Meeting Rita

Jenny Powell's MEETING RITA is a collection of forty-seven poems inspired by New Zealand artist Rita Angus (1908-70). Rita has shifted in time to become the poet's friend. As Powell says: "Rita and I had much in common. We might have enjoyed each other's company." Within the poems they converse. There is a poetic response to Rita at a number of levels. Many of the poems reference specific paintings and actual episodes in Angus's life and in a series of imagined encounters poet and painter share experiences and have a dialogue about things that are of importance: clothes, love, place, painting, poetry, the meaning of life. At times the poems translate art and music into an over-arching layer of language, with responding patterns, rhythms and tones. Other poems seek to explore and express ideas and images that might lie beneath Rita's creativity, or the dual creativity of artist and poet. In this way, a fresh direction evolves. MEETING RITA offers a unique insight into the creative process and the spiritual, intellectual and emotional camaraderie that art offers both to the artist/writer and the viewer/reader.