Maori performer with Poi balls
Rick Rohan
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Hone Tuwhare, Poet: 21-10-1922 - 16-1-2008 HONE TUWHARE, whose loquacity was a match for his prolific body of earthy poems, said he had a big head. "It's astounding what you can fit inside," he told writer Noel Hilliard.
Tuwhare had just treated the author of the ground-breaking Maori Girl to a spontaneous and unblemished, off-the-cuff quotation from the Titahi Bay writer's 1960 best-seller.
Hilliard observed that his pal's memory was remarkable, and responded with Rain, a celebrated poem by Tuwhare. Hilliard transposed two lines. Tuwhare hooted with delight, and said Hilliard's slip was proof that the capacity of Maori heads was superior and "why we don't have to put everything down on paper".
Tuwhare, who has died in Dunedin, aged 85, was the first Maori to have a book of poetry published in English. His 1964 debut, No Ordinary Sun, was a best- seller, and its style set a refreshing standard in new writing.
His reputation is richly deserved. His deft constructions and a seemingly bottomless drawer of observations, both charitable and pointed, are hallmarks of his style.
His work is also distinctive because almost without exception, the works are individually addressed, whether to people, ideas, objects or events. It is eminently readable in the sense that it can either be digested in silence on the bus while homeward bound, or bellowed alone in the privacy of one's home.
Tuwhare's reputation sprang from underdog beginnings. He was the sole survivor of five children born to born to Pene (Ben) Tuwhare Anitipa Te Pone and Mihipaea Maihi. His mother died of TB in their dirt-floor shack when he was five. Soon after, his father moved to Auckland, where the breadline was within easier reach.
Hard conditions saw the two Tuwhares flitting from basement to shed or sharing bed and room in a boarding house.
Tuwhare was not one to complain about the life, later describing the years as formative and giving a good understanding of class difference.
Tuwhare senior ensured his son got an education and he signed him up to a New Zealand Railways apprenticeship. At the Otahuhu workshops, Tuwhare soon learned there was a library, where he could widen his appreciations and whet his appetite.
Like his fellow apprentices, Tuwhare became a union member. He developed an interest in socialist ideas and joined the New Zealand Communist Party. "Maoris are natural commos," he later observed, though for years he was said to be 50% of the party's Maori membership.
He was a delegate to rallies and meetings in Australia and elsewhere, but he left the party in disgust when the Soviet Union invaded Hungary in 1956. He rejoined in 1973, and was about to resign in 1978 when the party pre-empted his intended move and expelled him.
By that time, he was an established poet with a generous audience, and he had taken to the speaking circuit, where he was an accomplished performer. He also tuned his attention to Maori concerns, and became a mentor to young Maori writers.
Getting there had been formative, to say the least. As a young boilermaker, he had liked the rhythm that poetry provided, he said, but few of his railway workmates were willing to understand it.
An established poet, editor and unionist, R. A. K. Mason, advised him that poetry was not the preserve of academics or ladies in parlours, and Tuwhare was grateful for Mason's nudge.
As a young man, Tuwhare spent a year with J Force, the military unit sent to Japan to assist with security during the country's post-World War II rehabilitation. The experience gave him a wider understanding of the world beyond Auckland.
In early 1949, he moved to Wellington. Recently married, he worked in manual jobs and briefly as a lowly public servant at the Health Department before returning to Auckland via hydro construction jobs.
The attractions of life beyond the garden gate were to become increasingly irresistible. He was a one-term municipal councillor, but lacked the stomach for it, and he botched his marriage.
His trade took him to construction projects throughout New Zealand, to the Bougainville copper mine at Panguna in Papua New Guinea's North Solomons Province, and to Samoa.
When poetry took him south to Dunedin and a Burns Fellowship at Otago University, he found there that isolation from Auckland was the best medicine for what he once described as the "writing disease".
In 1992, after years in cities, Tuwhare moved to coastal South Otago. Periodically, he would emerge on poetry forays where his audience never diminished.
Tuwhare is survived by his three sons. DOMINION POST
Tuwhare had just treated the author of the ground-breaking Maori Girl to a spontaneous and unblemished, off-the-cuff quotation from the Titahi Bay writer's 1960 best-seller.
Hilliard observed that his pal's memory was remarkable, and responded with Rain, a celebrated poem by Tuwhare. Hilliard transposed two lines. Tuwhare hooted with delight, and said Hilliard's slip was proof that the capacity of Maori heads was superior and "why we don't have to put everything down on paper".
Tuwhare, who has died in Dunedin, aged 85, was the first Maori to have a book of poetry published in English. His 1964 debut, No Ordinary Sun, was a best- seller, and its style set a refreshing standard in new writing.
His reputation is richly deserved. His deft constructions and a seemingly bottomless drawer of observations, both charitable and pointed, are hallmarks of his style.
His work is also distinctive because almost without exception, the works are individually addressed, whether to people, ideas, objects or events. It is eminently readable in the sense that it can either be digested in silence on the bus while homeward bound, or bellowed alone in the privacy of one's home.
Tuwhare's reputation sprang from underdog beginnings. He was the sole survivor of five children born to born to Pene (Ben) Tuwhare Anitipa Te Pone and Mihipaea Maihi. His mother died of TB in their dirt-floor shack when he was five. Soon after, his father moved to Auckland, where the breadline was within easier reach.
Hard conditions saw the two Tuwhares flitting from basement to shed or sharing bed and room in a boarding house.
Tuwhare was not one to complain about the life, later describing the years as formative and giving a good understanding of class difference.
Tuwhare senior ensured his son got an education and he signed him up to a New Zealand Railways apprenticeship. At the Otahuhu workshops, Tuwhare soon learned there was a library, where he could widen his appreciations and whet his appetite.
Like his fellow apprentices, Tuwhare became a union member. He developed an interest in socialist ideas and joined the New Zealand Communist Party. "Maoris are natural commos," he later observed, though for years he was said to be 50% of the party's Maori membership.
He was a delegate to rallies and meetings in Australia and elsewhere, but he left the party in disgust when the Soviet Union invaded Hungary in 1956. He rejoined in 1973, and was about to resign in 1978 when the party pre-empted his intended move and expelled him.
By that time, he was an established poet with a generous audience, and he had taken to the speaking circuit, where he was an accomplished performer. He also tuned his attention to Maori concerns, and became a mentor to young Maori writers.
Getting there had been formative, to say the least. As a young boilermaker, he had liked the rhythm that poetry provided, he said, but few of his railway workmates were willing to understand it.
An established poet, editor and unionist, R. A. K. Mason, advised him that poetry was not the preserve of academics or ladies in parlours, and Tuwhare was grateful for Mason's nudge.
As a young man, Tuwhare spent a year with J Force, the military unit sent to Japan to assist with security during the country's post-World War II rehabilitation. The experience gave him a wider understanding of the world beyond Auckland.
In early 1949, he moved to Wellington. Recently married, he worked in manual jobs and briefly as a lowly public servant at the Health Department before returning to Auckland via hydro construction jobs.
The attractions of life beyond the garden gate were to become increasingly irresistible. He was a one-term municipal councillor, but lacked the stomach for it, and he botched his marriage.
His trade took him to construction projects throughout New Zealand, to the Bougainville copper mine at Panguna in Papua New Guinea's North Solomons Province, and to Samoa.
When poetry took him south to Dunedin and a Burns Fellowship at Otago University, he found there that isolation from Auckland was the best medicine for what he once described as the "writing disease".
In 1992, after years in cities, Tuwhare moved to coastal South Otago. Periodically, he would emerge on poetry forays where his audience never diminished.
Tuwhare is survived by his three sons. DOMINION POST
FONTE: The Age - Melbourne,Victoria,Australia
http://www.theage.com.au/
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