James K Baxter

JK Baxter lived in many parts of New Zealand: Wellington, Christchurch, Dunedin, the Wanganui River community of Jerusalem, and Auckland.  He writes of all of these areas in his poetry.  But it is of a boardinghouse in Grafton that he writes with affection.

“…my eyes want to look

On the streets of Grafton, where I was a king.”  (JS.7)

Baxter met a man called Trixie in the Auckland Domain and was invited ot share Trixie’s flat in Park Road.  In 1969 Baxter moved to 7 Boyle Crescent, boardinghouse.  It was here Baxter met and counselled many drug users.  Some of the residents died from overdosing on heroin.  No 7 became a meeting place for addicts and was often overcrowded.  But everything was shered and the local greengrocer provided the house with left over produce.  In his poem Ballad of the Junkies and the Fuzz he says of those days:

“In the rickety streets of Grafton where many gather

In a single house, sharing the kai, sharing

The pain, sharing the drug perhaps, sharing the

Paranoa,”

In Jerusalem Sonnets, he complains that he cannot sleep “… as I did once in Grafton.” (JS.13)

His love of the Auckland Domain, as part of his Grafton experience is also evident.

“The delicate pure invisible light I have not

Seen since I left Grafton.  In those days

I’d climb the hill on the Domain

Before dawn, when the leaves were cold as iron

Underfoot…” (AT.30)

In his latter days he seemed to move between “the people’s republic of Gibraltar Crescent” in Parnell and “the disorderly house” in Boyle Crescent.  He had friends in both houses.  It is claimed that the track between Parnell and Grafton through the Domain was named Ho Chi Minh trail by Baxter and his friends.

It was in Grafton in 1972 that JK Baxter wrote perhaps his finest work:  Ode to Auckland, Letter to Peter Olds, and Autumn Testament.  He died in Boyle Crescent on 22 October 1972 and his funeral and burial was in Jerusalem, attended by hundreds of mourners in recognition of one of New Zealand’s greatest poets.

For more information on Baxter and Grafton see: Hemi’s Rehab Pad: Ideals & Realities in 1960s Grafton by Redmer Yska http://www.nzhistory.net.nz/phanza/journal/grafton.html

Also see The Life of James K Baxter, Frank Mckay, 1990, OUP.