no longer the man he was
from “The send-off”
he is now more or less forever
already so much younger
in the minds of friends outside the church
who narrate him to each other
all those tales which constitute a last hurrah
I Came This Way Some Time Before
– Selected Poems –
by John Allison
Available August 2025
ISBN: 978-1-0670252-3-6
paperback; 150 p.
148 mm x 210 mm
rrp: $30
In February 2024, John asked if Sudden Valley Press would be willing to consider the manuscript he’d been working on – a Selected Poems. We said yes, but no guarantees, and if we took it there would almost certainly be changes. To which he replied with an airy “Yes, but by then I’ll be dead, so it won’t matter,” and promptly sent the manuscript.
There were some changes.
John Midlane Allison was a poet, musician, mentor, philosopher, respected Steiner teacher, scholar, father and grandfather. I Came This Way Some Time Before brings together the best of John’s seven previous poetry collections – Dividing the Light (Hazard Press, 1997), Both Roads Taken (Sudden Valley Press, 1997), Stone Moon Dark Water (Sudden Valley Press, 1999), Balance (Five Islands Press, 2006), A Place to Return To (Cold Hub Press, 2019), the chapbook Near Distance (Cold Hub Press, 2020), and A Long Road Trip Home (Cold Hub Press, 2023).
when he looks at her
from “In/Fidelities”
he sees someone
he has never known
when she looks at him
she sees him
In his later years I saw John as a fresco painter on his way to the monastery. I imagined him sizing up a moist plaster wall. He would brush his colourful images into the surface. As the wall dried, as its plaster set, every pigmented line John put there would join the lime and sand particles, becoming part of the structure rather than a surface decoration. His artistry, I thought, made things more solid.
But nothing was beyond retouching, fresco secco. John responded to public prompts and to private re-readings of Plotinus, Novalis, and Jean Giono – the three masters who taught him most. His love for the world here was transfigured by a vision of the world there. Finally, in his finest pieces, the artist became his own mythological creature:
The sky opens, filled with calling,
filled with form. Across the estuary
the swans rise from the water—
making myths. Across the forest
you can feel a summer breeze
feathering your skin, and turn to see
what it is that’s come over you.
[‘Making Myths’]
– DAVID HOWARD
But towards the end he went
from “This Side”
beyond those mountains he loved, turning
down the morphine so he wouldn’t be mistaken.
Each night I tried to look out through that window.
In the frame myself, the polished sheen
of a black mirror always looking back at me.
I Came This Way Some Time Before is a testament to a life vibrantly, tenderly, attentively lived. I paused mid-reading, reminded of a line John penned in a letter a couple of months before he died, ‘I’ve spent the day walking and working in the garden, all the while wording …’ My thought at the time: All the while wording. Yes. This is John—the man, and the poet. He travelled extensively and well in those realms where we make and remake ourselves.
It’s all here: apertures and openings; departures and arrivals; liminal spaces; everything between and en-route. The astonishing gift of life. The inevitability and fragility of death.
I notice how grateful I am for the way John names—rather than labels—his subjects of interest, evoking in us a sense of intimate regard, connection and personal relationship. Kōtare and kōtuku, trees, clouds and stones, the sea and the wind… all are his teachers, as are family, fellow poets, artists, musicians and philosophers-of-old. And when John writes of the ‘vigilant eye’ of the heron, he is surely referencing his own?
As readers, we encounter anew the textures and nuances of life on this planet as witnessed by John, and are expanded by the experience. His poems are meticulously-drawn observations. They activate in us the reverence, respect and care with which he engaged the world.
His journey is complete. And it will continue.
– CLAIRE BEYNON
Maybe it’s time to start again
from “Why we fish”
fetch my fly rod, head off to the river—
to look for you, brother mine
out on the water at the evening rise.
An extremely satisfying selection of John Allison’s finest work. These poems invite you to pause, notice, and feel. Deceptively simple yet rich with meaning, they speak with a gentle honesty that is immediately accessible and quietly resonant. This is poetry to be read aloud, shared, and returned to — essential reading in every sense.
– JENNA HELLER
… yet poetry is all there is
from “Envoi”
when nothing else makes sense
A new selection covering the entire career of one of Aotearoa’s most thoughtful and humane poets, I Came This Way Some Time Before reminds readers of what is special about John’s writing. From the love-infused brio of his early work to the straightforward life-reckoning of his last poems, John was an unrestrainable and cosmopolitan spirit, deeply influenced by his travels around the planet and around the wide world of the arts.
– ERIK KENNEDY
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