Celebrating Brian Turner: “Taking Off” in poetry and song

Poet Brian Turner in Central Otago

Photo credit: Jillian Sullivan

For her project "Voices of Men", New Zealand composer Janet Jennings set six poems by poet Brian Turner as Taking Off, a song cycle for baritone and piano. She hoped her audience would gain a deeper understanding of the poems themselves from her music. "I want to get across how marvellous these poems are,” she tells me. “It's about honouring the words."

Composer Janet Jennings

“…drawn to Turner’s poems because they’re beautifully crafted; every word has its place.”

Photo supplied

She was drawn to Turner's poetry “because it's beautifully crafted, but there's no obscurity there; the poems are not pretentious, they're not setting out to have you searching for meaning. Every word has its place, beautifully placed; it's really emotional but never sentimental."

Turner died in February 2025, aged 80. One of New Zealand's most acclaimed contemporary poets, he was also an environmentalist, sportsman and a proud South Islander, and in the many tributes that flowed after his death, the presence in his life and his poetry of both music and the landscapes of Central Otago were constant themes.

In the Forward to his collection Elemental: Central Otago Poems (Godwit 2012), Turner himself wrote: "Poets — certainly poets like me — end up finding and revealing the self in where they come from, and hope to be able to say, eventually, this is where I most belong. All writers, not just poets, are explorers, archaeologists too; we grub, we dig, are often surprised by what we find. There is music, there is song, there is grace and, now and again, a place where peace of mind is at home; then one can feel confident and, for magical moments, comfortable and at ease. There, truly, is a wonderful place to be."

This week, during the “Aspiring Conversations” weekend in the Wanaka Festival of Colour, Jennings will meet with writer and environmentalist Jillian Sullivan, Turner's partner, for a public conversation about the poet’s diverse life and interests, about what mattered most to him and about his exploration of themes of love, music and landscape in his poetry. Jennings will also talk about how she selected and set the six poems in Taking Off, named after Turner’s collection of that name and the title of the poem that became her first song.

Brian Turner’s partner Jillian Sullivan

“…music is threaded all through his poetry.”

Photo supplied

Jennings experiences Central Otago in the poetry of Turner as what she describes as a rugged terrain. “It’s not a luscious landscape,” she says. “It’s quite austere and sharp-edged and clear and clean.”  In his poem “Deserts, for instance”, published in the collection Just This (VUP, 2009), Turner wrote:“The loveliest places of all/are those that look as if/ there’s nothing there/ to those still learning to look.”

Although she spoke to him when seeking his permission to set the poems, Jennings never met Turner in person. Later, when the songs were recorded for her Voices of Men album, she sent them to him. “He was lovely about it. I’ve never met him, but I’ve always assumed the narrative voice in his poetry is his voice. It speaks directly. I feel, reading the poems, that I know him.”

Music was always hugely important to Turner, Sullivan tells me. “Music is threaded all though the poetry. There was always classical music in his house – he was an avid listener to the Concert Programme. [Now RNZ Concert.] The music, the cycling, the environmental work – his poetry came out of all of that.”

In “Tombed”, the sixth and final poem chosen by Jennings for her cycle, two voices, named Arthur and Emily, speak from beyond the grave, and their conversation turns to song and singing. “Clip clop is a kind of song,” says Arthur “anything in full flight breaks/ into song. So I too sang/and I sang to you, on/Cornish Head, on Mapoutahi,/on the road to Moeraki…”. And, in what Jennings describes as “an ecstatic ending” for her cycle, Emily replies “I agree, Arthur, it was in your nature/it is in our nature to sing: so let/memory be/ our song.”

Fittingly, the Aspiring Conversations session ends with singing, a live performance of Jennings’ cycle Taking Off, by baritone Robert Tucker with pianist David Kelly.

Aspiring Conversations in the Wanaka Festival of Colour, a celebration of poet Brian Turner (1944-2025), with Janet Jennings (composer) and Jillian Sullivan (writer and environmentalist) in conversation with music writer Elizabeth Kerr. Lake Wanaka Centre 29 March, 2026. Tickets here

Taking Off Poems by Brian Turner, Te Herenga Waka University Press 2001 Purchase link here

Voices of Men Song cycles by Janet Jennings Atoll Records 2021 Purchase link here