In memory of A.K. Grant

Today is A.K. Grant’s birthday. He would have been 70 today.

The 31st in this occasional series of reprints from Quote Unquote the magazine is from the March 1996 issue and reprints five of Alan’s poetry parodies. Four more were published in the June issue – they were all collected with other poems in his last, wonderful book Parodies Regained, published in 2000, the year he died.

I didn’t know Alan well but every time I went to Christchurch in the 1990s he was always my first port of call. Before I met him I had the privilege of occasionally editing his Listener column in the 1970s, which was a joy. Later, I met him in the 1980s when he was in Auckland struggling with TVNZ’s script editors and we would go out for lunch and drinks. Well, I had lunch, Alan had drinks and I had no clue what this meant. 

If I have got the story right, when Alan was dying in Christchurch hospital, his doctor was called Fernando. On being introduced, Alan said, ”Can you hear the drums, Fernando?” Talk about courage being grace under pressure.

The heading was:

The Rewrite Stuff

The intro read:

If the Troggs could cover Wet Wet Wet’s “Love Is All Around”, if Otis Redding could cover Michael Bolton’s “Dock Of The Bay” – why shouldn’t Marvell, Kipling, Rochester, Gray and even Omar Khayyam rewrite a Sam Hunt poem in their own style? AK GRANT recently unearthed these long-lost manuscripts.

This is the Sam Hunt original:

Enough! to count the cars

Sliding by, remember the bars

where women and jokes were shared

Scars smart now, like the stars through tears –

a man and his dog, running scared.

(from Running Scared, 1982)

And here are Alan’s parodies in other poets’ voices:

Bottle Creek

by Rudyard Kipling

By the DB Paremata, looking lazy at the sea,

There’s a green-eyed girl a-settin’ and she’s settin’ next to me;

But the wind is in the toi-toi, and its plumes they seem to speak:

“Come you back, you rovin’ poet, come you back to Bottle Creek:

Come you back to Bottle Creek.

You’ve been gone at least a week:

And the herons all are cryin’, Bring Sam back to Bottle Creek!”

I must go to Bottle Creek,

(When my dog has had a leak),

Where the dawn comes up like thunder out of Pae-ae-kak-arik!

The Missed Mistress

by John Wilmot, Earl of Rochester

Pray tapster, fill the flowing bowl

As quickly as you can,

For I must drown my haunted soul

Inside this DB can.

I loved a woman once, but now

I tremble when I shave;

And all that’s left’s a bow-wow-wow

To guide me to the grave.

I loved for better, loved for worse,

I think, I think, I think.

Oh Christ! I think this sort of verse

May drive a man to drink.

To His Shared Mistress

by Andrew Marvell

Had I but world enough and Time,

I would confront the Great Sublime,
By which I mean the girls I’ve kissed

In places which I sometimes missed;

Discovering with a sudden start

Myself adjacent to a part,

Though not the one where I’d been heading;

Enough! I brought the bawd to bedding.

But at my back I always hear

A surly barman hurrying near,

To fill my glass and count my cash,

Of which I have a dwindling stash.

Dog! to the window let us go

And count the sliding cars below.

The grave’s a dry and crumbling wicket –

Bugger! I think I’ve got a ticket!

Omar Khayyam Tries To Work It Out

by Edward Fitzgerald

A Book of Verses underneath the Bar

A Jug of Beer, a Georgie Pie – a Car

A Dog! beside me in the Wilderness –

I sometimes wonder who I am – or are!

Elegy Written in a Country Tavern

by Thomas Gray

The barmaid, Nell, is wiping down the bar.

The lowing herd winds slowly out the door.

The ploughman plods towards a distant car.

The Ploughman’s Lunch is squashed upon the floor.

Now fades the glimmering pokie on the sight:

Switched off the beacon of the TAB.

Nell says to me, “Will you lock up? Goodnight”,

And leaves the pub to darkness and to me.

Full many a gin of purest ray serene

The dark upended spirit bowsers bear

Full many a DB Bitter can of green

Will wash away full many a bitter tear.

Far from the car park’s mad ignoble strife,

The sliding cars have sped upon their way.

I count them, as I think about my life

And sing (in noiseless tenor), “Yesterday”.

And now my dog’s my truest friend on earth,

Though I’m to Fame and Fortune not unknown:

Nothing especially humble in my birth,

But Melancholy marked me for her own.

The dog’s not looking cheerful, come to that.

We’re running on an empty tank of fear.

Mutely I give the mutt a moody pat,

And pour a Scotch to chase away my beer.