Dante's heaven Book

Kemp's latest collection, Dante's Heaven (2006), engages with familiar New Zealand themes of personal and national identity, here and there, then and now, in an imaginative new way. At the end of the Inferno, Dante and his guide Virgil journey upwards from the depths of Hell to emerge in the southern 'watery hemisphere' on the shores of the island-mountain Purgatory, the exact antipodes of the point of entry at Jerusalem. As they complete their climb there appear above them 'the fair things that Heaven bears' and they see again the stars. And among them, Dante tells us at the beginning of his Purgatorio, are 'four stars never seen except by the first people'. So Kemp imagines Dante as a kind of visionary Kupe, Tasman, or Cook (successive Maori, Dutch, and English discoverers of Aotearoa/New Zealand), viewing the Southern Cross over the South Seas. Dante's Heaven explores New Zealand experience, where 'We are all newcomers', with homage not only to Dante but also to the country's own spiritual cartographers - contemporary writers. There is an eloquent mix of local, historical, mythical, and literary reference.