James K. Baxter: ‘The Jerusalem Day Book’

36 pp. manuscript book, written out in Chinese ink on Zerkall paper with gouache paintings on light-blue Barcham Green’s paper, light blue Zerkall endpapers, millboard covered in Khadi blue paper, printed jacket with ‘seaweed’ motif. Completed April 2019

James K. Baxter (29 June 1926 – 22 October 1972) was arguably New Zealand’s most well-known 20th century poet. He struggled with alcoholism during his 20’s before pursuing an increasing interest in Christianity. He claimed that he was inspired in a dream to set up an intentional community at Jerusalem, New Zealand (known by its Māori transliteration, Hiruharama) on the Whanganui River, leaving his salaried employment at the time with nothing but a bible. He also set up a centre for drug addicts in Grafton, Auckland, along the lines of Alcoholics Anonymous and spoke out vociferously against what he considered to be the social structures that sanction poverty.

For me, the harsh personal deprivations he adopted reflects an element of self-laceration (perhaps resulting from at one point having confessed to a friend that he raped his wife - which has damaged his posthumous reputation), although there is something admirable in his whole-hearted commitment to social justice.

This piece concludes with a powerful allegory in which he describes a man living in a tin shack which is repeatedly shot through with gunfire. On emerging from his shack the man encounters a Christ-like figure who is wielding the gun - the implication being that the suffering he has been enduring is for his own benefit.