Ted Jenner

Vasalua Jenner-Helu

Address

Hūfanga he ha‘oha‘onga oe kau mataotao fa‘u tohi mo lau māau o Aotearoa, moe ngāahi kaungāme‘a, kaungā faiako o Ted i Malawi, Afilika, Pilitania, Atenisi i Tonga, mo Aotearoa foki.

Tulou ki hoku ofa‘anga, kae uma‘ā e Nimatapu, kae atā keu fakahoko ha fakamālō mo ha tēngihia fakamāvae mo Ted.

Ki he fāmili, kainga, moe whanau, ngāahi kaungāme‘a, maheni, moe kaungā ngāue kotoa.

Thanks and Acknowledgement

Firstly, I want to thank Ross, Chris, and family for their care and support. Ross helped with putting together Ted’s Service programme and Aria put together the photo show. To my daughter, Davinia who stood by me throughout the year since Ted was admitted to hospital. To my nephew, Hingano, Lupe and their whanau for the loving support and representing my Tongan kainga in honouring Ted. Malo e fakahoko fatongia.

To Paul Janman for the beautiful karakia and for co-ordinating the online link for tributes to Ted and to Uwe Grodd for playing his flute music piece "Syrinx" from Debussy at Ted's service. To my nephew, Tapuaki Helu, the Nimatapu and guardian of Ted. To Richard von Sturmer for the karanga at the end of the service.

To friends, colleagues, and acquaintances, who were able to come and say good-bye to Ted and those who weren’t able to but sent their tributes. To all those overseas who sent their condolences.

THANK YOU ALL VERY MUCH for your kind thoughts and messages of condolences. I will always be grateful to you for your love, care, and support given me and Ted.

Mālō aupito. Nga mihi nui.

Grateful acknowledgement of Alan at Sibuns funeral directors, Julia the Celebrant, and Purewa.

Lament of Ted (Tēngihia o Ted)

Kuo tō e la‘ā, pea laumea ao‘aofia e langi,

pulia e māhina, moe ngāahi fetu‘u o pōpō‘ulia pea lōngonoa e aātakai,

He kuo fokifā e pulia eku ‘māama oe mo‘ui.’

The sun has gone and the sky is dark,

the moon disappeared, and no stars to be seen,

darkness falls and the surroundings still.

Since my ‘Light of Life’ parted.

Ko e tā ne ongo ki hoku mafu,

pea mafasia eku mo‘ui he ta‘e‘amanekina ho‘o folau, Ted.

Ikai toe ifo ha me‘a he kuo mūnoa e fakakaukau,

he neu falala pē kia koe.

Ted’s parting so soon broke my heart,

and my life is empty, my thoughts numb,

he’s been my mentor, my strength.

He gave me true love I never thought I’d find and the happiness and aroha we shared, made me realize even more what an amazing man he was and I count myself extremely lucky to have met him. His wisdom never ceased to inspire me. He was my best friend, who understood me more than anyone else could. I miss him so much.

Togetherness

During Ted’s nearly 4 weeks (since June 12) in Auckland hospital we spent everyday together and we pledged our love for each other over many times. I never thought I would look forward to going to the hospital. He wanted to still continue reading and asked for ‘The Sauna Bath Mysteries’ but trying to read and write was tiring and out of frustrations he scribbled short bits of notes;

“The ability of humans to survive depends on inadequate numbers of pillows.”

when we didn’t find extra pillows to prop up his legs.

“I’ve been counting the squares in the ceiling above my hospital bed.”

out of sheer boredom.

“Everyday, I hear that I am the seriously impaired patient in Ward 78.”

Then, when we talked about his funeral he mumbled,

“A literary man but in the end I choose music.”

and asked for Miles Davis, Saint-Saens, and Messiaen. In his final hour, nurse Duncan, kindly played Miles Davis while I held Ted’s hand, Ross held his other hand, and Davinia patted his head until 1.30 a.m. Thursday 8th of July. He went to sleep peacefully.

Folau ā, si‘oku ofa‘anga he kuo mā‘uloloa e pō‘uli, kae fakaheka e folau.

FAREWELL Ted. With all my love.

Cultural clarification

The Karakia by Paul at Ted’s Service was fitting and the gateway (Fafā) to Pulotu (land of the Afterlife in the Polynesian world) welcomed Ted’s soul. The Nimatapu (Sacred Hands), Ted’s guardian who sat by his side to ensure of Ted’s safe journey and to navigate the waka across the ocean. By having the Nimatapu we honoured Ted appropriately as a Classicist and I didn’t break any Tongan protocol because the Nimatapu (Tapuaki Helu) is a direct descendant of Hikule‘o named after the ‘god of Pulotu’, son of the Torchbearer (a skilled Tufunga) of the Tu‘i Tonga (16th century A.D.). Thus, Hikule‘o was a member of Kauhala Uta (Upper Echelon) of the Tu‘i Tonga.

Similar honour was bestowed upon my late uncle, Prof. Futa Helu (founder of Atenisi) in Tonga where he had a Nimatapu at his funeral service in 2010

Ross Jenner

My first memories of Big Bro are at 35 Prince Albert Road, St Kilda, later at 8 Alton Avenue, Musselburgh Rise, Dunedin. Since last Thursday, Ted was the only living connection with my childhood, I now have only a filling in my front tooth due to a rock from the Manuhirikia River in Alexandra (where we holidayed every break, every year) which he threw at me at the age of eight as a concrete, which is to say golden, reminder.

Ted graduated from Otago University with a masters in Greek, followed by a masters in Latin. He then attended to Epsom Teachers College followed by a stint at Hamilton Boys High.

In 1973, we (my parents, Christine and I) farewelled him off on the Ellinis bound for Southampton, via New York, together with Grahame Sydney, who emailed me two days ago to report:

“I have such clear and unforgettable recollections of ted and I on the boat to Southampton, the night ashore in Tahiti, sprinting around the galleries of Manhattan etc. January 1973 that was... and I can see him clearly still at Alton Avenue, coming down from his upstairs bedroom, school uniform, pipe in mouth... likely clutching something by T S Eliot or Lawrence Durrell.”

Nevertheless, typically, Ted said on departure at Southampton, ‘I’ll see you round”. Grahame thought he’d be back in ten minutes. They did not meet again for 20 years!

In England he taught at St Ronan’s School in Kent, among others. He toured around his favorite megalithic sites, then made trips to Greece, Italy, France Spain. He worked on an archaeological site in the Negev Desert and hated it. Christine and I saw him only occasionally when we worked in London in the ‘70s. On one expedition he travelled overland (an impossibility today) from Egypt to Morocco, where he was knifed by a mugger. On return, Ted taught at Westlake Boys and lived in Devonport. Then he returned to the UK around 1985 for another spell, when he also visited Malta and a favorite megalithic site, Gozo.

Ted was offered a bargain deal to do a PhD at a good English university but through stinginess or stubbornness did not take it up. The whole course of his life might have been so much easier but, long before, he had coined the family motto: nihil simplex, Nothing Simple. He returned to New Zealand and taught, I seem to remember, as a relief teacher in order to make time for writing. But he also taught at Epsom Girls.

In the 1990s he decided to teach in Africa, in Malawi - of all places to teach Greek! He taught in two spells, with a return home in between, at Chancellor College, the University of Malawi and Kamuzu Academy and travelled to Mozambique. He was teaching in Invercargill when our father died in 2002. In the poorest nation in the world, he earned less than the dole in NZ, while not infrequently people would be eaten on campus by lions. There, Ted developed a horror of mosquitos which lasted even till this year.

In 2014, having already taught at Atenesi Academy in Tonga, Ted married Vasalua Helu, niece of its founder, the Herakleitos scholar. Inveterate traveler, Ted ranged all over New Zealand from Cape Reinga to Stewart Island before and after marriage. He and Vasalua were preparing to return to Greece and Italy one final time when Covid took over.

For three decades Ted had a serious addiction: Citroen cars, spending half his income at Bishop’s Garage. It might have been a Maigret fantasy, cured only by a Toyota. He was of decidedly leftist inclinations and I have vivid memories, when he was first living next door with our father, of his shouting and swearing at ‘Lockjaw’ Smith then, latterly, at David Seymour, to get off the screen. He avidly followed The Chase on tv., where we would hear him one day shouting, ‘you fool the answer is…. , then the next, I’m not watching this rubbish, it’s just the commodification of knowledge!’, then the next, ‘the answer is…’.

Ted was a man of integrity and high principles (which led him at times to conflict with even his best friends), with a very perceptive humour and dry wit. He had immense linguistic skills (learning te reo Māori quite late) and a love of the natural world, manifest in his poetry. His way of looking at life was fresh and open-minded. His thirst for knowledge was enriched by experiences in varied lands and varied times.

Ted’s lasting legacy is his writing, which includes the volumes of poetry: A Memorial Brass, Hawk Press, 1980. Dedications, Omphalos Press, 1991. Sappho Triptych, Puriri Press, 2007. Writers in Residence and other Captive Fauna, Titus Books, 2009. The Arrow that missed, Cold Hub Press, 2017.

He wrote innumerable journal articles including, And, Parallex, Landfall, Brief, ka mate ka ora : a new zealand journal of poetry and poetics.

Then, there are the books of translations: The Love songs of Ibykos: 22 Fragments. Holloway Press, 1997. ‘Complete Gold Leaves: Transcriptions of Sixteen Ancient Greek Gold Lamellae’, in the journal Percutio, 2016, followed by the book The Gold Leaves: Being an account and translation from the Ancient Greek of the so-called Orphic gold tablets, Atuanui Press, 2014. These last two concern Ted’s most recent obsession, minute pieces of gold foil, usually placed in the mouth, bearing instructions in Ancient Greek verse for the souls of the dead on the paths they should take in the Underworld.

Perhaps, unfortunately, in a sense, he was prescient…

Being an architect, I am an amateur when it comes to literature, nevertheless, having observed Ted writing for at least 60 years, I must note what I most admire about his work. The first is concision, which I suspect he began to practice following Ezra Pound’s formulation, “dichten est condensare” - to write poetry, which in German means also ‘to thicken’, is to condense. His output might have been bigger but it would not have been better.

Then, there are what he calls “Luminous Details” by which I understand the particular, the fragment, perhaps as in the idea of Ecco’s Open Work. The highlighting of the specific, the detail, which is luminous like the Aztec Crystal skull which Ted, following another hero, St-John Perse, admired so much. It is there in the photos in his album. Moreover everything tends to microcosm.

Ted took everything as he found it, finding the river Styx in Waiatarua park. His interests are not regional, nor national, rather, something approaching universal. There is no privileging - St Kilda and Central Otago are on the same level as the Ramblas in Barcelona, as Zomba in Malawi. Similarly, there is no privilege in his ranging around in and with time, from cave art to megaliths, to classical antiquity, to high modernism, to postmodernity.

Michael Harlow observes of Ted’s work “It is a labyrinthine house of language with many rooms that Jenner inhabits and what he finds there is never less than (ordinarily) surprising and provocative.”

For what it’s worth, I would add that he found a chiasmus: landscape or thing as language, language as landscape or thing.

Last week Ted told me of a vivid dream he had. He was looking out from his old bedroom in Musselburgh Rise over St Kilda to the Ocean where he saw every last detail of city, sea and sky. I find it all prefigured in his writing. He also started to tell me of a vivid dream of Stone Henge but the doctor interrupted us…

And now he has slipped back into the wider life of the planet.

Very dear Ted,

Very silvered but golden Bro,

I would like to place a golden map to the next world in your lips but all I can say is:

Ave atque vale!

Jack Ross

Edward [Ted] Jenner was a friend of mine. I guess one of the things I appreciated most about Ted was his unfailing cheerfulness and unflappability even when things appeared to be going very, very wrong indeed.

Perhaps it was his long years working as a Classics lecturer in Malawi that accustomed him to sudden emergencies, or perhaps it was the hand-to-mouth nature of his life as a writer and teacher in New Zealand, but I never saw him at a loss for a wise and witty thing to say.

I had heard that he was ill, and even in hospital, but I'm sorry to say that the news of his death from cancer in the early hours of Friday morning still came as a shock. He wore his years lightly. He was one of that group of baby-boomer New Zealand poets, all born in 1946, at the close of World War II – Sam Hunt, Bill Manhire, Ian Wedde prominent among them – who've been so influential on our literature.

Much though I always enjoyed chatting to Ted – he was a marvellously learned man, a trained classicist with an expertise in Ancient Greek – I suppose it would be true to say that my only real intimate knowledge of him came through his books.

Looking back, I seem to have written quite a lot about Ted's work over the years:

• There's a brief introduction to it here, on this blog.

• Then there's my review-essay of his Writers in Residence, on the online poetics journal Ka Mate Ka Ora.

• And, more recently, there's my review of The Arrow that Missed from Poetry NZ Yearbook 2018.

I'm not sure that there's any need to repeat all that here. Suffice it to say that for me, Ted Jenner combined the twin virtues of precise, scrupulous scholarship with an equally strong taste for experimental fiction and poetry – not that I think he saw much difference between the two genres, and, the way he wrote, there really wasn't.

I borrowed the title for this piece from his earliest book, A Memorial Brass, exquisitely printed by Alan Loney at the Hawk Press in 1980. I'd like to conclude with some more of Ted's own words, taken from the title poem:

My dear, they call us bourgeois

But it was essentially

A bourgeois thing to do –

An image of conjugal

Faith – to cross the hands over chest

And breast and stand on

The goblin pups, a monumental

Brass patent

For the bloodstream-fevers.

I remember it was cold

That May with added expense, upkeep

of allotment, and late

Spring blooms falling fierce as

Snow on the gale-lashed

Oats. Very soon a priest mumbled eight

Sacrificia patriarchae nostri

Above us. Commenting now on the

Canon of his mass, I

Like to think it was

Easy in Abraham's time –

Knowledge and fear were deliberate

Then, total, without cover; but

As for us, we lie awake

Until the sleeping's over.

My profoundest condolences to Ted's wife, Vasalua. If he were here I'm sure he could find the perfect words to thank her for making the last years of his life perhaps the happiest of all.

As for me, I'd like to say once more Ave atque Vale: Hail and farewell, to one of the finest scholars and poets I've ever known. Perhaps we'll meet again some day, when the sleeping's over.

Scott Hamilton

Cerian and I are sorry we can’t be here in person today. Our deepest sympathies to you all.

I first met Ted Jenner in print. He had a piece about Motuihe Island in an anthology of short stories that I found in my high school library. I thought I knew what Motuihe was and I thought I knew what a short story was. Ted proved me wrong. He made the familiar island strange, by mixing bits of scenic description with incidents from myth and history and with archaeological and oceanographic measurements. His text dived into the soil, the sea, the past. Polynesian gods materialised and mingled with dazed tourists.

Ted’s text about Motuihe is typical of the body of writing he created over five decades. (And Ted’s oeuvre is substantial, even though it is scattered in small edition books, academic journals, and little literary magazines.) Ted brought poetry to scholarship and scholarship to poetry. He gave a sense of beauty and mischief to his academic texts, and an academic precision to his poems and stories. He had an ability to look at familiar places, like Motuihe, or texts, like Plato’s Republic, from unusual angles, so that they could be appreciated in new ways. His travel writing makes unexpected and disconcerting connections between Third World nations like Malawi and Tonga and smug colonial Western societies like New Zealand.

Ted was fond of the pre-Socratic philosopher Heraclitus, and he had, as a writer and a person, the same combination of scepticism and awe as Heraclitus. The world is, Heraclitus said, a chaotic, constantly changing place, and so dogmas and states are temporary and absurd things. All ideologies are suspect; all zealots are fools. And yet the constant change also means that each day, each hour, each moment are precious, and should be experienced with a sort of wonder. Readers as yet unborn will find wonder in Ted Jenner’s writing.

Rest in peace Ted.

Paul Janman

Although I knew he wasn’t well, Ted’s passing was still sudden and very saddening news to me.

We didn’t spend a huge amount of time together but every exchange we had was vigorous and memorable. We had some key things in common like a fascination with the Greek philosopher Herakleitos and a taste for travel to places distant in culture, time and space and of course a love of European art cinema. He had even taught at the school in Central Africa that my grandfather helped to build for the benign dictator Kamuzu Banda. Of course we were both completely in love with Futa Helu’s daring concept of Greek education for the Pacific at ‘Atenisi Institute in Tonga where we both taught at different times. It was only fitting that Ted went on to marry Futa’s niece, his beloved Vasalua with whom he found his inner romantic late in life.

I don’t think of myself as particularly insightful in a literary sense and I was honestly surprised when Ted asked me to help him launch his book The Gold Leaves, which is his translation of the Orphic gold tablets used in ancient Greek funerary rites. I don’t think I did a very good job of it but I did try to appreciate his extraordinary book in the context of my own experiences of the numinous in Tonga and Ted seemed ok with it. I was always intensely impressed with the range of his unusual interests and the freshness and vibrancy with which he approached them.

He came over a few months ago and I made him a lunch of fish and mediterreanean salad, which he appreciated vociferously with a good bit of wine and we sat and watched his favourite film - Michelangelo Antonioni’s The Passenger where Jack Nicholas goes on a strange misadventure through Africa and Europe. “Watch for the fantastic last shot” said Ted near the end of the film, “I think it may be Homeric”. The last shot came and the camera moved out through the iron bars of the bedroom window as the soul of the dead reporter floated off to the otherworld. “It’s like the soul departing through the teeth” said Ted. I could only nod and wonder what he was really on about - and I’m still wondering.

Anyone who stops learning is old, whether at twenty or eighty. Anyone who keeps learning stays young and Ted’s was such a well-educated mind that he always had more questions than answers. He always allowed himself to be a beginner when he was in fact always excellent and he shared that excellence in very subtle and humble ways. I was never more than an interesting student in his presence and like all great teachers, he had a knack for pointed suggestions, shared through being enthusiastic rather than didactic or virtuosic. The last book he gave me was Time and Style by his own treasured mentors Harry and Agathe Thornton - scholars of Greek and Maori that had inspired him as a young student in Dunedin. He also gave me an old photocopied editorial he wrote in an obscure journal for New Zealand classics teachers, which compared the Greek Okeanos - the Oceanic serpent-circle of time with Bantu African time concepts. I would never have found these things by myself and they were exactly what I needed.

It seems like only weeks ago that he emailed me and described in characteristically frank and vivid detail a procedure that he had to endure that would have been very unpleasant, were it not for the beautiful Korean nurse that was doing it to him. Kataki Vasalua - he was only human. And that was Ted, a man of really profound learning and culture who also had a satirical Greek eye for tragic beauty, which he relished with both gusto and dignity.

You only need to look at the cheeky photos of him on the cover of “Writers in Residence and other captive fauna”, which is a book about exile, solitude, partying, monkey skulls, pre-Socratic philosophy and algebra’. In it he writes a lot about his experiences in Africa and the echoes of the Greek learning and roots in Aotearoa that sharpened his erudite observations and wit. Here are a few lines from that book:

“Holding to one ear the spiral shell of the fresh-water snail that plays host to the bilharzia fluke, I hear the dumping of breakers on a west-coast beach (Piha?), even ‘the turn of the waves and the scutter of receding pebbles’ (Pound out of Homer?) at a distance of almost four hundred kilometres from the Indian Ocean.”

It’s hard to say goodbye to such a friend but let me finally say it in Greek: “Κύριε, ύπνο, ύπνο”, “E te rangatira, moe, moe ra”, “Sleep sir, sleep in peace”.

Richard Taylor

I met Ted Jenner when he returned to NZ about 2008, I think it was after the launch of his book Writers in Residence which was launched with David Lyndon Brown's book of poetry Skin Hunger. After the launch and a meal we walked up to our cars, we both found we shared an interest in William Golding's books. Ted had read most of his books. I had read a number. We also shared an interest in the poetry of John Berryman -- whose 'Homage to Mistress Bradstreet' he kept urging me to read. I eventually did, aided by a commentary and concluded it was one of the great things written. Ted was a classics scholar and the NZ agent for Paideuma the journal devoted to Pound and his Cantos. Like Ted, Pound knew a number of languages and among other things the Cantos became central to Ted's life. His interests in writers encompassed many who took an interest in the classics. From there he radiated out to writers of the Pound Era, to Joyce, T S Eliot. Also of course Gaudia Brzeska and Wyndham Lewis. The art of these two I think influenced Ted's own. Indeed, he preferred minimalist sculpture and art. He liked Joanna Paul's writings but not her (watercolour) art. I liked both. We had some differences but these were not too significant. As well as the classical writers he had read a lot of Nobel or say Booker Prize winners.

Ted and I also liked the works of the innovative writer Christopher Middleton. He saw my edition of Pataxanadu and persuaded me to part with it. I was selling books up to 2014 so I got some books he wanted including The Grass by Claude Simon, French Nobel Prize Winner. I got a copy for myself also. Ted was associated with Stand Magazine and may have contributed to it.

He recalled a review in Stand of two writers. I got copies of the books and we both read them.

He also had an interest in French writers such as Ponge (whose work he translated) or the earlier Fargue. We also discussed Jules Laforgue whose satires influenced T S Eliot. He was interested in translations esp. of French books.

I read or re-read stories by Hemmingway and we discussed his stories, which Ted was enthusiastic about. I had also rekindled an interest, and Ted suggested some titles such as 'A Clean Well Lighted Place'. But it is clear from Ted's own brilliant work: 'Progress Report on an Annnotated Checklist for Motuihe Is. Gazeteer of Ethnographical Topology and Comparative Onomatography' which first appeared in 1985 edited with a great and still important assessment and introduction by Michael Morrissey, that Ted, as well as having an interest in French, Spanish and other writers, and various languages, was also au fait with Maori. (He told me later that he had studied French and Maori.) I had bought The New Fiction by Michael Morrisey in 1988 the time I had wanted to learn more about writing in NZ and the world. It was completely new to me. The writers talked about and the writing inside had a long lasting influence on me. But I think I spent little time reading Ted's work at the time. But, as with other works, I was intrigued by the lay out and the way he and others often numbered their 'points' like a semi-scientific thesis.

Morrissey's anthology is one of the milestones of NZ literature on a par (say) with C. K. Stead's The New Poetic.

There were some fascinating writers in The New Fiction. In the last few days, as Ted's work set on Motuihe is also in his book Writers in Residence I have been reading it carefully and some of Ted's other works. Scott Hamilton's introduction is very good. He also 'discovered' this book, at a younger age.

Ted and I used to visit each other. I felt privileged -- it may sound a bit silly -- but I felt Ted was part of a world I was not. He was in a sort of 'higher class', an academic, knew many of the writers of the 70s and 80s or earlier and had traveled widely. But we got on pretty well and used to go to the Ellerslie pub for a beer and talk for quite a few hours or we would talk at my place and sometimes Ted invited me to his place. But Ted had a similar background in some ways to myself. My father had become an architect like Ted's brother, and was fairly well off, in a working class area. But I had failed to continue with poetry and academic studies and worked in many labouring or other jobs and as a Lineman or as a Comms Tech and so on. In effect my career started mid of Ted's. I asked him about Malawi. My concern was how big the spiders were there. They were, he said, huge. 'What did you do?' 'I brushed them out or got someone to help with that!' No! Malawi and travel in general was not for me! So we differed but Ted's experiences in Europe, Africa and later the Pacific (and obviously Tonga) had enriched his knowledge and that appears in his books.

But the spiders bring me to another aspect of Ted. He got the idea that I didn't care about the animals he did care about. I do and did. Animals and biology etc had been one of my main interests as a teenager. But Ted was very committed to causes opposing cruelty to animals and the killing of animals for profit etc. I was and am with him on that. In any case it was something beside his wit and friendship that I saw good in Ted. Ted was witty and sometimes dry but we had a lot of laughs together. We laughed at many of the adventures -- real or invented -- that Scott Hamilton had got into. I had to explain to Ted that no, I hadn't beaten up cops in the 1960s to 70s, he had either mixed up my account of a friend I had at work called Kaio Rivers -- but I warned him to be wary of many of Scott's anecdotes. Nevertheless we both agreed on the high quality of Scott's writing. There was no questioning that he is a very talented writer.

Once at Ted's for a nice dinner - Ted would make an excellent lightish meal and we might have some wine, Ted put on a CD or cassette of Pound reading his Cantos. I found it quite beautiful.

I said to Ted then: 'Is it not that he really believed that the Greek gods actually existed for him?'

Ted later did his Gold Leaves and got into questions of death and even early religion. Ted's fascination for Pound's enormous work was total. He spent years on it. Yes, we discussed the controversial aspects of Pound. But even the American Jewish Language Poet Charles Bernstein saw the acheivement of Pound and wrote of it in an extended essay-book called Pounding Fascism. Which like The Pound Era by Hugh Kenner is worth reading. But Ted also, following Eliot, looked into and read the Elizabethan and other so-called Metaphysical poets. 'For the images', he said. He meant the complex and clever conceits used by Donne etc. But he had followed up Eliot's notes and read into Fraser's The Golden Bough (which also influenced Freud). The Welsh poet David Jones, another interest, was interested in Roman history, hence Latin, the First World War, and things such as Welsh and the Arthurian tales. Ted was keen on David Jones as was I. Not his art, not minimal enough. I am interested in everything including all kinds of art. Ted tended to specialise and like minimalism and concision. This I admired. He was a craftsmen but he brought a lyricism (even love) into his poems as well as that allusiveness Scott Hamilton talked of in his introduction to Ted's first book.

Ted could be amusing in surprising ways. Once he suggested a game at his place. He shut his eyes and asked me to pass him books at random from his shelves. As I did, he identified them, by touch. I wonder if he had done some magic as a boy or loved books so much he knew them by their contents as well even as by the feel and texture of them. I found that tactility when I was 11 or so reading Charles Dickens. I think Ted also loved words and the physicality of books.

I think Ted was interested and puzzled by my own work. Michael Morrissey certainly was. Apart from the many amusing incidents we shared, there was the time he suggested to Morissey and I a meeting. Morrissey had said, to the effect that: "No, that Richard Taylor is too weird for me!" This became a standing joke between us, I loved to hear it from Ted! Indeed I had known Michael Morrissey for a number of years.

Ted got caught up in Scott's enthusiasm for Tonga and Pasifica. Intrepid traveler that he was he went there. Ted was also an editor of Brief which I had been involved in (as a subscriber or more recently a contributor) since its incipience when Alan Loney began it in 1995. I talked to Loney in those days and was really excited when it first started as 'A Brief History of the Whole World'. It morphed into Brief. Ted was published a lot by Loney and was in the first issue and Parallax. Ted was helping Loney until recently. We both agreed on the great talent of Loney. And I stick to my support of Alan's work as that of one of NZ's most significant writers.

Ted himself became an editor of one issue of Brief, and putting one of my works full of semi-random quotes etc he left out some swear words -- these came from people arguing on You Tube about Bach -- either saying that one had to believe in God to appreciate Bach or not.

These highly cerebral lovers of Bach who dedicated all his work to 'The Glory of God' were ripping into each other! This was 'reality' so called and became part of my The Infinite Project! ... Ted felt that many NZ writers were not of much quality. He had a point. But I would argue this a kind of category error. But Ted was adamant about certain standards. Yet he was interested in postmodernism also. His own work reflects these complex and varied influences.

We didn't discuss the 'uncreative writing' of Kenneth Goldsmith or that of others or even much re the Language Poets but Loney through WCW, Creeley, and Olson (an influence on Loney) had their effects. So we didn't much discuss the Language Poets. Their practice interested me and had some influence. We never discussed Gertrude Stein. A pity. Stein for me is as significant as Joyce, as is indeed is, say, Emily Dickinson, Mina Loy, and others. He liked Cesar Vallejo but not so much Wallace Stevens. I had never "engaged" properly with the former, but loved the latter. We both were very keen on the poetry of Gerald Manley Hopkins.

I once suggested Ted read St. Augustine's Confessions. I pointed out that in most of that work which Wittgenstein quotes at the beginning of Philosophical Investigations, St. Augustine constantly finds beautiful examples of what seem the impossiblity of God's existence, but then reverts to faith, but that the writing is fascinating. But he felt reading it would be reading 'propaganda for Christianity'.

There were also many NZ writers who we discussed. Ted was close to my age so we had in common the aches and anxieties of growing old. So we became good friends.

I went to the launch of Ted's book The Arrow that Missed which was introduced by Scott Hamilton. In the Auck. Lib. it occurred to me to look for Ed Dorn's Gunslinger (I since bought a copy) which I had started reading some years ago. As I turned down an isle, Ted asked me: 'Did you ever read much by Ed Dorn?' (I mentioned Abhorrences and some of Gunslinger). After the launch we went to a Mexican Restaurant or was it Little Italy (?) up Wellesly Street. It was an ejoyable night. But Ted was a bit disappointed by the turn out. We had both gone to the publication of a book of stories by Russell Haley.

Later Dr. Jack Ross gave a very good review of that book and Ted was very pleased. He had got a bit off-side with Jack. I always tried to persuade him to look objectively at Jack's work and managed to get him to agree that To Terezin was a good book. After the good review of The Arrow that Missed he took a more positive view of Jack's works. We are affected by these things. Objectivity is hard to maintain. Literature, like most of our life, is not easily objective.

Much earlier Ted had told me of chest pains. He said: 'I have things I still want to do.' Later he asked me to drive him into the hospital. He had an operation for angina pectoris which was successful. But I felt for Ted as at that time he was living alone. And he had things to do. And Ted was a diligent worker. I was a bit ashamed seeing Ted's work table with books and references laid out quite neatly and I knew he was working pretty diligently. Unlike myself. I am too disorganised, too random in the way I work if work it can be called. I admired Ted's diligence, and I liked Ted's approach to writing and his interesting library. He took an interest in my amassment.

Ted lent some books and borrowed some of mine. In exchange for something; he gave me an extra copy of Pound's Cantos (I had annotated my other one), some books by Robert Lowell and Michael Morrissey.

-----------------------------------------------

I will greatly miss Ted and his ways and our talks. Ted got married but we still met as much. Lose was also working on academic studies. He was very proud of her. We didn't talk too much of personal issues, but I told him some of my adventures in life. He told me something of his childhood. I would ask him about Greek and Latin. I had myself studied Latin for 4 years. We sent silly letters or emails to each other with absurd titles. I was sometimes Richard von Talagg, he might be Herr Gruppenfuehrer von Yenner. Then he would get a long pseudo Latin name. I would be Ricardo or other.

When he last came, although he and I knew that he had been diagnosed with cancer, his first thing on arriving was to say how beautiful my hydrangeas were. As we drove off from my place we could see a particular Cypress tree down the road. It had a gap at the top. He always noted it and said it was like young woman sucking her thumb. Ted was observant and this showed in his writing. He also was subtle and witty. He appreciated the world, animals, and hoped for a liberal, just world, perhaps a better world -- if such a thing could ever be attained. He was critical of certain 'weak' witing. But he was alert to new talent and old talent. He also admired such as Michael Harlow, Richard von Sturmer, Murray Edmonds, Bill Manhire, Michelle Leggott, Michael Steven, Scott Hamilton,Tracy Slaughter and such as Lisa Samuels. Ted could, in his choice of writers, be a bit picky; but there were many others.

Ted Jenner was not just a good writer, he was one of NZ's great writers: his writing was subtle, original, and intense. He was no tired 'realist' writing about fishing, a creek, or being a “man of the bush”. He was simply an extraordinarily talented writer. He deserves a place in any anthology of NZ writing with such as Alan Curnow, Smithyman, Robyn Hyde, Michael Harlow, and indeed Wystan Curnow, Alan Loney and many of his talented peers. This is, of course, to omit many great NZ writers, and we have many.

His writing shows the work of one of NZ's great writers and also he was a good and fundamentally loving, caring man -- of people and animals. He cared -- yes, like all of us he could get grumpy at times -- but that is part of being human. I have been known to do the same. But in a way I loved Ted as a friend and valued his ideas, his wit and insights, and his very human qualities. I was shocked to hear of his death. I loved him as a friend. He was a good mate. I will miss him. I have still not registered that Ted is no longer with us. I feel for his wife Vasalua (Lose) and his family, his close friends and all who liked Ted.

Kit Withers

Ted, you were a man of many talents. Greek scholar, author, teacher in Africa, husband & friend, to name a few. I will miss our brisk walks & conversations.

Rest in peace,

Kit

Michael Horowitz ('Atenisi Institute)

A valiant soldier for classical education, one of the few academics who inspired – and often enabled – 'Atenisi to prevail. Ted's colourful lectures on ancient Greece, Rome, and Persia rank among the most compelling in the University's history. – University at 'Atenisi Institute, Kingdom of Tonga (Ted Jenner was senior lecturer in the Classics, University at 'Atenisi Institute, 2015-18.)

Louise Gluck

My condolences to Vasalua and Ted's family.

New Zealand literature has lost a unique voice with Ted's passing. As a scholar he led us back to the time of ancient Greece and the Orphic poets, and as a writer he produced marvelous books of experimental fiction and poetry.

Ted and I bonded over our distasted with Westlake Boys High School on Auckland's North Shore. I was a student at Westlake Boys from 1970 to 1974 and Ted taught Latin there a few years after I left.We also shared a love of the prose poem, and Ted was a fine practitioner of the prose poem. In my review of Ted's last book, The Arrow That Missed, I noted how he collected fragments in the form of diary entries for 'Genius Loci', the third and final section of the book. Each entry is set in a particular place. In my review I recalled the words of the American psychologist, James Hillman: "Fragmentation indicates many possibilities". Ted's writings contain many possibilities. We are enriched when we revisit them. And we each carry a fragment of Ted within ourselves.

From THE GOLD LEAVES

In ancient Greece, the golden leaves were sacred texts engraved on gold foil to guide the souls of the dead on their journey through the underworld.

PHARSALOS

You will find a spring on your right in Hades' halls

and by it the cypress with its luminous sheen.

Do not go near this spring or drink its water.

Further on you will find cold water flowing from

Memory's lake; its guardians stand over it.

They will ask you the purpose of your visit.

Tell them the whole truth without any hesitation;

say, 'I am a child of Earth and starry Heaven,

Asterios by name. But I am parched with thirst;

let me drink from your spring.

AVERNO by Louise Gluck

Averno in Latin is Avernus. It's a small crater lake, ten miles west of Naples, regarded by the ancient Romans as the entrance to the underworld.

THE NIGHT MIGRATIONS

This is the moment when you see again

the red berries of the mountain ash

and in the dark sky

the birds' night migrations.

It grieves me to think

the dead won't see them -these things we depend on,

they disappear.

What will the soul do for solace then?

I tell myself maybe it won't need

these pleasures anymore;

maybe just not being is simply enough

hard as that is to imagine.

from TELESCOPE

There is a moment after you move

your eye away

when you forget where you are

because you've been living, it seems

somewhere else, in the silence of the night sky.

You've stopped being here in the world.

You're in a different place,

a place where human life has no meaning.

You're not a creature in a body.

You exist as the stars exist,

participating in their stillness, their immensity.

Ted, you've gone into that stillness, that immensity; you've gone into a great

unknown. Our love and our prayers accompany you on your journey.

Paul Phillips

I am an old student and personal friend of Ted's, and have just received the sad news of his death.

Ted was my 7th Form Latin teacher, back in 1978 at Westlake Boy's High School, and afterwards a

good friend for some 25 years.

Ted's friendship over that long period has been one of the most influential in my life.  His gift as an

educator enabled him to quietly and sincerely convey his deep love of learning, and the discipline of 

Classical Studies in particular,  and to transmit it to his pupils in such a way as to leave a long-term

formative impression.

As a personal friend of Ted's,  he was able to inspire in me a love of learning, of music, film and

literature generally that has stayed with me and helped shape my own life.  Ted did this in his

typically quiet and unassuming way, as he has done for so many of his students. 

Unfortunately,  Ted and I have lost touch over the last 15 years or so.  The last time we

corresponded, he was teaching in Malawi and was considering moving to live and teach in England.  I

am very glad to hear that he has since then married;  indeed,  may I say that over the course of our

friendship he often confided to me his deep desire for marriage and family.

Ted will be very much missed by many.

Tony Parlane

As I transitioned from teaching at Edgewater College to retirement, I spent a few years as Exam

Centre Manager at the College.  During this time, I spent a few exam cycles working with Ted, thus

getting to know him.  I would be grateful if you could pass on my sympathy to all his family for their

loss.

I always enjoyed his company and our conversations, on matters both classical and modern.  He was

always efficient in his supervision duties and demonstrated friendly support for students in what, for

many, was a stressful time.

Our last conversation, after I had passed on my ECM role, was just prior to his planned trip to Italy

where my wife and I had worked some years before.  He was looking forward to the visit and I am

sure he would have relished it.

John and Monica Garratt

We met Ted in Zomba, the former capital of Malawi – he was teaching at Chancellor College in Zomba, and we were working as volunteers for the Malawi Education Ministry. I was building computer systems so that the Ministry could process their examination results, and Ted was teaching Latin, Greek and Ancient History at the university. Between us we covered a whole spectrum of education.

Ted was unique, impossible to describe unless you had met him. One word that would do him proud was iconoclastic – there was no temple he was not afraid to knock down nor sacred cow he would not have consumed. You always knew exactly where you stood with Ted, he spoke his mind. At New Year 2007 he spent the night with us in our house in Zomba. When he arrived for breakfast next morning I asked, “Slept well Ted?”. Back came the gruff response “No, I didn’t”. Subject closed!

He left Malawi to return to New Zealand just before our time in Zomba was up. He had a problem with his luggage in that he just had too much for his suitcases. What could or should he leave behind? It came down to a choice between his lecture notes and two heavy plates made in the local. Dezda pottery. There was no competition in Ted’s mind between the academic and the practical “After all who needs plates?” asked Ted as he handed them to us. Fourteen years later and we still use them every day. You are still with us Ted.

Bob Overend

I first knew Ted when he taught at Westlake B.H.S. where I was head of the English Dept. Although he didn’t enjoy some aspects of the school, he did make some good friends among the staff and my friendship continued long after we had both moved on.

I found Ted a delightful person; a man of integrity and high principles, with a perceptive sense of humour and dry wit. I admired his scholarship, his skill with language, his love of the natural world, often expressed in poetry. I liked his fresh way of looking at life, his open-mindedness, his thirst for knowledge which was enriched by his varied experiences in other lands. His students were indeed fortunate to be taught by him.

Unfortunately, I cannot attend the service to celebrate Ted’s life, as old age has curtailed my activities and my wife is very unwell. However, I will be thinking of you all at that time.

Lorenz Gonschor

Unlike most people paying their tribute here, I got to know Ted rather late in his life, while I was teaching at ‘Atenisi University in Tonga from 2017 to 2019 and renting Vasalua’s house in ‘Ananā. While passing through Auckland from and to Tonga, Vasalua graciously offered me to stay with her and her husband in their house in Remuera, and so I met Ted.

I immediately became fond of him, as he was similar in spirit to my high school classics instructors back in Germany: Highly educated and knowledgeable of the ancient Mediterranean world and its languages, but at the same time – the very opposite of being lost in antiquity – actively interested in the current state of the world and highly concerned with social justice and the present human condition.

In Germany we have a word coined during the 18^th century, namely “Humanismus,” and “Humanist,” which refers to classical education combined with a highly ethical attitude towards life and the human condition. A “Humanist” is thus someone who is well versed in the classics while having a passionate attitude towards his or her fellow human beings. The term perfectly fit Ted, more perhaps than any other classics scholar that I knew.

What I also appreciated about Ted was his wide range of academic interests besides the civilizations of the ancient Mediterranean. Counting among the (alas still rather few) progressive minded Pākehā, he took an interest in the pre-colonial past of his home country of Aotearoa, just as he researched the history and mythology of the Pacific Islands he visited, like Tonga and Vanuatu. Furthermore, he not only excelled as an academic writer but also as a creative one, producing a wide range of poetry and prose that was published in various collections and anthologies. In that sense, Ted was more than a mere scholar, indeed a true “renaissance man.”

Ted left the world much too early, as I was looking forward to many more hours of fruitful discussions with him. I have even saved a French academic book for him in which the author compares the ancient Mediterranean civilizations with those of pre-colonial Oceania. I am sure Ted would have appreciated it very much, and I imagine his spirit exploring in on my bookshelf right now as I am writing this.

To Vasalua and all of Ted’s family and friends, I offer my most sincere condolences. May he rest in peace in ‘Elisiuma, the Tonganized name of the ancient Greek paradise or spirit world.

Fiona

I didn’t know Ted as a scholar, or a writer, or a poet, even though he was all of those things. I knew him simply as Ted. The memories that I remember about him are very simple yet special moments. I think they can tell a lot about a person.

The way he’d call Mum ‘dear’ before heading out to get her a baguette from the supermarket

How he’d check the ocean tides before heading out the door for a swim at St Helier’s beach in his blue swimming shorts during summer

How he’d watch wildlife documentaries and reminisce about his time living in Malawi and walking through fields with snakes in them or avoiding hippos in the water

He enjoyed eating a kebab or a pizza with olives on it and a cold beer for Friday night takeaways

The way he would listen out for the call of a grey warbler, sometimes known as the rainbird, signalling that wet weather could be on its way

If Ted remembered seeing something intriguing, he would drive out in his red Toyota and bring his camera along to take photographs

How he always looked forward to gatherings with his brother Ross and family, especially at birthdays or Christmas.

He could often be found writing at his desk, or reading a book on the couch in the warmth of the sun, falling asleep with the book still open, resting on his chest

His friend’s dog jumped up on him once and overly enthusiastically began licking him – Ted was delighted. He would sometimes remark that he preferred animals to people.

When the film festival was on, he would get a copy of the booklet and mark each of the films that he was eager to see

How he’d read the newspaper every Saturday and cut out political cartoons and stick them on the fridge

When something special was scheduled to occur in the Milky Way, he’d go out at night with his binoculars to look at the moon and the stars

How Ted and Mum would often go for walks together, talking away, as though they were lost in their own happy world together

Ted was Mum’s biggest supporter - he always encouraged her to keep going with her work. He had always been so very proud of her. Since the day they met, he found Mum to be charming and lovable and said that he only wished that he had gotten married sooner.

They shared food, wine, matching ‘Atenisi T-shirts, laughter, deep conversation, and dreams for the future…a true connection.

I don’t know if Ted liked the poet Rumi, but two lines of this poem describe Ted and Mum’s time together better than I can,

“With a love like that, it lights up the whole sky.”

Rest in peace Ted