may day is lei day

photo credit: Godfrey Boehnke, University of Auckland photographer

There were Morris dancers in Queen Elizabeth Square Thursday morning, waving white hankies and jingling at the knees. People taking cover from the wild weather gathered around the circle of dancers. May Day celebrations are alive and well in the city. At the other end of Queen St, university graduation was getting under way. Tim Page and I packed ourselves into a taxi with a guitar, regalia, the matua tokotoko and my blue stick, and headed for the Town Hall. It was the matua’s first outing in Auckland: an appointment with 2000-odd people under cameras and lights.

Onstage I explained the tangible connection of the matua with Hone Tuwhare and how that connection has rubbed off on Te Kikorangi, the blue stick. We passed both sticks to kuia Merimeri Penfold to look after and then launched into ‘taking it seriously,’ a fairly unserious poem for the arts graduates of Te Whare Wananga o Tamaki Makaurau They seemed to like it, especially when Tim did his bluesy riff for the feast at the end. The biggest thrill was getting half a dozen lei from graduates afterwards. Thanks all!


taking it seriously

wwhat shall I do I asked that stick
Te Kikorangi write them a poem what else
said the stick and went back to cooking up
a feed of mussels from Kawhia national treasures
can do that take a weekday trip
down the coast and go fishing
while the rest of us work for the man
oh and make it funny said the stick
you don’t want them dozing off and winked
too true Blue I said the mussels went down
and the feet went up the giver of advice
and good counsel settled in for a well-earned
nap why keep a poet and bark yourself?

so I invite myself into your had-it-up-to-here
lives it’s rent day I’m working till midnight
three thousand words forty percent out of coffee
out of smokes out of time the computer ate it
and that one doesn’t give extensions
even for dead grandmothers my tenth
this semester heartless just heartless
how will my grandmothers cope
with the news of my expiry from Intellectual
Over-Utilisation Syndrome IOUs
and youse and youse I am the future
sitting here in academic drag flat broke
about to get an arts degree
how do you come back from that?

all this fuss has disturbed the stick
who opens one eye and says build a bridge
and get over it easy enough for TK
reviewing the back of those famous eyelids
half the afternoon thinking about
a cup of tea and maybe some of last night’s
whitebait fritters before a walk
to the beach where someone has written
the only land I own is that between
my toes too right says Kikorangi
adding a flourish in blue hooray
it’s worth a fortune and the ragged artist
struggling to repay student debts
auctions the scrawl on Trade Me
and walks free upon the earth again
in the company of ten grandmothers

you think it can’t happen?
poets to come orators singers musicians
to come the stick is really getting going now
thinkers teachers philosophers and you
the quiet ones who reach for the moon and stars
not today is to justify me and answer
what I am for but you a new brood digital
Pacific voyagers understanding more
than any before you about the blue planet
and her breathing multitudes come forward
for you must justify me one who saunters
turns a casual look upon you and steps
into the shadows leaving it to you
to constellate and configure expecting
the main things from you

Kikorangi I said you’d better stop
channelling Walt Whitman or Turnitin
will get you uh huh comes the reply
why don’t you help me get this hapuka
into the smoker and tell Walt to bring
his grandma as well as a good red
and whatever poems he’s written lately
we’ll have a session there’s always room
in the world for poems grandmothers
and arts degrees looking for a good time
la dolce vita la vie en rose fia ola
May Day is Lei Day in Tamaki Makaurau
don’t you see
the stick is looking for extra glasses
and fairy lights to string along the path
and as smoke curls between the banana palms
new potatoes dance with garden mint
and it’s clear the whole graduating class
has been invited over here they are now
knocking with their elbows because
their arms are full of bags bowls and bottles
crates of champagne dolmadas drums
and diplomas figs fire and frangipani
ginger garlic grapes and guitars
harps and honeydew eel and icecream
lamb lutes lemons and limes melons mangos
mandolins maraccas okra olives
onions oysters pork parsley passionfruit
persimmons pineapples pomegranates prawns
roast corn red peppers rhubarb rosemary and rice
scallops and sangria snapper and squid
taro truffles tabouleh tortillas
venison vineleaves yoghurt zucchini
and crayfish in coconut cream
food of heaven says Te Kikorangi
bring on your poems dance with your grannies
we feast with the gods tonight!

photo credit: Godfrey Boehnke, University of Auckland photographer

laureate at work

It’s term-time and Poetry off the Page is in full swing at the University of Auckland. Colleague Helen Sword and I co-convene the course, now in its fourth year and with a committed and enthusiastic 2008 enrolment. We started off in the rain, chalking poems on pavements around the university and documenting responses from passers-by. Then LOUNGE #1 debuted this year’s reading series at Old Government House with an enlivening mix of student readers and local poets. Also part of the line-up was Chris Price, the inaugural Michael King Centre/University of Auckland Literary Fellow.

Now the students are wrangling their webpage assignments and making digital transformations of a print poem of their choice. After the mid-semester break, we go into the University Library’s Special Collections to look at how poems move from manuscript to multimedia environments. The students will then assemble selections of archival material for presentation on the course website.

So we’ll be busy for a while yet. Here’s a webpage Helen and I made recently as the class was asked to consider ways of presenting digitally the famous variant lines in a poem by 19th century American Emily Dickinson. We started by getting the different versions down in chalk (sunny weather this time) before going on to talk about how they might appear in virtual space.

• Poetry off the Page at the University of Auckland
• LOUNGE readings and photos
• Chris Price, 2008 Michael King Cerntre/UoA Literary Fellow
• Emily Dickinson at Old Government House
  

Photo credits: Tim Page

photos from matahiwi and hastings

Te Matau a Maui (The Hook of Maui), the wharenui at Matahiwi Marae with carved representations of Maui’s family on the paepae (forecourt)

Maui hooking Te Ika, the big fish of Aotearoa New Zealand

John Buck addresses manuhiri and tangata whenua at Matahiwi

Guests with Jacob Scott at Matahiwi

Penny Carnaby, National Librarian, and Hon Judith Tizard with the two tokotoko

Michele Leggott with matua tokotoko and Te Kikorangi, the blue stick


Jacob Scott and poets at the mouth of the Tukituki river

Pipi Café – poets and poetry-loving people

Same again, another table

Pipi Café – more poets

I Say Te Mata: Jack Ross at the Hawke’s Bay Opera House Assembly Room

I Say Te Mata: Selina Tusitala Marsh

I Say Te Mata: poets and tokotoko

matahiwi, hastings, te ahi tapu

It was a big weekend, for everyone. Jack Ross has written about it here. Hawke’s Bay Today profiled the occasion and the local high school readers who were part of the 14-strong line-up for I Say Te Mata at the Hastings Opera House. Poets and librarians ate for free at Havelock’s Pipi Café (thanks guys). And Rowley Habib read his epic poem The Raw Men for video before we left on Sunday morning.

At the heart of it all were the two tokotoko made by Jacob Scott and presented by Ngati Kahungunu to the National Library. One of them, the matua tokotoko, is carved from black maire and lasered with designs that tell interrelated stories of sacred fire-making (te ahi tapu). It also contains literal means of making fire if you unscrew it and apply one part (hika) to a special groove (kaunoti) in the other. Jacob says he tested it there on the banks of the Tukituki; it works.

This stick, with its abalone and paua insets, has gone to Wellington and will be displayed in the National Library. Laureates will use it there, and everyone who picks it up should be able to feel its mana. It also commemorates the passing of Jacob Scott’s good friend Hone Tuwhare: deep in its interior is a Tuwhare poem.

The second tokotoko (and the seventh Jacob has made) is the one I will keep and treasure. It’s sky-blue, with laser-etched white-on-blue designs towards the top end surmounted by chased silver that references flames. Because it’s a converted pool cue, it also comes apart in four pieces which means I can take it travelling without setting off major security alerts in airports. There is plenty of tactile surface and it was fun watching people run their fingers over it, exploring and connecting up the design elements. Its stories have just begun.

It was a big weekend, for everyone. But perhaps the biggest thing of all was the gift of Jacob Scott’s deeply thought-out representations of creative process: serious, sparky, a challenge to make more fire. Thank you Jacob; it’s a lot to live up to.

• Hawke’s Bay photos coming soon

• More about the tokotoko

• Hawke’s Bay Today laureate event profile 23 Feb 2008

• Jack Ross, Hooning around in Hawke’s Bay, I Say Te Mata

• Pipi Café and Poesy Bread

• Tim Page audio The Long Lunch, Fast Talking PI (with Selina Tusitala Marsh), Wild Light (with Michele Leggott)

laureates, locals and out of town poets in Hawkes Bay

Drums are beating, email is running hot and phonecalls are criss-crossing the land as the folk at the National Library coordinate the first Laureate event for 2008 in Hawkes Bay. NatLib, Te Mata Estate Wines, Matahiwi Marae, Scott Design, Creative Hastings and the Hawkes Bay Opera House are all working towards Saturday 23 February when the new matua tokotoko (carved speaking stick) will be presented at Matahiwi Marae in a ceremony that will also honour the achievements of Hone Tuwhare. Laureate Elizabeth Smither will be there, as will a host of readers and speakers with words, stories and songs for Hone. This is Poetry at the Pa, Matahiwi-style, 10 am to 2 pm.

In the evening the focus shifts to the Opera House in Hastings for I Say Te Mata: Poets at the Assembly Room. Keith Thorsen and I will co-host, starting at 8 pm with a glass of Te Mata and processing through the line-up of poets in town for the event. Some young Hawkes Bay talent should give laureates and others a taste of the poetic future and we’re expecting to have a very good time indeed. Anyone left standing will be directed to Dancing on the Green, running till midnight at nearby Kohupatiki Marae.

So we’re fine-tuning our offerings and packing toothbrushes and sleeping bags here in Auckland in anticipation of the Great Poetic Hikoi to the Bay. Some are flying, others driving; but we’ll all be there as the action gets underway. Look, isn’t that the National Library bus pulling in from Wellington with a bunch of poetry-loving librarians hanging out the windows?

Remembering Hone Tuwhare

Tributes, thoughts and memories of Hone Tuwhare are in the links and posts below. I will be adding more links and posts to this post as I receive them.

• Raewyn Alexander
  
• John Buck
  
• Glenn Colquhoun
• Riemke Ensing
• Lauris Edmond
• Murray Edmond
• Jeffrey Paparoa Holman
  
• Michele Leggott
• Renee Liang
• Mary Paul
  
• Brian Poitiki
  
• Jack Ross
• Iain Sharp
• Penny Somervaille
• Brian Turner

Brian Poitiki

i can feel you making holes in the silence, rain
i can feel you making holes in my brain, hone
in my brain
hemi & ani are gone -
jean, harry & ron -
but i won't wait until you're gone to say
you're my old man, hone
you're my old man
(brian potiki, written 1980)

Jeffrey Paparoa Holman

Universal Hone

Well fuck it man
that’s the bucket well and truly
kicked (I was a lonely pisshead
on the rebound from Oz in the year
of 1970 I think it was when I bought
a copy of Come Rain Hail from
Peter Hooper that great West Coast
intellectual in his Albert Street Greymouth
shrine to Thoreau, Walden Books)! O

yes: you are the universal Hone
and you really are to blame
my kupu came from far away
no more

they came from here and there
Kaikohe, Karl Marx, old fishguts
Shakespeare and the Friday Flash, from
rhythms in your soul they flared
those karakia soused in jazz. Tekoteko
totem man, you handed me my tongue
and said ‘Let’s sing! Let’s put this hoha
country back in tune!’ My ticker thumps

to think of yours all done. Go have a feed
of mussels, man – you won. You won
the biggest raffle ever run: the Universal Hone.

16 January 2008
First published in the Press (Christchurch)

Jeffrey writes:
The day he died I found myself singing at the clothesline, ‘He's the Universal Hone and he really is to blame, my kupu come from far away no more...’ to the tune of Donovan's most-likely forgotten 60s ballad, ‘The Universal Soldier.’ What a brain.

That got me going – I'd been thinking how with Hone, a universe had just disappeared, the same thought I had when my mother died in 2005. The rest, the kick-off, was just me swearing my way into the house of death, I guess.

The reference, ‘my ticker thumps’ is from his poem to Baxter – ‘no more thump in the old ticker,’ which I quoted to Roger Steele on the day Mum died, when I rang to cancel a dinner in the Green Parrot.

I now have the dubious reputation as being the first person to get the word ‘fuck’ into the Press, and on the Obituary page at that. Hone would laugh at this distinction, I reckon. But as you will intuit, it's a splash of condensed emotion, not an attempt at obscenity – I knew kicking the bucket would follow right on.

Penny Somervaille

Letter to a Dead Poet

Kia Ora Hone,

Do you remember the night we met?
In Grey Lynn? At Jan’s house in Cooper St?
You said to me that there was no point me keeping my poems in a box under the bed.
You come back here tomorrow, you said,
you bring your poems with you,
and you read them to me.

No-one disobeyed an order like that from you, Hone.

I brought my poems the next night, even though I wasn’t invited,
and I did read them to you.
You listened, you really listened, and
you said, read them again,
and you said, send them off to so-and-so, tell them I told you to,
tell them I said they must publish them.

Well, I didn’t do that, didn’t have that much courage.
But, Hone, you know, you started something for me,
it’s because of you that I’m doing all those papers at Uni,
it’s all your fault that I stand up and read places,
meet so many people I love.

For a few months I saw you around,
drove you down from Shirley’s place at Pakiri once,
discovered for myself the warmth and charm that drew us to you, made us laugh.
Made me feel I was more than I thought I could be.
Two or three years later,
after you moved to Kaka Pt,
I saw you again,
you didn’t remember me,
but
I will always remember you,
you are like the rain
I can feel you in the air.

Farewell Hone, Arohanui, Penny

Michele Leggott

work for the living

one by one they come out
the piece of paper with the poem transcribed
at five in the morning and folded
into the driver’s pocket
another with the words of the song
the Yorkshireman doesn’t need
he’s brought cucumbers from his garden
she found puriri around the corner
I’m looking up the Latin for big flower
or maybe really big flower
and pulling it from the tree

too many funerals but the road
is clear to the north      the driver
puts his foot down
the words in his pocket speed
the conversation the weave of
bad singing bad hearing bad eyes
stopping only for a bad joke
across the road from the Hundertwasser
toilets      they call me mellow yellow
the tourist train rolls up the main street
someone takes a picture on a phone
stories flash by     Ruapekapeka Ohaeawai
Culloden the Spanish Armada
the wars the families deaths and clearances

at Te Kotahitanga we find him
whose words have brought us
to the north     wheear 'ast ta bin sin'
ah saw thee     he asks silently
did you clean up the shattered teacup
the milk spilling onto the floor?
the Lake Poet walks in trailing clouds
the Persian Ecstatic takes a spin
around the room and King James
does benison in both languages
body and soul     light and air
puriri grieves and the Really Big Flower
opens its lemon soap heart     Ephphatha!
the birds in the trees are suddenly uproarious
and then we hear rain outside

it’s gone by the time
we emerge and the van has him
safely on the road to Wharepaepae
we are slower getting up there
the carter on the horizon calls out
in the arms of the road     a translation
anyone might understand
replying to the voice in the wind
as the old lady opens her arms
and takes him into the earth

lost children
and talk that goes on into the night
around a table in a house on another hilltop
where an old friend pulls out the first book
and inside it another piece of paper
with a handwritten poem she reads
remembering where it came from
taking the path between that coast
and the travellers she is feeding tonight
the cucumbers went into the salad
more books more history more wine
the driver’s poem is unfolded
as a full moon gets up over the valley
A red libation to your good memory, friend.
There’s work yet, for the living.
in the morning a bird will call from the trees
visible invisible     riro she explains
to the man without a hat who knows
the song but can’t sing it now
to save his life     riro riro little stranger
the wars the deaths the clearances
one who intrudes into my shadow
I don’t recognise shadows     his face
a translation anyone might understand

John Buck, 21 January 2008

The thing to remember about Hone is that he grew up first on the King James Bible and then on Shakespeare. So he heard that magnificent poetic language over and under and around his own ways into Polynesian storytelling and Polynesian song. He took the animism of the Maori world – everything in it is alive and has a voice – and he wrote that world, those voices, hearing as he went the echo and cadences of the classic English tradition. His poems sound so good, they’re wonderful to hear out loud, and not just because Hone was a wonderful reader of his own work. A poem like ‘Rain’ will still be around when we’ve forgotten almost everything else. It goes straight in, it’s everyone’s poem to learn and remember. My children’s children will be taught ‘Rain’ and I think Hone knew that. He knew very well what his poems could do: But if I / should not hear / smell or feel or see / you // you would still / define me / disperse me / wash over me / rain.

Lauris Edmond

Lauris Edmond, from Late Song (Auckland University Press, 2000).

Afternoon at Akatarawa
for Frances and Hone

It was there, a silence within the wind, brushing
lightly across that dedicated hillside
holding its dead in its arms, each one’s
eternity contained in the long sleep of the earth.

It was a colour – or no colour – in the quiet sky
as we three knelt or sat on the grass looking down,
my hand on the carved stone of her name,
her years written there in brief relentless strokes;

it was our tears, our shared remembering,
our close-leaning bodies; it touched our skin
with the wind, held us close in our stillness.
It was – a mysterious knowing beyond knowledge;

or perhaps the earth itself, where we will all
one day lie with her, the voice of its silence.
Then we stood up, heads bent, and meandered
over the grass. But – there was one thing more –

he broke, turned, breathed hard, his great voice
suddenly filling that cathedral of hills with
a muscular shouting, strange harsh music as though
coming from some deep place beyond even himself.

He ended. We walked to the car. Miles down the road
in the silence we drew round us, each peering
inwards to see what we could of her long-ago face,
he told us: ‘A salute. For a chief only. For her.’

Murray Edmond

Everyday Life on Mount Forehead (excerpt)

17/1

Yuri signed her name with her stamp
the two characters – KINU (silk) and GAWA (river) –
in red inside a circle of red ink

SILK-RIVER

what an exotic beautiful name I wanted to exclaim
until I stopped to listen to my own language
and heard such names as SILKSTONE or BRIDGEWATER
for what they are which is to say what they might be


ostranenie of course Shklovsky called it


to hear then stop and listen and to hear again

on the TV news at 6pm last

night ‘breaking news’ of Hone Tuwhare’s death


TU to stand to stop to remain
WHARE house

hear the name again

and what stands inside the name

in ’77 in Sid (Hirirni) Melbourne’s reo class we
were set the composition
‘Taku whare tu mokemoke’
poem/prose/song/essay/whatever-you-liked
to speak with the voice of the carved house in the
National Museum

the house is not a house without the people

it does not stand

in 1966 (or was it five

Scott and I went to hear him read almost all of
No Ordinary Sun cigarette after cigarette poem after
poem in the new Teachers College/University lecture theatre
in Hillcrest (the college just moved from Melville

(the university just a little more than an idea

before each poem he apologised for the poem we were
about to hear

funny funny funny old man funny

only one friend

went to Waikato
(the rest of us thought we wanted to drop

dead rather than stay in Hamilton

not from choice but
with mother dying and father in prison it was
all she could afford

good to hear now she teaches at

The New School in New York

Best not to leave a mark

behind for good or ill

in her big old Holden she drove me
round the lake under the stars under that tree:

the girl in the park

did not reach up to touch

the cold steel buttons

hear again
here again

biking across Hamilton for poetry’s sake

23/1

KOTAHITANGA 1889

NZ flag at half mast as Pat Hohepa finishes his
speech, a young man scurries into the house
to announce: ‘They read a Tuwhare poem at Sir Ed’s funeral –
I heard it on the radio’

but most locals here haven’t read any

Tuwhare poem

careful he might write another one with that blue ballpoint
in his left hand

the Wharepaepae urupa is hidden from view

across a paddock where the cars are parked, down a track
then up to the top of a small steep hill

from there you can

look out north south east west / as far as the eye
a fine place to rest

there’s/work yet, for the living

stopped by the cops for goin’ too slow
whoa
just want to get there as late as I can
whoa whoa whoa

red light in my head

blue light in my eyes

long green stick insect waves in the air sitting on
the rimu like a Bill Hammond bird

huhu bug

blunders in to join the drinkers

a fool moon

and a mist at dawn

the land breathes out long and slow

Brian Turner, 20 January 2008

I always found Hone engaging, amusing and good company. He was regularly generous and sincerely didn't have much time for pomp and ceremony – he had a wicked sense of humour and enjoyed taking the piss out of others. He could also see aspects of absurdity in himself and was brilliant at playing to a crowd. Then he'd say something quietly, give you a wink; he knew he could do a great con job if he wanted to. Occasionally he did. The more irreverent he was the more reverent his audience became. Hone knew he was onto a good thing there. He was a very very good reader of his own work, one of the best.

I'll miss the old bugger. He helped make people believe that all poets weren't rarefied, could be warm and human – in the best sense of the word – and I'm grateful to him for that.

16 January 2008: Death of Hone Tuwhare

Hone Tuwhare (1922-2008) was the second Te Mata Poet Laureate. He was appointed in 1999, received his carved tokotoko from PM Helen Clark and published Piggyback Moon, his laureate collection, in 2001. Hone’s tokotoko is now held at the Eastern Southland Museum.


Three classic poems by Hone Tuwhare - Hone Tuwhare website

Publications and reviews list - University of Auckland Library website

'Friend', published in Te Ao Hou (1964)

Three poems published in Te Ao Hou (1959) (scroll down a little on the page to see)

Feature on Tuwhare in Te Ao Hou (1964) A selection of early work from the digitised journal Te Ao Hou.

Fifteen Minutes in the Life of Johannes H. Jean Ivanovich A poem about laundry day at Kaka Point, Hone-style. Published in Shape-Shifter (1997) and reprinted in Whetu Moana: Contemporary Polynesian Poems in English (2003).

LP Blues Debra Smith’s photograph documenting Hone Tuwhares contribution to Poetry on the Pavement in the Auckland CBD, February 2005.

Biography and publications NZ Book Council Writer Files Images (from the International Institute of Modern Letters website)
Top: Prime Minister Helen Clark and Hone Tuwhare
Bottom: Hone's tokotoko

Post about Tuwhare on the National Library's 'Create Readers' blog


Information and links on the Christchurch City Libraries site

The New Zealand Poet Laureate Award

Poetry is an essential part of New Zealand culture, with a proud and vibrant history. In May 2007 the government announced the New Zealand Poet Laureate award to be established and administered by the National Library of New Zealand. This award replaced the Poet Laureate Award created by Te Mata Estate in 1996. Te Mata Estate remains involved in the new award in a supporting role.

The title of New Zealand Poet Laureate is awarded to an accomplished and highly regarded poet who has made an outstanding contribution to New Zealand poetry. In this highly public role, the first Poet Laureate must be able to communicate a passion for poetry, be a strong advocate for poetry and have an interest in digital publication.

Auckland poet Michele Leggott was announced as the inaugural Poet Laureate under the new award in December 2007. The Poet Laureate is selected biennially and receives an award of $50,000 per year. The Poet Laureate is also presented with a tokotoko (a carved walking stick) for ceremonial use as well as a stipend of Te Mata wine. The Laureate is selected by the National Librarian/Chief Executive of the National Library after a nomination process.

As part of the new award, items such as the Poet Laureate’s drafts, creative processes (including video interviews, podcasts, readings, and online publications) and published work will be preserved in the National Library’s National Digital Heritage Archive and in the collections of the Alexander Turnbull Library.

History of the Poet Laureate award

Te Mata Estate winery established the New Zealand Poet Laureate award in 1996, its centenary year. The award recognised outstanding contributions to New Zealand poetry.

Each poet was appointed for two years and received a grant from Te Mata Estate, together with an individual tokotoko symbolising their achievement and status.

Past Te Mata New Zealand Poet Laureates

2005-2006 Jenny Bornholdt
Bio from the Oxford Companion to New Zealand Literature
Publications, bio, gallery and online works
Collection of poems and images

2003-2004 Brian Turner
Bio from the Oxford Companion to New Zealand Literature
Featured poems at New Zealand Electronic Poetry Centre website
Collection of poems and images

2001-2002 Elizabeth Smither
Bio from the Oxford Companion to New Zealand Literature
Publications, bio, gallery and online works
Collection of poems and images

1999-2000 Hone Tuwhare
Bio from the Oxford Companion to New Zealand Literature
Featured poems at New Zealand Electronic Poetry Centre
Short bio and poem

1997-1998 Bill Manhire
Bio from the Oxford Companion to New Zealand Literature
Publications, bio, gallery and online works
Collection of poems and images