Review of 'The Double Rainbow: James K Baxter, Ngāti Hau and the Jerusalem Commune.' By John Newton: Wellington, Victoria University Press, 2009. 224 pp., illus., footnotes, bibliog., index. ISBN 978-0-86473-603-1 (pb). NZ$40.00.s

Abstract

In 1968, James K. Baxter was by some accounts New Zealand's most notable and productive poet. Following his first collection, published in 1944 when he was 18 years old, Baxter had consolidated his reputation as a leading voice of the generation after Allen Curnow, with a succession of nationally and internationally published collections. Two books of essays, a further collection of poems and the production of several plays stemmed from his tenure of the Robert Burns Fellowship at the University of Otago in 1967. At the same time, Baxter was undergoing a crisis associated with his conviction, in turn associated with his professed Catholic faith, that words should be converted into action. In April 1968, he believed he was 'called' to go to Jerusalem (Hiruharama), a mission station on the Wanganui River and there establish a community of Maori and Pakeha devoutly worshipping God, working the land and living frugally without books. Abandoning family and regular employment as a writer of catechetical articles and material for the Catholic Education Office, Baxter first proceeded to Auckland, where he lived in a Grafton squat, trying to assist drug users, alcoholics and self-orphaned young people, until the establishment was forcibly shut down. In the following year, Baxter moved to Jerusalem to begin his experiment.