Loved, Misloved and Loved Again

If you have seen local identity and poet Mark Raffills dynamic readings of his works, you'll know how much he loves and enjoys words.

Phantom Press's publication of Loved, Mis-loved and Loved Again, poems by Mark Raffills, co-edited and assisted by Amy Brooke, puts 78 of his poems down on paper for the pleasure of his admiring audience.

Raffills is an unashamed romantic in language and tone, not afraid to attribute the high emotion of myth and melodrama to local landscapes in poems such as Lines to Marahau. His extravagant imagery sometimes totters precariously as the reader struggles to reconcile the numerous figures and images used but, in the main, he brings his message home.

Raffills is at his best in poems such as The Hay Barn, where he avoids over blown language and mythic references and writes with clarity and insight.

 

Raffills draws his subject matter from his life and the people in it...which gives the poems a generous humanity and a sincerity and warmth that it is hard not to respond to...

...The live poet is obvious; the words have both a lyrical and rhythmic quality... there is a depth to the poetry but at the same time, its heart is on its sleeve...

...This collection is a worthy distillation of Raffills' career, a glimpse into his soul and a celebration of the songs of life...

 

...But you have a gift of the unexpected attitude, the original phrase, the original thought, that makes me rethink about my friends of the past. Curnow, Glover, Brasch for example; wordsmiths par excellence but somewhere passion missed out...

 

I first came across Mark's poetry 3 or 4 years ago when reading a Christmas card - and looking in some perplexity as this confident voice of personal reflections - and social comment - packed into verses that groaned a little under their weight. But there in the middle flashed out a couple of stunning lines that lingered in the mind - as great imagery does.

It struck me that here was someone with a genuine gift of words who needed to undertake the disciplines of shaping and controlling them, editing, pruning and re-packaging what he was trying to say, to do justice to the art of poetry - and to some intriguing - or moving - insights and observations.

Somehow I got trapped - and spent several arduous but hugely interesting weeks - or was it months?!- finding out what Mark's poems wanted to say - and be - and trying to help them to become it. Points of order were thoroughly argued - and one or two poems have been included that I wash my hands of! Two or three others were so good that I wish they had been included in this volume. I also remember alighting with great pleasure on some magical little pieces, images, or insights scattered throughout, and finding three lines that I thought were the equal of any that Baxter ever wrote.

 

The following bio has been edited from The Nelson Mail interview 'Book tribute to lifelong poetry passion', published Thursday 1 December 2005.

Thirty years after he first mumbled his love on paper to a girl he didn't even know, Mark Raffills is publishing his first book of poems entitled The Cornfield and Other Poems.

Words have been Raffills' stock-in-trade over the years. Whether scribbling dispatches from the famine-stricken Horn of Africa or penning reviews of rock albums, the Nelson-based publisher, journalist, columnist and publicist has crafted text as a livelihood.

However, it's taken three decades to finally bring together 59 of his poems into a published collection. Raffills says his ear for spoken rhythms and his love of the live gig has been fuelled by years as a concert event promoter, band and club manager, youth worker and former jug band musician - plus 30-odd years of adventurous and close-knit family life (he lives with wife Jeanie and varying combinations of their four children on Best Island, Richmond, Nelson).

When asked why publish now after 30 years of dabbling in poetry, Raffills initially has one word to explain it: confidence. "In my younger days I didn't really know if the poems would stand up to experiences and scrutiny of anyone other than myself," he says.

"Like a whole lot of people, I wrote in the shadows of my bedroom, and the scratchings of my pen never saw the light of day."

It's possible, he muses, that the fragility of his youth might not have withstood rejection if the literary world deemed his poems to be 'the trite wanderings of a wannabe" and his words to be "mere symbols of little significance to be wiped from the blackboard of my life."

But in growing older he discovered he doesn't care so much what other people think. He has found confidence in the joy of writing his own words.

In 1993, he started the Live Poets Society (inspired by the movie Dead Poets Society) at the then Faces Cafebar in Nelson. "The experience of actually reading the poems made you own them a bit and honed the writing skills needed to make them intelligible to others" he says.

Last year Raffills worked with Nelson-based writer Amy Brooke, a Commonwealth award-winning columnist, critic, commentator and publisher who has gained a reputation for her outstanding children's stories.

"I sent her a Christmas card which contained a poem of mine and she thought a couple of lines in it were pretty good; the rest of it needed major surgery! We set about untangling my thoughts and editing a bunch of poems, which have now made their way to the printed page."

As for poetry, Raffills says he likes rhythm and rhyme and things lyrical and romantic.

"The classic poets like W.B,Yeats, Browning, Wordsworth and Dylan Thomas whom we learned at school lodged in our heads and hearts because they captured those qualities. I'd like to think some of those things rub off on my poems and give them a sense of that same magic. I also love the warning, urgency and spirit of war poets like Wilfred Owen and Rupert Brooke."

The courage of Christ's life has been a major inspiration and Raffills also gives a nod to Bob Dylan, James K Baxter, Sam Hunt and others treading their own path.

"These people have lived their words and in so doing have pumped my tanks full with gallons of rocket fuel so that no matter where my own journey takes me, I can find redemption even in the betrayal of my own ideals, I can find joy in the belief that love and justice and mercy are worth whatever it takes to find them."

The title poem of his collection, The Cornfield, is about greed and the lack of compassion.

"I worked for the relief and development agency Tear Fund for a number of years and chalked up some experiences which weave their way through the book."

And while there are a few "angry rants" and finger-pointing "issue" poems, he would like to believe that the poems, while written out of personal experience and his own view of the way things are, and the sentiments they express, would resonate with readers.

"Love and broken hearts are also scattered throughout the pages, while fatherly advice pops up here and there.

"There's a section of the book occupied by the loss of my brother Philip through cancer," Raffills says. "The Cornfield & Other Poems is dedicated to him."