I have been a member of Waitakere Writers for about a year now. [2025] I live in the bush on the North Shore in the house I bought as a young teacher at Westlake GHS. Yes, I’m getting older now, but will remain there for as long as I can. The serenity of the location has been a Godsend for me. The kauri I planted then are way overhead now, as are the other natives – and the birdlife is rich. I have been a teacher of secondary English and specialist music – to scholarship level, and for years have conducted choirs, and played the pipe organ at notable churches. While that has largely dropped out of my life, other arts have manifested. I have a background in painting. Invariably with text sub-stratum [say TS Eliot], quite a few have been bought by collectors – semi-abstracts. And suddenly I am writing.
As a music student in the 60s, you had to make a choice between Fine Arts and Music. Not any more. The link between the Arts is acknowledged. So many poets [eg William Blake] have painted too, as did the modern composer Schoenberg, and NZ’s composer Jack Body. The Renaissance painter Michaelangelo even wrote sonnets – some set to music by Benjamin Britten. I have a book of his work in translation. So my writing has burgeoned. I have poetry on www.allpoetry.com where I am experimenting with links to musical works on Youtube. The ‘senior years’ are interesting in that so much of life is finally ‘sorted’ and you have freedom to let it all go, for ‘full enjoyment of felicity’ [as Edmund Spenser said in the motet Faire is the Heaven]. I see myself as a ‘metaphysical’ and quite apart from trendy political fashion.