Florence Ruth Gilbert (26 March 1917 – 11 April 2016) was a New Zealand poet whose work was published in New Zealand and other Commonwealth countries.Roger Robinson and Nelson Wattie (eds). Oxford Companion to New Zealand Literature, Wattie, 1998.Stevens, Joan.Contemporary Poets of the English Language 1970. Chicago. London 1971 New York 3rd edition 1970 pp. 549–550Virginia Blain, Patricia Clements and Isobel Grundy (eds). The Feminist Companion to Literature in English: Women Writers from the Middle Ages to the Present 1990. London She was born in Greytown and educated at Hamilton High School and the Otago School of Physiotherapy.
Her poetry appeared first in magazines and anthologies and later in ten personal collections. She was awarded the Jessie Mackay Memorial Award for verse three times. She has served as President of New Zealand PEN and the New Zealand Women Writers' Society."Poet Ruth Gilbert wins Jessie Mackay prize," New Zealand Listener, 11 November 1949 p. 9.Wright, Niel. Sketch Profile of Ruth Gilbert with Full Commentary 2007.Heather Murray and Roger Robinson. "New Zealand Women Writers' Society", Oxford Companion to New Zealand Literature1998.Evening Post Queen's Birthday Honours 3 June 2002 p.16 under heading "Sir Pat leads Nelson honours"Nelson Evening Mail, 5 June 2002
In the 2002 Queen's Birthday and Golden Jubilee Honours, she was appointed an Officer of the New Zealand Order of Merit, for services to poetry.
Family background and early life
Ruth Gilbert comes from the same family as the librettist W.S. Gilbert (the surname was originally French).Wright, Niel. Ruth Gilbert An Account of her Poetry 1919–85 p.25. Her father, Henry George Gilbert, was born 1881 in Cust, Canterbury, into a farming family. In his youth, having left primary school and home, he worked his way around the world, visiting relatives in Hampshire, England. He enlisted in the Mounted Rifles in the Boer War at 19, giving a false age. He was educated as a late entrant at Otago University, completing the work for an MA about 1914, but was never awarded the degree as he had not matriculated. Responding to an invitation to train as a Presbyterian minister (although an Anglican by upbringing) he spent four years at Knox College. He studied Hebrew and Greek. He married in 1914, and in 1917 went to France as a padre with the artillery with the rank of Captain. He was the Minister of the St. Andrew's Presbyterian Church Hamilton 1925–1946.The Centennial book A Century of Faith (1976), published in April 1985, has passages on the Rev. Gilbert and his wife, pp.14, 19 Dewey 283.9359 21 After retiring in 1946, he lived in Hamilton, dying in 1954.Wright, Niel. Ruth Gilbert: An Account of Her Poetry He played the violin and the cello and was a violin maker (luthier).New Zealand Listener 10 February 1967 p.26
Ruth's mother, Florence Margaret Carrington, was born in 1886 in Dunedin. Her father was an artist, G. W. Carrington, and her mother was Irish. A musician, she became a music teacher and was official accompanist for visiting artists in Dunedin. She played the piano, pipe organ and cello. Marrying in 1914, she had four children, of whom Ruth was the second.
Ruth Gilbert was born in 1917 at Greytown in the Wairarapa during her mother's visit to the Featherston Military Camp where Captain Gilbert was training. She lived until 8 years old in Invercargill; thereafter in Hamilton city overlooking the river from 1925 till 1935. She was educated at Hamilton West Primary School and at Hamilton Girls' High School. In 1935 she trained at what is now the Dunedin School of Physiotherapy, completing her diploma in 1938. During 1938 to 1946 she was employed in the Waikato Hospital, Wellington Hospital (Otaki Branch, where she was in charge of the Physiotherapy Department), and Christchurch Hospital. Most of her experience was with young orthopaedic and geriatric patients.Wright, Niel. Ruth Gilbert: An Account of Her Poetry Ruth returned home for four years to nurse her mother, who died of cancer in 1943.Wright, Niel. Ruth Gilbert: An Account of Her Poetry
For seven years, she was engaged to Rev. John Dinsmore Johnston, born 19 November 1912.https://pcanzarchives.recollect.co.nz/ stated that Dinsmore "has previously been engaged to Ruth Gilbert, daughter of Rev. H. G. Gilbert." Johnston was Irish and Ruth Gilbert's poem "Leprechaun" written 1939 in Irish dialect may relate to him. Johnston studied at Knox College 1937–1938 when presumably he and Ruth Gilbert met. Johnston left New Zealand to serve as a missionary in China, arriving there on 13 March 1941. He was interned during the Japanese occupation of Hong Kong December 1941 – September 1945. He returned to New Zealand on 24 October 1945.
Ruth Gilbert married John Bennett Mackay, a physician specialising in chest diseases.Wright, Niel Sketch Profile of Ruth Gilbert 2007 p.19 Their marriage took place on VJ Day, the day the Pacific war ended, when "All the bells were ringing."Wright, Niel Sketch Profile of Ruth Gilbert 2007. pp. 19Wright, Niel Among Friends of the Author 2007 p.52 Their children were Michael (born 1946), Deirdre (1951), Charles (1954), and Pippa (1957). Ruth travelled for a year with her family to England and France in 1953, when John received his MRCP degree. His FRCP was conferred by the College later. She and John made four trips to Samoa on professional business. In 1975-7 she made a trip on her own to New York City to visit her son Michael who was working as a physician there.Wright, Niel. Ruth Gilbert: An Account of her Poetry pp. 2–3.
Literary works
Ruth Gilbert is a poet, and her public oeuvre is almost totally poetry. Her published poetry dates from 1938 to 2005. Some uncollected poetry was published when she was a schoolgirl, but the publications have not been retrieved. Other uncollected jeux d'esprit exist in letters held at the Alexander Turnbull Library and in private hands.Bibliographical records at National Library of New Zealand.
Her published poetry includes several collections. Selected Poems 2009 runs to 101 pages, Collected Poems to 148 pages, Complete Early Poems to 104 small A5 pages, Complete Sappho Poems to 76 pages, Lazrarus and Other Poems to 40 pages, The Sunlt Hour to 47 pages, The Luthier and Other Poems to 55 pages, The Lovely Acres and Other Poems to 68 pages, Talismans and Later Poems to 20 pages, so not including the selected and collected editions or Talismans that is 390 pages in total.Bibliographical records at National Library of New Zealand. Many of the poems are stand-alone works, but from 1947 Ruth Gilbert was given to writing poem sequences, which often appeared as stand-alone publication in full or in part in magazines.
People associated with Gilbert's work included C.A. Marris, Pat Lawlor, Charles Brasch, Mervyn Taylor, A.R.D. Fairburn, J. H. E. Schroder, Jonathan Bennett, Robert Chapman, Celia and Louis Johnson, Willow Macky, Lorna and Monte Holcroft, Professor Ian Gordon, Professor Joan Stevens (an acquaintance from school days at Hamilton), Margaret J. O'Donnell (Britain), Niel Wright, Sylvia Ashton-Warner, Jean and James Munro Bertram, Frank McKay, Helen Shaw, Denis Glover, Lauris Edmond, Ralph Park, Riemke Ensing, Meg and Alistair Campbell, Sam Hunt, Jack Ross, Jan Kemp, Peter Smart, Robin Dudding, Bill Wieben, Ian Wedde, Harvey McQueen, Derek Bolt, C. K. Stead, Michele Leggott, Jenny Bornholdt, Terry Locke, Mary Barnard (Oregon), Dr Michael O'Leary, Mark Pirie, Denis Welsh, Cameron La Follette (Oregon), Ian Lancashire (Toronto), her commercial publishers A.H. and A.W. Reed and Allen & Unwin, and her many readers.This is a documented list of names of her editors, reviewers, publishers, or friends named in her interviews or published letters. Many have entries in the Oxford Companion to New Zealand Literature 1998.
Literary career
Ruth Gilbert's earliest verse was written about 1926; she was first published in the Hamilton High School magazine in the 1930s, but copies have yet to be found.
Interviewed in 1991, Ruth Gilbert said that as a child of the manse her earliest influences came from hymns and the Bible.MacKay, Deirdre. "Escaping into poetry gave her life vitality", Nelson Evening Mail. Reproduced in Wright, Niel. Sketch Profile of Ruth Gilbert pp.49–51. "My father recited poems to all the family – and listening to him read from the Bible Sunday after Sunday gave me an ear for words and their music." Her first attempts at rhyme were a source of merriment to her family. One of her earliest memories is being laughed at by a family group on the veranda of her grandparents' place for parodying a hymn which goes: The great physician now is near The sympathising Jesus ... Her own version in tune with the original went: Oh little fly oh don't you die I'll ask the Lord to help you.
She has an equally clear recollection of the first original poem she wrote when she was 11. It read: A mass of brightest gold was she And not as any other tree For she was golden as the sun That through the branches played and run. "I knew the last line was wrong but didn't know what to do about it."
Many years later the poem reappeared, much altered as "The Wattle Tree" and started with the lines: You blazing there, a living core of light, Were the first poem a child longed to write. A spendthrift gold among the careful green ...
At 12 she started to read other people's poetry, an interest that was encouraged by the wealth of reading material at the manse. "My father had a study which had books from floor to ceiling and, provided I had clean hands, I was allowed to read what I liked." An early favourite was Thomas Wyatt and later she enjoyed Yeats, Graves and many of the French poets. "The music and artistry of their work stayed with me for the rest of my life."
Otherwise Ruth Gilbert's first publications were in 1941 in the Evening Post and in Art in New Zealand. "Joseph" appears in Lyric Poems of New Zealand 1928–1942, edited by C. A. Marris.
A 1966 interview report Hard Lines for Women Writers states: "Ruth Gilbert, who wrote verse from about nine, kept black books with "the most ghastly verse" and contributed to her high school magazine, was in her early 20s when a friend suggested she should show her verse to C. A. Marris."Wright, Niel. Sketch Profile of Ruth Gilbert pp.18–19, in the newspaper interview "Hard Lines for Women Writers." Marris, then writing in the Evening Post as Percy Flage, told her: "You can write, but you mustn't send anything out till I tell you." He got her work first into the Evening Post, over the initial "R", and later into Art in New Zealand and New Zealand Best Poems.
"Mr Marris has been much criticised," Ruth Gilbert said. "But I feel he was genuinely interested in New Zealand literature and was only trying to get writers published."
F.W. Nielson Wright traces to the Evening Post 1941–1944 the four poems in More Early Poems 1939–1944 sourced to the Evening Post as well as three others: "Joseph", "Worshipper" and "Street at Dusk" that appear in Lazarus and Other Poems, and one never reprinted by Ruth Gilbert, the poem "Aged Eighty-Three".Wright, Niel.Apology for Man 2010
Ruth Gilbert had poems published in the following: Art in New Zealand December 1941 Yearbook of the Arts in New Zealand 1948, 1949 Arts Year Book 1950, 1951 New Zealand Best Poems 1942, 1943 New Zealand Poetry Yearbook 1951, 1955, 1957–8 Poetry New Zealand Vol. 1 1971, Vol. 4 1979 The New Zealand Listener from July 1950, 1951 (twice), 1952, 1957, 1958 (twice), 1960, 1961 (twice), 1962 (four times), 1963 (three, possibly five times), 1964 (twice), 1965, 1966 (possibly twice), 1967, 1968 (twice), 1969 (twice), 1972, 1973, 1975, 1990.Exact dates are given in Sketch Profile of Ruth Gilbert.