JOHNSTON, Andrew (Grahame)

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Nationality: New Zealander (resident in France since 1997). Born: Upper Hutt, New Zealand, 7 September 1963. Education: Victoria University, Wellington, New Zealand, 1981; Otago University, Dunedin, New Zealand, 1982–85, B.A. in English Literature 1985; Auckland University, New Zealand, 1986, M.A. (honors) in English Literature 1986. Family: Married Christine Lorre in 1998. Career: Sub-editor, Otago Daily Times, Dunedin, New Zealand, 1987, The Evening Post, Wellington, New Zealand, 1988–89, The Dominion, Wellington, New Zealand, 1989–91, and The Observer, London, 1997–99; tutor, Otago University, Department of English, Dunedin, 1987, and Whitireia Polytechnic, Porirua, New Zealand, 1994–95; literary editor, The Evening Post, Wellington, New Zealand, 1991–96. Since 1999 copy editor, International Herald Tribune, Paris. Awards: Arts Council of New Zealand Toi Aotearoa, Louis Johnson New Writer's Bursary, 1991, Established Writers Bursary, 1994; PEN-Stout Centre fellowship, Victoria University of Wellington, 1993; Jessie McKay Award for Best First Book of Poetry, 1994, and New Zealand Book award for poetry, 1994, both for How to Talk.Address: International Herald Tribune, 181 Avenue Charles-de-Gaulle, 92521 Neuilly-sur-Seine, France.

Publications

Poetry

How to Talk. Wellington, New Zealand, Victoria University Press, 1993.

The Sounds. Wellington, New Zealand, Victoria University Press, 1996.

The Open Window: New and Selected Poems. Todmorden, England, Arc Publications, 1999.

Birds of Europe. Wellington, New Zealand, Victoria University Press, 2000.

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Manuscript Collection: National Library of New Zealand, Wellington.

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Andrew Johnston's constant attention is to the word that, as in Saint John's surprisingly emphatic declaration about what there was "in the beginning," comes before what it refers to and calls it into existence. "Being" is there already in "begin," needing only a slight rearrangement of the letters. The word, then, must be God, and when a person grants it such precedence, it works hard for him. It seems to reverse Allen Curnow's insistence on "the reality prior to the poem," but the difference is more apparent than real. It is a matter of where the two poets start, from opposite poles but each working toward the same center, a world of words but one as near to "reality" as we can ever hope to be authors of.

In Johnston's sequence "Fool Heart" the Dwarf Conifer Collection is "whistling I wish /I wish I wish." A dead, or dormant, phrase like "sensible shoes" suddenly springs to life as footprints reveal "a toehold on the real." "New leaves /put themselves out for you." A man whose heart, like the conifers, goes, "I wish I wish I wish," "might need a new frame of mind." A shag "dives—for its other name /and comes up with cormorant." "Old magnolias burst into Latin." It is to have their being arrested, confirmed, attested that the conifers and magnolias, the shoes and the shag, are wanting, and this is a miracle that only language can perform for them. There are two aspects to this approach—the word as meaning and the word as sound—and in Johnston's poetry the two have to work unusually closely together. When one is speaking by phone across continents, "there's an echo, /it's you, it's euphony, it's funny." The title of his second collection, The Sounds (both place and aural quantity), catches this doubleness perfectly.

Reflecting on his poems at large, one feels that there is a characteristic temperamental movement in them that is an escape from an inner darkness into the neutral light of particulars. There is wit, and there is even comedy, but who ever supposed that these cannot—and commonly do not—flourish in a sad soil? The poet alone in New York, trying to remember the names of the Seven Dwarfs, remembers Happy last. In London, where the sun "fades from star to rumour," he tells himself, "Kneel and pray to the fire instead: /your wishes will be granted, as wishes are, /little by little." In parting from a lover, loss and grief are there but pressed down, disciplined to wit:

When I leave I leave
a lot to be desired.

There are two forms Johnston especially favors: one a poem in five, or more latterly six, loose unrhymed couplets, and the other the sestina. The poems in couplets seem in various ways to spring from, or attach themselves to, occasions. The sestinas have, instead, the appearance of generating something out of nothing. They reveal hard graft and great technical accomplishment, but not even a master of the form can make any but the first stanza sound inevitable. In "The Singer," however, Johnston gets close. He also likes to use haiku, not singly but as a stanza form, and its economy suits his temperament:

along the beach road
River Glade, Park Avenue
Oak Bay, Walnut Close
fences and glimpses
architectural finish
magazine gardens
gap for the golf course
Toledo Park Motel, keep
your options open

Johnston's work has been likened to that of John Ashbery. He is one of several influences, and it may be Ashbery's example that has encouraged Johnston's fascination with the sestina, but the temperamental difference is huge. With Johnston one does not have to take so much on trust, and he requires his words, wherever they start from, to make their way toward something we can recognize and begin to understand. Ashbery, however, prefers to stay well clear of meaning, while signaling excitedly that it is there somewhere, just out of sight.

—C.K. Stead