Mayer, Gerda (Kamilla)
MAYER, Gerda (Kamilla)
Nationality: British. Born: Gerda Kamilla Stein, Carlsbad, Czechoslovakia, 9 June 1927; immigrated to Britain in 1939; became citizen in 1949. Education: Attended schools in Czechoslovakia and England, 1933–44; Bedford College, London, 1960–63, B.A. 1963. Family: Married Adolf Mayer in 1949. Career: Worked on farms in Worcestershire and Surrey, 1945–46; office worker in London, 1946–52. Address: 12 Margaret Avenue, London E4 7NP, England.
Publications
Poetry
Oddments. Privately printed, 1970.
Gerda Mayer's Library Folder. Kettering, Northamptonshire, All-In, 1972.
Treble Poets 2, with Florence Elon and Daniel Halpern. London, Chatto and Windus, 1975.
The Knockabout Show (for children). London, Chatto and Windus, 1978.
Monkey on the Analyst's Couch. Sunderland, Ceolfrith Press, 1980.
The Candy-Floss Tree (for children), with Norman Nicholson and Frank Flynn. Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1984.
March Postman. Berkhamsted, Hertfordshire, Priapus, 1985.
A Heartache of Grass. Calstock, Cornwall, Peterloo Poets, 1988.
Time Watching. London, Hearing Eye, 1995.
Bernini's Cat: New and Selected Poems. North Shields, Northumberland, Iron Press, 1999.
Other
Editor, Poet Tree Centaur: A Walthamstow Group Anthology. London, Oddments, 1973.
*Gerda Mayer comments:
I have written square poems, pointed poems; my poems have been around.
* * *Gerda Mayer's poems have that direct simplicity of approach that gives them an air of timelessness, something of the atmosphere of folktales that address God or the universe as if it were as casual as speaking over the fence to a next-door neighbor. I do not know if this has anything to with Mayer's Czechoslovakian origins and memories, but I suspect that it has, and the fact is that her poems are like that: "Save the world God, save your creatures save us for a rainy day." Even when she is taking on current subjects and concerns such as the environment, the same approach comes to the fore, and "Consumer" assumes a fabulosity:
The Great Consumer
crops the ground bare
where are the flowers?
where the sweet parsnips?
It is the same quality that enables her to invest the everyday with the surreal clarity of dreams:
The waiter licks the tablecloth clean
he licks clean the plates the glasses the
flowers his tongue
moves between the prongs of the forks
It is a superb talent that is Mayer's own, and it makes her a fine creator of poems for young people. Like all the best poems for young people, hers are not written down to them but are a natural extension of the rest of her work, with the same sharp humor and directness of approach:
In childhood I took it for granted
that Adam and Eve were Jews:
though implied rather than stated
it was Good News.
Mayer's collection Monkey on the Analyst's Couch confirms her place alongside the other poets of a sharp-eyed sparkling wit such as Stevie Smith. But at the back of Mayer's poetry is a depth of dark experience that makes her balanced and wry view of the world the more remarkable and worthy of our attention.
In A Heartache of Grass Mayer confronts the depth of dark experience more directly to produce a moving and chastening collection of poems. The book is dedicated to Muriel and Trevor Chadwick, to whom, she says, "I owe my preservation." Behind the dedication is a story of physical and emotional survival, of heartrending experiences, and of the downright savagery of the Nazi regime. It is not that Mayer forgives, for who could forgive such mindless barbarity? It is not that she reconciles us to the horrors of the time; that would be asking the impossible. It is not that she lashes out in anger, which could be understood. What she does is to confront these outrages against common humanity with a dignity and intelligence that is the opposite of what her enemies and her race's enemies stood for. That she can do this with humor is an even greater measure of her spirit. In this she is a model to those of us who strive toward Christian values and to many of her own coreligionists. The poem quoted above ends,
The swastikas of my childhood,
chalked up on the wall,
the rain and the years have washed away
And the Bible survives them all.
In A Heartache of Grass it is as if Mayer has been working toward this confrontation all the time. In her poem "Make Believe," addressed to her father Arnold Stein, who disappeared in the maelstrom that was Europe in 1940, she triumphantly and movingly succeeds:
That is why at sixty
when some publisher asks me
for biographical details,
I still carefully give
the year of my birth,
the name of my hometown:
GERDA MAYER born '27, in Karlsbad,
Czechoslovakia … write to me, father.
A Heartache of Grass is a book to be read as a testament to the dignity of the human spirit and as a lesson in the use of poetry.
Eminently readable and deceptively simple, Mayer's poetry is penetrating stuff. It should be read with care, as readers can suddenly find themselves falling unexpectedly into great wells of meaning and emotion.