From Signposts

New Zealand has suffered another great loss with the death of poet and playwright Hōne Tūwhare.

Tūwhare’s debut collection, No ordinary sun (1964), was the first book of poetry by a Māori writer in English. The 1966 Encyclopedia of New Zealand described him as ‘the only modern Māori poet’. Whether or not that was strictly true at the time, thankfully it is not so now, and Tūwhare and his writing has inspired many New Zealand poets, both Māori and Pākehā.

Tūwhare is of Ngāpuhi (Ngāti Korokoro, Tautahi, Uri o Hau and Te Popoto hapū) and Scottish descent. He was born in Northland (near Kaikohe) in 1922 and, though he lived elsewhere for much of his life, Northland is remembered in many of his poems, such as ‘A fall of rain at Miti-miti’.

He also wrote poems about more political subjects, including ‘Rain-maker’s song for Whina’, inspired by the 1975 land march, and his protest against forest destruction, ‘Warawara, Pureora, Okarito’, which has the ‘honour’ of being the only time the f-word is used in Te Ara. I think that would have amused him.

This entry was posted on Thursday, January 17th, 2008 at 1:39 pm and is filed under National identity, Guest blogger - Signposts. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.