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Sorry, I'm a Stranger Here Myself, Peter Bland – a memoir
Vintage
Reviewed by Jan Treliving-Brown (Courtesy of Taranaki Daily News)

Huge egos abound among writers and poets. We know this because they admit fondly to it. I've reached the conclusion that ego only enhances great writing; that poets especially write wonderful memoirs.

My all-time favourite is still the 2002 autobiography by Lauris Edmond. This masterpiece gives the richest of insights into the life of women, particularly young mothers in the 1950s.

I enjoyed Peter Bland's memoir almost as much. Bland is an enigma and I'm not letting him get away with his appalling antics. He managed to produce brilliant writing, simultaneously behaving like a complete ass. Wife and children seemed to hang off the shirttails of Bland's extraordinary life: "In the 1950s and early 1960s realities were always ignored when they didn't conform to some strict code of acceptable social and sexual behaviour."

Boyhood in the UK had been fraught with tragedy. Big brother Billy was lost at sea in 1943 and, soon after, both of young Peter's parents were dead. Migration to New Zealand seemed an exciting option.

Peter met and married the lovely Beryl, but appeared incapable of expressing his love: "What was it about the 1950s that proved so soul-destroying? Behind the tight hedges and trim blinds the man/woman relationship was still dominated by the absolute male power of the wage earner and the learned social submissiveness of the housewife with nowhere else to go ... Budding poets are not known for their domestic sensibilities and I was no exception. I cringe at the memory of my change from homeless London waif to New Zealand lord-and-master ... No one should suffer as a result of such self-centred youthful ambition. But my wife did. Today, nearly fifty years later, the anguish still shadows our relationship."

Bland the husband was a prat. Bland the poet is a complete blow-away. The final 34-page section of the book is devoted to Bland's poems 1958-1965. I have picked out the most lustrous description of mushrooming I could ever wish for: "These soft white skulls with their fresh pink frills were gifts from the gods. You hoarded them in a plastic bucket and took them home like buried treasure, spilling them on the kitchen table as if they were heaped doubloons."
Gorgeous. I want to frame it.