Winter in Prague turned out to be a blessing for Dunedin poet David Howard. The Unesco City of Literature residency recipient tells Rebecca Fox of an experience which changed his thinking.
A visit to a Nazi concentration camp is a sobering one which massively impacts a person.
It did so with poet David Howard, so much so he went home and tore up the work he had spent the previous weeks on.
‘‘All the material I made I looked at it in a completely different way. I looked at it as full of false starts and game playing and clever turns of language and ego-based attempts to convince readers how clever I was.
‘‘It was a series of false starts with some good stuff, yes. But not nearly as much good stuff as I thought.
‘‘That came directly out of going through the concentration camp and realising what I thought was important wasn't. I needed to go way deeper to deserve readership.''
Howard, a former Burns Fellow (2013), was in Prague for the two-month Unesco residency when he made the visit to Theresienstadt concentration camp where tens of thousands were killed during World War 2.
He had arrived in winter and immediately bedded down and got to work on the dramatic monologues he planned on the controversial Ian Milner.
‘‘It was intensely enjoyable to arrive in that sort of environment as it predisposed me to stay in the apartment and start making work. There was not immediate impulse to race out.
‘‘I stayed indoors and pretty much worked. For the first two weeks, I didn't venture out much.''
Milner, who was an Oamaru boy, became an Australian diplomat at the United Nations but was suspected of spying for the Russians, something he always denied. In the 1950s, Milner relocated to Prague and a position at Charles University.
He had a distinguished academic career at the university, Howard said.
‘‘It was ethical challenges that interested me as a poet.''
Writing
Howard settled into a routine, playing a Bats tune North by North which balanced the view out his window of the ‘‘alien, entrancing beauty'' of a frozen Prague.
‘‘After 3.5 minutes of Flying Nun pop magic, then I was in the right space to start writing.''
Then late afternoon, when he ran out of fresh ideas, he would venture into the city to sightsee, to cross Charles Bridge and visit the many churches.
‘‘I started to get an idea of what Czechoslovakia was like. In Prague, you are not in the 20th or the 21st century, you are in the 1500 or 1600s. You are not in the contemporary world at all.
‘‘Which is wonderful to give depth to the writing but not so great for being accessible.''
He found visiting a contemporary mall with shops recognisable anywhere in the world helped bring him back to reality.
‘‘Pretty much everything you could find in Wall St.''
After three weeks, he joined a touring group of 20 poets from around the world for three days visiting Croatia, where they did readings of their work in Zagreb and Split.
‘‘It was an incredible blast for me.''
Back in Prague, he decided to visit the concentration camp and with that came the realisation of what the country's history of battles and tragedy really meant.
‘‘I'd just been tinkering in my reading and writing. I spent the rest of my residency remaking the work and asking myself key questions about what good writing was because the frame I was evaluating it in had changed.''
He then visited the Crypt of Cyril and St Methodious, where Czechoslovakian partisans trapped in the tiny crypt all died after a five-hour gunbattle.
‘‘I stood in that space. Just being a smart aleck with a turn of phrase is looking hopelessly inadequate. More than that, it looks insulting. That was another key event in me understanding the work I needed to make in the Czech Republic.''
Again, it was a piece of history which profoundly affected him and his outlook on his work.
‘‘I realised I had to bring that to my writing. I would have never figured that out without this visit. That is really what a residency overseas can do for a New Zealand writer. It can alert you to things you don't consider in your day-to-day practice here.
‘‘It brought back that increased understanding.''
Czech connections
The residency was not Howard's first introduction to Czech culture. In 2004, his long poem There you go was set to music by the Czech composer Marta Jirackova.
The collaboration was made possible by a 2002 Creative New Zealand project grant which Howard received to develop pieces based in Eastern Europe.
He continues to develop this project and in 2007 the composer Brina Jez-Brezavscek premiered her electro-acoustic setting of Howard's The Flax Heckler at a new music festival in Slovenia.
Howard also had a long-standing interest in Milner and his connections to Dunedin and had always wanted to build a project around the controversial figure.
He first became interested in Dunedin-born poet Charles Brasch, who went to school with Milner.
Then he was at university when Milner was invited to speak at three New Zealand universities, but after Rob Muldoon attacked him as a Russian spy, two universities retracted their invitation. Otago did not.
‘‘I've met people who met Milner. The fact he went to live behind the Iron Curtain where horrific things were happening knowingly.''
While there was evidence to suggest Milner did spy, including circumstantial evidence
in the opening in 1996 of Czech archives, there was not enough to say for certain he did, Howard believes.
‘‘It made him interesting. He brought together this part of the world, Otago, that I know and love to a completely new part. It's good territory for poetry. I can use doubt.''
The work he created while in Prague - two dramatic monologues speaking as Milner, one at the end of his days looking back to his Oamaru school days - were being translated by one of the city's top poets Thomas Mika. Two pieces were translated before he left and those were read by a Czech actor before he read them in English.
Residency
The opportunity to spend time in Prague had shown Howard that Dunedin writers should not feel disadvantaged by being on the other side of the world.
Each weekend, there were ‘‘high-powered'' literary events happening in Prague but the arts world there enjoyed hearing voices from different parts of the world.
‘‘You are not really evaluated by a big reputation but how special a project is to the country. You have to bring something to Prague.''
He felt very supported while in Prague, with visits to schools organised and readings of his work. Howard was also interviewed on Prague radio about his work.
Overall, he believed the residency had direct benefits to the writer as well as both cities.
‘‘At every presentation, I spoke a little about the writing environment I come from. No-one had any doubt about where I came from and where New Zealand is.''When he had completed his residency, he travelled to Slovenia where he met like minds about working together in the future.
He also held a masterclass at the Vienna University of Applied Arts for a group of postgraduate students.
‘‘These opportunities were a direct flow through consequence [of the residency].''
Now back home in Dunedin, he was preparing for another residency, this time the Ursula Bethell residency in Christchurch.
‘‘It was a stroke of luck on my part.''
Normally, for Dunedin artists, when one opportunity ended they would find themselves starting from scratch, relying on their extended family for support, he said.
For 30 years, he had funded his writing time with work in pyrotechnics, doing fireworks shows for the likes of Janet Jackson, Metallica and the All Blacks.
While it combined his love of fire with being able to continue to write, it was not enough, he said. ‘‘It was still a compromise as I wanted to write all the time.''
With his Milner work sent to a publisher for consideration, he was moving on to another topic, this time an Austrian taxidermist employed by the Canterbury Museum in the 19th century who also robbed graves.
‘‘I feel the pressure intensely. I want to make something worthwhile out of it. I'm lucky to have the opportunity.''
