Wellington mail round gave Baxter time for his poetry
WELLINGTON’S most famous postman was probably James K Baxter.
The renowned nonconformist poet was snapped on the job by The Evening Post in 1965, just after he won a prestigious fellowship at Otago University.
He was already a well-known writer when the accompanying photo was taken, but delivering the mail was something he did to make ends meet throughout his life. Poems never paid well, and his troubles with alcohol also made it hard for him to hold down a job.
He first turned to being a postie after walking out of the Ngauranga abattoir in 1948. A young student at the time, he was already forging a reputation as a writer. But it simply didn’t pay.
By most accounts, he did not enjoy walking up and down hills, but it gave him time to think and compose poetry, and he did not worry much about missing deliveries or being late.
In 1951, he was sacked after being found in a drunken stupor on the floor of the Karori post office, but he returned to the mail in 1963.
By then he was critically acclaimed, had joined Alcoholics Anonymous and dried out, travelled to Japan and India and published many volumes of work, but he never respected authority.
On the mail round he composed poems attacking the Vietnam War and continued with his other creative works.
It won him a significant reward – not that he much cared for rewards – when he was given the Robert Burns Fellowship in 1965.
That was when The Evening Post sought out a photo of the poet-postman. ‘‘This is the first literary award I have applied for and thought I might get,’’ he told the paper. He was particularly glad he could take his family with him to Dunedin.
‘‘The fellowship, which is generally regarded as New Zealand’s major literary prize, will mean £1500 and the chance to do little more than write for a year –a pleasure Mr Baxter has not been able to afford in the past,’’ the Post wrote. In 1971, Baxter came back to Wellington. He was longhaired, barefooted and leading a group of devotees in a commune.
His lifestyle and poems were confronting for traditional New Zealanders, but that was kind of the point. Though he lived in Wellington for several years he labelled it ‘‘a sterile whore of a thousand bureaucrats’’.
But he was a great poet by any standard and one of the finest writers this country has produced.