posted by Michele
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
- Hawke’s Bay Today laureate event profile 23 Feb 2008
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
