the tuwhare special

posted by Michele

Hone Tuwhare went to Jerusalem in November 1972 to farewell his friend James K Baxter. He wrote what became a well-known poem about driving overnight to get to the tangi, picking up three young men along the way and putting time and place into context as the sun came up at Jerusalem that morning. The poem is called 'Heemi' (Deep River Talk: Collected Poems 96) and it ends:

Joy for the brother sun chesting over
the brim of the land, and for the three
young blokes flaked out in the back seat
who would make it now, knowing that they
were not called on to witness
some mysterious phenomenon of birth on
a dung-littered floor of a stable

but come simply to call
on a tired old mate in a tent
laid out in a box
with no money in the pocket
no fancy halo, no thump left in the old
ticker.

Several of the contributors to nzepc's e-journal ka mate ka ora #6, a Hone Tuwhare special issue, recall the poem in their own tributes to Tuwhare. Robert Sullivan has assembled the rich mix of critical essays, memoirs, poems and photographs just now launching in the September issue. Yes, it's late: there was a much bigger take-up than expected to kmko's call for Tuwhare material, but it's worth waiting for: 8 essays, 3 sets of archival photographs and 25 tributes plus an editorial by Sullivan and a poroporoaki (farewell) by Hana O'Regan called 'He tītī me te waihoka pōhutukawa / Mutton Birds and Red Wine'. Much to savour, much to ponder. Here's a gem from Jean McCormack, who married Tuwhare in 1949:

Calling the ex at seventy-nine

He's in the hospital
in Balclutha
eighty-two now
heart trouble, etc...

I'm reasonable,
high blood pressure
now under control
watery eyes when I go out
in the cold
but that's minor

Who is it he says..
Jean..
Who?
JEAN..
Who? Spell it!
Louder this time…J E A N…
Joan?
No! JEAN…
Jane?
NO! JEAN!

Oh! JUNE! JUNE! (delighted)
(Those names from the 1920s! But who is June, I wonder...
haven’t heard of that one..)

JEAN! YOUR CHILDREN’S MOTHER!

Oh, JEAN!

We talk for a while
as much as is possible,
he asks after the sons, the mokopuna..

He tires
says good-bye
but I hear no clicking off.
I hold the phone

Then I hear faintly, the quavery but
melodious voice..

My heart is sad and lonely, de da, de da, de daaa...

Image
Hone Tuwhare at Jerusalem, 1972
Photograph by William Farrimond

Remembering Hone Tuwhare

posted by Michele
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

posted by Michele

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

posted by Michele
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

posted by Michele
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

posted by Michele
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

posted by Michele

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

posted by Michele

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

posted by Michele

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

posted by Michele

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

posted by Michele
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