Desmond Piggin's Poetry

Though he did not find his voice as a poet till late in life, Desmond Piggin left a considerable quantity of verse and is surely our family's greatest achiever in this literary form. His subjects cover a wide range, from religion to nature, but the theme is usually loss or disappointment, mostly presented with the whimsical humour that his friends so appreciated.

As far as can be established, none of his verse was published during his lifetime: he had set himself an almost impossible goal, to have his poetry printed in the literary journals. New Zealand probably has thousands or even tens of thousands of poets at work at any one time, and there is scarcely any market for their work.

Many poets find satisfaction instead in exchanging their work with other poets, or offering some pleasure to friends and family, but Desmond Piggin kept his literary side to himself. Much of what he wrote showed him at his most vulnerable, and he did not readily entrust his hopes and fears to other human beings, preferring to confess to his books, his cats and his crucified Lord. He was too proud to accept a role as a mere local or family poet. Had he been less sensitive to criticism, he might have taken part in a creative-writing course to hone his technical skills and perhaps learn how to avoid the pain caused by the publisher's rejection letter.

Late in life he did send a selection of his poetry to one of New Zealand's leading literary editors and appears to have been told that his work did not reflect New Zealand experience. That is wide of the mark, since the verse declares no ambition to improve on the work of other New Zealand poets. He does not appear to have read much in the way of native poetry. Although he must have met Allen Curnow and other Auckland poets, he took no interest in their debates about open and closed form and other such literary disputes.

Instead he took 19th-century English poets as his models, and polished his daily observations and ironies into simple, lyrical verse, mostly rhyming, less often free form. His poetry reveals a fluent and well-read man whose Christian faith confronts him with more questions than it provides answers.

Desmond Milgrew Piggin was born in 1923 in Papatoetoe on the southern outskirts of Auckland, New Zealand, and attended a Catholic boys' school in Ponsonby, Sacred Heart College, and the university in Auckland. His literary ambitions were established by the time he reached early adulthood, but as far as we can tell most of his writing in this period was in the form of diaries and letters. His most concentrated bout of writing in early life came in the year or so that he spent as a radio officer in the merchant navy: there were long hours of leisure during the ocean voyages.

As an Auckland lawyer for more than 40 years, his daily writing output consisted largely of correspondence, court submissions and speeches. His studies as a mature student for a Masters of Laws degree may have encouraged a return to a more polished style and his gradual retirement in the late 1990s brought him the opportunity to concentrate on poetry, to write articles about current affairs and to experiment with fiction. His hopes for a new career as a writer were dashed by the discovery that he had cancer. He died in 2001 at the age of 77.

Publication was his objective. This website, with a selection of his best verse, was compiled by Jean-Baptiste Piggin. Electronic publication offers an opportunity to exhibit the poetry in worthy fashion without cost constraints. It is planned to add further texts to the website after Desmond Piggin's considerable body of papers have been sifted through.

To proceed to the Contents Page, click here.