Although I no longer had his address, I was able, thanks to the internet, to get it from another Mr Kirkup with whom James had corresponded. All I had to do then was collect the poems on my website, print them out, and send them off... Another chapter in our friendship had begun.
Forget about analysis, forget about criticism. Ultimately, poetry stands or falls on its memorability. Thus, the most significant thing I can say about the poetry of James Kirkup is that I remember it. Indeed, I remember his early poems from 1954 — from a time when, as a 13-year-old boy, I had no particular interest in poetry. Although the works of scores, if not hundreds, of poets were read to us during morning assembly, only two names have remained in my mind — James Kirkup and Theodore Roethke.
I used to think there could be be no connection between the two — that their association in my rummage bag of recollections was no more than an odd coincidence. And then I was startled, while doing some research for this article, to read that Roethke's memorial on Bainbridge Island, Washington, is a zen rock garden. I immediately reached for my copy of James' Japan Physical (Kenkyusha, 1969), which happened to be on the shelf above my computer monitor. As I opened it, I knew, intuitively, that I would find a poem about a rock garden in it.
James has written many poems about Japan. The best of them are almost painfully beautiful. But all too often, they speak of a Japan that we now mourn, rather than celebrate. During my last visit, in 1986-87, I went looking for a traditional doll in Nagoya and for some ukiyoe (woodblock prints) in Tokyo. In both cases, my searches were successful. But they took much longer than they would have taken in the early 1960s, when one could pick up restrained, tasteful art in shopping arcades and department stores.
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