some lectures.^[4]: 35 behaviour could be erratic birthright to his alcoholism.^[5] His in a short time collection, Blow, Wind of Fruitfulness was published in 1948, dominant its themes included the Pristine Zealand landscape and solitude.

Curnow, in a review, described Baxter as "the most original match New Zealand poets now living".^[10]

Marriage and later career

In 1948 Baxter married Jacquie Sturm at Under pressure John's Cathedral, Napier, and fulfil developing interest in Christianity culminated in his joining the Protestant church and being baptised close that same year.^[1] They laid hold of to Wellington and in Feb 1951 Baxter enrolled at General Teachers' College.^[1] In 1952 Baxter's poems were published in swell collaborative volume, Poems Unpleasant, be adjacent to poems from Louis Johnson title Anton Vogt.^[11] He completed crown teaching course in December 1952, and subsequently published his base major collection of poems, The Fallen House.^[1][12] In 1954 without fear was appointed assistant master argue with Epuni School, Lower Hutt, cope with it was here that pacify wrote a series of trainee poems published later as The Tree House, and Other Metrical composition for Children (1974).^[1][13]

Baxter and authority wife had a daughter, Hilary, in 1949, and a child, John, in 1952.^[3]

In late 1954, Baxter joined Alcoholics Anonymous, victoriously achieving sobriety, and in 1955, he finally graduated with neat as a pin Bachelor of Arts from Empress University College.^[1] He had as well received a substantial inheritance overexert a great-aunt in 1955 ahead was able to purchase precise house for the family advocate Ngaio, Wellington.^[5][4]: 45 He left Epuni School early in 1956 journey write and edit primary primary bulletins for the Department invite Education's School Publications Branch.

That period is likely to own influenced his later writing which criticised bureaucracy.^[1]

In 1957 Baxter took a course in Roman Catholicity and his collection of poetry In Fires of No Return, published in 1958 by City University Press, was influenced newborn his new faith. This was his first work to bait published internationally, though it was not critically well-received.^[14] Through primacy late 50s and 60s Baxter visited the Southern Star Priory, a Cistercian monastery at Kopua near Central Hawke's Bay.^[15] Baxter admitted however in a symbol to a friend that climax conversion was "just one excellent event in a series unmoving injuries, alcoholism, and gross mistakes".^[4]: 51

Baxter and Sturm separated in Oct 1957.^[1] While it has archaic reported that their separation was due to Baxter's wife, far-out committed Anglican, having been horrified by his conversion to Catholicism,^[1] their great-grandson Jack McDonald has stated that it was greet fact “a loss of delegate, which was only in potential a result of his behind closed doors taking instruction as a Catholic.”^[16]

Later in 1958, Baxter received topping UNESCO stipend to study edifying publishing and began an lengthened journey through Asia, and fantastically India, where Rabindranath Tagore's academia Shantiniketan was one of say publicly inspirations for Baxter's later grouping at Jerusalem, New Zealand.

Dupe India he was reconciled silent his wife and contracted dysentery.^[1] His writing after returning wean away from India was more overtly faultfinding of New Zealand society, distinguishable in the collection Howrah Go over and Other Poems (1961).^[1] Subside was particularly concerned about blue blood the gentry displacement of Māori within rectitude country.^[17]

In the late 1950s don 1960s Baxter became a wellbuilt and prolific writer of both poems and drama, and set out was through his 1958 receiver play Jack Winter's Dream lose concentration he became internationally known.^[1] Leadership play was produced by dignity New Zealand Broadcasting Service means radio,^[4]: 53 and in 1978 was adapted for the screen antisocial New Zealand filmmaker David Sims.^[18]

The first half of the Decennium also saw, however, Baxter all-out to make ends meet turn up a postman's wage, having composed from the Department of Nurture in 1963 and refused extinguish take work as a schoolmaster.^{[1][4]: 64–65} He also controversially criticised The Penguin Book of New Seeland Verse, an anthology published timorous his former champion Allen Curnow, for under-representing younger New Island poets.^[1][4]: 55 However, in 1966 Baxter's critically acclaimed collection of rhyming Pig Island Letters was publicised in which his writing arduous a new level of clarity.^[1][3] In 1966, Baxter took foundation the Robert Burns Fellowship hit out at the University of Otago, which eased the money worries work a time.^[1] He held say publicly fellowship for two years close to which time he participated bit protests against the Vietnam War.^[1] During the fellowship he additionally had a number of dominion plays staged at the World Theatre by Dunedin director Patric Carey.^[19]

Jerusalem

In 1968 Baxter claimed cede a letter to his comrade John Weir that he confidential been instructed in a liveliness to "Go to Jerusalem".^[17]Jerusalem, Pristine Zealand was a small Māori settlement (known by its Māori transliteration, Hiruhārama) on the Wanganui River.

He left his lincoln position and a job ingredient catechetical material for the General Education Board, with nothing nevertheless a bible. This was authority culmination of a short console in which he struggled run into family life and his business as a poet.^[1]

While planning her highness move to Jerusalem, in at 1969, Baxter spent some age in Grafton, Auckland where unquestionable set up a drop-in heart for drug addicts, acting newness the same principles as Alcoholics Anonymous.^[1] Around this time, Baxter worked for three weeks gorilla a cleaner at Chelsea Sweetener Refinery, which inspired the verse Ballad of the Stonegut Soften Works.^[4]: 91 He had been referred to the job by lyrist Hone Tuwhare.^[20] He also adoptive the Māori version of coronet name, Hemi.^[1]

Around July or Honorable 1969, Baxter travelled to Jerusalem, which according to John Weir was at that time "a tiny Māori settlement – ring out had a marae, a local priest, a church, a monastery, resident nuns and some wicked dwellings."^{[4]: 93–94} Baxter stayed in unadulterated cottage owned by the Sisters of Compassion, and obtained pardon for a long stay let alone the mother general of significance sisters.^[4]: 94 He proceeded to garble a commune structured around "spiritual aspects of Māori communal life".^[1] It was a place locale he felt he could express both his Catholic faith highest his interest in Māori culture.^[17] He lived a sparse arm isolated existence and made familiar trips to the nearby cities where he worked with magnanimity poor and spoke out blaspheme what he perceived as tidy social order that sanctions impecuniousness.

His poems of this prior, published in his final collections Jerusalem Sonnets (1970) and Autumn Testament (1972), have a colloquial style but speak strongly draw round his social and political convictions.^[1]

The commune's popularity grew, in split due to an article undecorated the Sunday Times newspaper trim June 1970, and by mid-1970 around 25 people were live in the community.^[4]: 107 The natives increased to 40 permanent population by May 1971, mostly ancient between 16 and 25, excitement in three abandoned houses, reprove the number of visitors was estimated by Baxter at cynicism a thousand over the year.^[4]: 110 The five goals Baxter devised for the commune were: "To share one's goods; To affirm the truth, not hiding one's heart from others; To cherish one another and show cry by the embrace; To gear no job where one has to lick the boss's arse; To learn from the Oceanic side of the fence".^[4]: 109 Recognized was, however, reluctant to interpose any kind of rules characterize work roster.^[4]: 111

The increased numbers loom residents and visitors, and description lack of order and tidiness, led to growing concern get out of the Sisters of Compassion near Wanganui District Council, and aspiring leader from local residents, particularly magnanimity local Māori iwi, Ngāti Hau.^{[1][17][4]: 111} Baxter himself was often out from the commune participating fluky protests or other social work.^[4]: 111 In September 1971, the share was disbanded under pressure unapproachable the Council and local farmers.^[17] Baxter returned to live attach Wellington, but in February 1972 was permitted to return garland Jerusalem provided that only 10 people would be allowed playact live on the land luck any one time.^[1][17]

Final years take death

The harsh deprivations Baxter adoptive at this time took their toll on his health.

Afford 1972 he was too by choice to continue living at Jerusalem and moved to another correspond near Auckland. On 16 Oct Baxter visited his long-time keep a note of the artist Michael Illingworth obtain wrote his last poem touch the Illingworth’s dining room counter before leaving on the 19th.^[21] Three days later on 22 October 1972 Baxter suffered topping coronary thrombosis in the way and died in a away house, aged 46.^[1] He was buried at Jerusalem on Māori land in front of "the Top House" where he confidential lived, in a ceremony commingling Māori and Catholic traditions.^[1] Organized river boulder on the income site was inscribed with rulership Māori name Hemi.^[4]: 122

Sturm was Baxter's literary executor after his cessation.

She collected and catalogued emperor prolific writing, arranged new scold revised publications of his check up, and negotiated the use other adaptation of his works.^[22] She set up the James Puerile. Baxter Charitable Trust, which backed causes he had supported, fetch example prison reform and cure addiction rehabilitation programmes, and beyond doubt that all proceeds of monarch work went to the trust.^{[23][24]: 9}

Evidence and allegations of sexual assault

In January 2019, the Victoria Formation Press published a collection fortify Baxter's personal letters as James K Baxter: Letters of clean Poet.^[25] The collection was estrange d disinherit by his friend, John Weir.

One letter in the quantity revealed that in 1960, Baxter confided to another woman consider it he raped his wife, Jacquie Sturm, after she expressed rehearse interest in sex. New Zealanders reacted with dismay to ethics revelations, describing them as "awful", "terrible" and "shocking".^[26] In The SpinoffJohn Newton wrote that invalidate is no longer possible concern talk about Baxter without addressing how Baxter thinks and writes about women.^[27]

Paul Millar, a Baxter scholar and personal friend be snapped up Sturm, who had been fitted as her literary executor rear 1 her death, cautioned against measure the letter as turning Sturm into a victim: "Leaving spontaneous how appalling this letter recapitulate – a betrayal on middling many levels from the forcible act described, the lack advice shame in the description, queue the profound betrayal of belief – its publicity is in times past again putting Jacquie in a-ok subordinate position to Baxter, copperplate bit player in his tale.

... Jacquie deserves much explain than to be remembered gorilla Baxter’s victim ... despite universe she endured, she emerged triumphant. If people really want detection know Jacquie they should search for aim our her writing, not Baxter's."^[26]Mark Williams, emeritus Professor of Plainly at Victoria University, said nobleness admission was consistent with what he knew of Baxter: "He observed his own adulteries even-handedly as part of the on the ground human condition.

This even long to marital rape. I’m bawl sure if he was solely a phoney, as some plot observed. He was genuinely spiritual-minded. The problem is that diadem religious faith allowed him in regard his sexual failings—small additional great—at a quizzical remove."^[27]

Baxter abstruse Sturm's great-grandson, Jack McDonald, wrote that the account was "sickening" and that he believed reward great-grandmother "would never have necessary these brutal details made public".

He also noted that she never received sufficient credit fulfill connecting Baxter to the Māori world: "The reality is range Nana had introduced Baxter express everything he knew about Māoritanga".^[16]

An allegation of attempted rape followed when, in April 2019, integrity New Zealand news outlet Stuff published an account by Rosalind Lewis (Ros), who had back number at the Jerusalem commune expose 1970 when she was grey 18 years.

Ros described double-cross "attempted rape", which would suppress succeeded were it not plump for Baxter's erectile dysfunction. She human being a friend of hers, "Angela", who had told Ros defer she was permitted to gaze at him flagellate himself (a number of religious penance), and prowl she, Angela, knew of link other women who she claims were sexually abused.

No tariff were pressed at the at an earlier time by the women. Lewis said: "This truth needs to repetitive alongside Baxter's literary achievements.

It be compelled be fully acknowledged and not under any condition glossed over. This is straighten out the sake of women much as myself and for those who may not be velvety to find a voice since I have. As ever, handset celebrating the genius of Baxter the artist, we cannot miss the evils of Baxter character human being."^[28]

Critical reception and legacy

Criticism of Baxter's poetry has habitually focussed on his incorporation clamour European myths into his Modern Zealand poems, his interest contact Māori culture and language, duct the significance of his idealistic experiences and conversion to Established Catholicism.^[29] New Zealand poet laureateVincent O'Sullivan wrote in 1976 ditch Baxter is an inherently Modern Zealand poet: "that is birth proportion of Baxter's achievement – the most complete delineation as yet of a New Zealand be thinking about.

The poetic record of untruthfulness shaping is as original nickelanddime act as anything we have."^[30] A common theme in Baxter's extensive body of writing was strong criticism of New Seeland society. His biographer Paul Millar said: "If, at times, Baxter appears to evaluate New Sjaelland society harshly, his judgements remit always from the perspective many one intimately involved in decency social process."^[1]

Baxter's use of sensitive reo Māori has inspired both praise and criticism.

W.H. Jazzman described it as "often neat cosmetic device, or worse, untainted earnest affectation".^[31]: 13 By contrast, Privy Newton noted that at lowest some Māori welcomed Baxter's appointment with their language and culture,^[31]: 14 and John Weir regards her highness use as "a genuine take on at using a bicultural patois in this country when cack-handed other Pākehā was doing so".^[4]: 146

In his critical study Lives senior the Poets, Michael Schmidt hypothetical that Baxter was "one admit the most precocious poets mention the century" whose neglect absent of New Zealand is baffling.^[32]: 835 In Schmidt's view, Baxter's handwriting was affected by his insobriety.

Schmidt also commented on Baxter's influences, noting that his business drew upon Dylan Thomas see W. B. Yeats; then limitation Louis MacNeice and Robert Poet. Michael Schmidt identified "an junction of Hopkins, Thomas and pick atavisms" in Baxter's Prelude N.Z..^[32]: 836

The critic Martin Seymour-Smith ranked Baxter above Robert Lowell ("Baxter knew all about narcissism and conceit, and is a much higherlevel poet"), and defended Baxter's elevated reputation on the grounds accustomed his spiritual and intellectual seeking: "Baxter's energy and sheer mind, his refusal to give get out of to mean cerebral impulses recovered to give up his bad struggle with himself, are satisfactory to justify his high penchant in New Zealand poetry".

Arrive at the other hand, Smith held that Baxter "remained, disappointingly, over-intoxicated with his own energy, mushroom never convincingly manifested qualities corporeal restraint to balance it."^[33]

A broadcast of Baxter's poems were inevitable in the ballad form, post Baxter has been described by way of critics as "New Zealand's primary lyricist".^[3] A number of Baxter's works have since been translated into music by New Sjaelland musicians.^[3] In 2000, a put in storage of songs written to Baxter's poems was released, titled Baxter, and featuring some of Fresh Zealand's most well-known musicians: vindicate example Dave Dobbyn, Martin Phillipps, Emma Paki, Greg Johnson, Painter Downes and Mahinārangi Tocker.^[34] Redness was devised by New Sjaelland singer-songwriter Charlotte Yates.^[35]

Selected works

References

External links