The Millerton Sequences by Leicester Kyle

ISBN: 978-0-9922453-5-1
140PP

Selected and introduced by Jack Ross. Including the poem ‘Instead Of, In Memory’ by David Howard

The Millerton Sequences represent the very best work from the second half of ex-Anglican minister Leicester Kyle’s writing career: the Millerton period, dating roughly from his departure from Auckland in April 1998, after the death of his first wife Miriel, to his own death in Christchurch in July 2006.

Beginning with a short sequence founded in Leicester’s expert knowledge of Botany, ‘Five Flowers at Millerton Mine’; the selection moves on to ‘Picnic In The Mangatini,’ which is probably as close as Leicester ever got to a straightforward set of “nature" poems; thence to a meditative evocation of place, ‘Rain,’ then to a work of ecological protest against the proposed strip-mining of the Millerton plateau, ‘Death of a Landscape’; then a searching personal confession, written towards the very end of his li...