Words and Melody

The magic of weaving poetry and music together is on show in this Going West session from 2017. 

Paula Green, poet, anthologist, reviewer and children’s author, with her newly minted honours and awards, shares the stage in a charming conversation with poet, short story writer and academic Bill Manhire, and jazz composer and performer Norman Meehan, as they disclose the alchemy of setting poetic text as song. They discuss their latest collaboration, the riddle project, Tell Me My Name, and along the way Bill Manhire reads two of his poems Frolic and I am quiet when I call.

This session took place the day after Manhire, Meehan and friends delivered a captivating opening night performance, Small Holes in the Silence for the Going West audience.

Paula Green describes Bill Manhire’s poems as ‘music chambers’ and when she asks Norman Meehan to describe the words that characterise their collaborative partnership he replies: 

“The first word I would use is ‘work’.  I love work... to paraphrase Margaret Mahy, who said stories confer structure upon our lives. I think work confers a kind of structure on our lives, it gives us a still turning-point… So it’s wonderful work...  And the other side of it is I suppose, love, or affection… and that permeates everything we do... So I would say ‘work’ and ‘love’… for me they are big themes in life really, they’re our pole stars.” 

Going West’s audio archive is made possible by the generous support of Auckland Libraries.
Photo: Bill Manhire and Norman Meehan. Photos by Liz March.