Allen Curnow, a poet often published and much admired by the LRB, died in September 2001. Early Days Yet: New and Collected Poems, 1941-97 is available from Carcanet. The Bells of Saint Babel’s has just been published in paperback.
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print this articleVol. 21 No. 16 · 19 August 1999
From Allen Curnow
A friend who writes from Germany evidently likes my poem 'The Bells of Saint Babel's' (LRB, 10 June) but points out the navigational impossibility of 'West/Longitude one-/eighty-three'. I wouldn't excuse myself to her, or to any other reader similarly troubled, by arguing that a poem which submerges Mt Everest in the Pacific may be allowed a small liberty in fixing the Kermadec Trench: the truth being that in consulting my excellent, detailed map of the sea floor in this hemisphere, I added three degrees to the 180 instead of subtracting them. Vanity hardly knows whether to hope the variant will be noted, or pass unnoticed, next time I print the poem.
Allen Curnow
Auckland