Monday's poem: Feeling the ache of infinite distance

This week we take the rare step of republishing a poem that has already appeared in the Monday's Poem column. It is by Rhys Brookbanks, a University of Otago English and History graduate, a former Otago Daily Times poetry contributor, and a newly qualified journalist.

Aged 25, Mr Brookbanks died in the CTV building in Christchurch's February earthquake. An unspeakable tragedy for his family - Alan, Fran, and Donna Brookbanks, and his fiancee Esther - and friends, it is also a loss to journalism, for although he was too early in his career to have made a significant mark, he self-evidently had a rare facility with language.

In an age of text messages, email and social media, in which many have dispensed with the subtleties and power of more formal expression - arguably to the detriment of clear and concise communication - this young man already stood out.

Rhys Brookbanks studied at the University of Otago from 2005 to 2008, graduating with a BA (hons) degree in English and history.

"In 2007 and 2008," writes Dr Jacob Edmond, senior lecturer in English at the University of Otago, "Rhys worked tirelessly for the Association of English Majors, which under his leadership was renamed LitSoc.

As president in 2008, "he organised many social events and readings for students. In 2007, he edited volume 11 of Deep South, the English Department's long-running and highly regarded student-led literary magazine".

"We in the English Department owe a great debt to him for all the time and energy he put into the department," Dr Edmond said.

Dunedin poet, novelist and editor Emma Neale, who tutored Mr Brookbanks on a creative writing paper offered at the University of Otago, and selected his work for the Monday's Poem column, recalls "a quiet yet noticeably dedicated student, whose gently-framed yet perceptive feedback helped other students considerably.

"As a rookie journalist," she wrote in an appreciation for online academic journal Ka Mate Ka Ora, "he had already begun to publish articles and reviews on a wide number of topics - from book clubs to whale watching; from historical fiction to contemporary theatre.

He had in fact published only a handful of poems: but he already had the focus, enthusiasm, and appetite for reading widely that suggested the vital role poetry would have had in his future.

"In an unpublished poem, The Space Between, which he asked me to critique in November 2009," continues Dr Neale, "Rhys quotes Rainer Maria Rilke: `But granted the consciousness that even between the closest people there persist infinite distances, a wonderful living side by side can arise for them, if they succeed in loving the expanse between them, which gives them the possibility of seeing one another in whole shape and before a great sky!'

"The intimate love lyric that grows from that quotation reveals a thoughtfulness, openness and tenderness that seem to be the fingerprint of his personality, as well as much of his writing. Rhys leaves all of us who knew him feeling the ache of that infinite distance."