Kiwi Konexions: Poets Night At Mussel Inn
After reading Glen Taylor's tempting column you will have to accept, however reluctantly, that you haven't lived a full life if you have never experienced poet's night at the Mussel Inn.
The Mussel Inn. Where is it? What is it?
Down the road from Takaka, almost at Tukurua, there is a sign on the road saying “100 metres to Mussel Inn.” A high hedge hides it from passing traffic and a carving, on an old tree trunk, marks its entrance.
You pull into the car park, hardly visible from the road, and then enter through an archway of hops, jasmine and roses. The courtyard has shady trees, with tables and chairs arranged around braziers, lit in the cool of the evening and illuminated by lights in the trees.
You absorb the ambience.
A veranda leads you into the inn and suddenly New Zealand has gone. You are in the Black Forest or the Yorkshire Dales. The big inglenook holds log fires on chilly winter or autumn evenings. The refectory tables and benches, made from driftwood found on the beaches, huge trunks of the hard woods, rimu and totara, no longer milled, polished to perfection, are scattered around.
The bar serves home made beer and cider which would leave any Devonshire man legless. The menu ranges from bar snacks to succulent steaks and fresh fish straight from the sea, rich fruit crumble and custard and “Death by chocolate” gateaux, lattes and cappuccinos, catering from the humblest taste to that of the connoisseur of fine wine and food.
Sit there, about tea time, and the locals in their boots and shirts, hair tied back in pony tails, and thirsty from a day’s work on farm or forest, or at sea, will arrive for a quick pint before heading for home. They will share their stories of the old days. Of the gold mining and the coal and iron mining and the milling of the precious hard wood from the forests, now protected for future generations.
On rainy days move in for the afternoon. Enjoy a cup of coffee and a piece of carrot cake, play cribbage or scrabble, beat out a tune on the out of tune piano, read newspapers or the many interesting books around the place, talk to people and find out about the history of the place or where the overseas tourists are from and about their countries. Relax and let the world go by.
The Mussel Inn is on the map for tourists. Its home brew is famous, made on the premises by Andrew, the owner, and his wife Jane is always ready to chat and keeps everything ship-shape. They are well known in this area. Groups of singers, musicians and actors put on evening entertainments here and the string section of the New Zealand orchestra has even performed in this out of the way spot. This is no backwater on the Arts circuit. The Mussel Inn may be a secret place but it is known by many.
And it is here, once a month that Poets Night takes place. Arrive early as people come from far and wide, over the hill from Nelson and all points between. Parking is at a premium, with cars backed up along the road. Seating space becomes standing space or sit on the floor space and people spill outside. Who says poetry is boring?
The bar is busy with food and drink and Joe Bell, the Golden Bay Poets president, patiently takes down the names of people willing to read and, in a “no fuss, she’ll be right” New Zealand way, things get under way.
Poets take the rostrum, throw their voices across the room, and we all listen and learn. Folders flick open as we realise we have counter to the poem being read or another way of expressing it. We laugh at the humour, cry at the pathos and silently consider the commonsense attitude of the man in the street to the problems of the world, so misunderstood by many of its leaders, and we applaud loudly the things we agree with. We are all the same under the skin, we cry for peace and tolerance, for justice and understanding, and poets express this so eloquently.
In our vying with each other, I discovered the long winded approach was not always the best way. In a poem about poverty, two of my verses were succinctly voiced by a far better poet than I, as “The rich man holds within his hand the golden corn and not one grain shall fall.” How true and how simply yet poetically put.
Yes poet’s nights for me are very special. Folk from as far away as Alaska have recited poems, not their own, but committed to memory, with such eloquence and feeling, which words read from the written page can never express.
Young children bring their school work to foretell the genius of the future and we share and learn. There is no ending time to these evenings; dawn may not be far away when we leave. But that is the Mussel Inn, it reflects the attitude of the people in this area, time is not important, live for the moment and share with your fellow man.
Yes the Mussel Inn is a very special place and my husband says you can even get a better pint than in Yorkshire. I often wonder why he asks me to drive when we leave the place.
