This television clip records James K. Baxter reading 'Oh early in the morning'. The poem begins, 'Oh early in the morning/I wake up in Firetrap Castle'. Firetrap Castle was Baxter's name for 26 MacDonald Crescent, off The Terrace in Wellington, where he was living at the end of 1971 when he composed the poem. Baxter had left the commune at Jerusalem on the Whanganui River in September of that year, and the poem was eventually published in his last book of poems Autumn testament (1972). The clip gives a fine sense of Baxter's performance style, with his clear enunciation. His appearance at this stage – about a year before he died – was of a prophet and high priest of the counter-culture.
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