Ode to Mansfield
Songs bring Kiwi’s poems to life
Like most Kiwis who went to a New Zealand high school, I was force-fed Katherine Mansfield’s short stories like they were a penance. I remember reading The Garden Party in 5th form and feeling like my brain was melting. I didn’t care because it was all so nice and I was going through a punk phase where I had convinced myself the only author on Earth who could really speak to me was William S Burroughs. Why are teenagers so insufferable?
I would give at least one kidney and half a spleen to sit quietly reading Mansfield’s beautiful, evocative prose for an afternoon these days. These days, I’m a fan.
Anyway, I think of that snot-nosed 15-year-old philistine today as I park my car in what is surely the only free space in the whole of Tinakori in Wellington, the heart of Mansfield country.
I’m snickering at how hard she’d be rolling her eyes at my unbridled delight at having first, bagged the last good parking space in the city, and second, willingly going to visit Katherine Mansfield House.
But she might be less annoyed by my companions, a bevy of New Zealand’s leading musicians and performers, gathered together by musician par excellence Charlotte Yates, to put Mansfield’s little known poems to music for the Mansfield album.
They’re not literally with me. They’re just in my earphones. But perhaps that makes their company even more intimate than if they were walking at my side.
I want to hear this new album, which is officially released on February 20, as I stroll around the place where Mansfield herself was born and took her first steps.
When I’d called Yates to talk about the Mansfield Project, I’d told her my plan and she seemed delighted I would be hunting for Mansfield’s ‘‘vibe’’ with the album as my guide.
‘‘It’s not just the house, it’s all around that area that she hung out,’’ says Yates, who has been ‘‘deep’’ in the Mansfield vibe for years.
After being a fan all of her life, she stumbled over a ‘‘really thin’’ volume of poems by the writer in the Wellington City Library.
‘‘I thought, huh? Mansfield’s poems? And that’s part of the reason [I did this project]. I had never heard of the poems. Also, at the time my eldest stepdaughter was at Wellington High School, and she was full bore in year 12, studying the stories.’’
She put together a little ‘‘wish list’’ of artists, approached some who were keen, and it all fell over for various reasons.
The dream didn’t die, and eventually Yates refreshed the list and matched the poems to the artists she thought would suit them best, and Mansfield – featuring work by Lawrence Arabia, The Bats, French for Rabbits, and Anna Coddington among others – is the result.
I’m sure the rest of the country is sick and tired of hearing this, but you really can’t beat Wellington on a good day, and it’s the definition of a good day when I arrive at 25 Tinakori Rd.
The sun is shining through the gently waving fronds of a nikau palm, there are cabbage white butterflies and monarchs flitting across the path and fluttering around the carefully planted borders of the garden, and Anna Coddington’s haunting, lilting voice is singing, ‘‘she is the bird, green is her body, and her wings are tawny’’.
She might be the most beautiful afternoon stroll companion I’ve ever had.
The front door of Katherine Mansfield House is wide open, like a good Kiwi home’s front door should be, inviting visitors into this quiet, sacred, temple to one of New Zealand’s treasured cultural touchstones.
As a lifelong Wellingtonian I’m embarrassed to say I’ve never been here before but, as I pay my $10 and accept the little guide pamphlet, I feel a bit like the first time I voted: like I’m taking part in a sacred duty.
Flustered by some unexpectedly big feelings, I stuff my earphones back in and shuffle off to the sunny parlour to the gentile awkwardness of Malade, set to music by Lawrence Arabia AKA singer-songwriter James Milne.
He has so much fun with the jaunty little tune, about two sick people’s coughing call and response ‘‘conversation’’ in a thin walled house, I can’t help but laugh.
‘‘This goes on for a long time, until I feel like we are two roosters calling to each other at false dawn...’’ Marvellous!
It should be kind of jarring to listen to these very contemporary sounds while walking around essentially a 120-year-old time capsule, but it somehow works.
One thing that strikes me is how tiny everything is – the drawing room isn’t much bigger than my bedroom. For a family of seven, it must have been a tight fit.
It’s almost like walking around a giant doll’s house, which is ironic.
The Dolls House is another of those short stories I pretended to loathe as a teenager, but which has stayed with me for more than 30 years.
Walking up the stairs, Lorina Harding’s The New Husband catches me emotionally unaware.
It’s a haunting Appalachian-style folk song that runs off with you at a great pace. Who knew that bluegrass would grow true at the foot of the Tinakori Hills?
Charlotte Yates’ David Bowie-esque The Awakening River has me literally teary and, as for French For Rabbits’ magical, transporting musical fairy tale The Wounded Bird . . . I have to have a sit down on the green velvet sofa in the upstairs room to get a hold of myself.
Mansfield is already the queen of our national literary canon, but I vote for The Wounded Bird, Malade, The Awakening River, The Bat’s haunting, cinematic Sanary, hell the whole album, to be admitted into the Great Kiwi Songbook. Not even 15-year-old me would complain about that.
Mansfield is released through record stores and available to stream on February 20