WYSTAN CURNOW has published three books (not collections) of poetry. Cancer Daybook, Back in the USA, both 1989, and Castor Bay. Pictures & Proses, 1996. He has been teaching modern and contemporary poetry at the University of Auckland for many, many years, mostly ‘language poetry’ in recent times. This year he is teaching creative writing.

Curnow comments: ‘ “Mondrian’s Restaurant” is from a long manuscript known as The Art Hotel. I stayed there. It’s in Wroclaw, Poland. Most of the manuscript, this poem included, springboards off writings by modern artists. There are aspects of homage, nostalgia, ridicule, to the project, although they aren’t really apparent in “Mondrian’s Restaurant”. There is a voice there, a Mondrian voice, that has changed the way I hear the paintings. I want to mention that last year I photographed a Mondrian restaurant in Paris; it’s just off the Boulevard Saint Germain I believe.’

 

Poem: Mondrian’s Restaurant