Up at the dam site, at Te Mahoe, among the clatter of pneumatic drills, the settling dust and the raw earth, a man is writing poetry.
So began an article in The Whakatane Beacon on 2 May 1962, and that man writing poetry was Hone Tuwhare. Boilermaker by trade, poet by inclination, he would come to be regarded as one of New Zealand’s poetry greats and be named by the Arts Foundation of New Zealand as an Icon Artist in 2003. At the time of his death in 2008 he was described as New Zealand’s most distinguished Maori writer, and - perhaps more importantly and more telling - his poem Rain was voted by a clear margin as New Zealand’s favourite poem in 2007.
Hone Tuwhare was born in Kaikohe, in Northland in 1922, but spent much of his childhood in Auckland. His father - an accomplished orator and storyteller - encouraging his son’s interest in the spoken and written word. Being the 1940s however, the young Tuwhare also pursued a “proper” trade and qualified as a boilermaker. He also served in Japan as part of New Zealand’s post-war occupation force before marrying and living in Wellington where he began to raise a family of his own. Before long they had moved to the Bay of Plenty, to Mangakino and then Te Mahoe, where he worked on the Matahina hydroelectric dam that was then under construction.
An early meeting with the noted poet R A K Mason had given Tuwhare the encouragement he needed to begin writing, and by the late 1950s and early 1960s his work was appearing in publications like Landfall and The Listener. It was, and still is, seen as something of a new departure in New Zealand poetry. The Oxford Companion to New Zealand Literature says his work cut across “the debates and divisions between the 1930s and post-war generations”, and remarked upon the originality gained from what it called “the Maori perspective”:
“This was not simply a question of the subject matter of some poems . . . but of their direct lyrical response to landscape and seascape, their vivid evocation of Maori myths and images (‘A burnt offering to your greenstone eyes, Tangaroa’), and their capacity for angry protest at the dispossession of Maori land and culture (‘The mana of my house has fled, the marae is but a paddock of thistle’).”
His writing and worldview was undoubtedly influenced by his work in Te Mahoe. He was active in the trade union movement and for a time joined the Communist Party, and he remained passionate about human rights for the rest of his life. He was also an organizer of the first Maori Writers and Artists hui at Te Kaha in 1973 and took part in the Land March of 1975.
His first book, No Ordinary Sun, was published in 1964 to immediate acclaim; it would be reprinted 12 times within the next forty years and it remains one of the most widely read individual collections of poems in New Zealand history to this day. More than ten other collections would follow, but it is this first volume, arguably his best, that remains the blueprint for the brilliance of Hone Tuwhare. The themes range from workers’ rights to nuclear testing, love, lust, family and friends, but the perspective remains solidly grounded, crafted by the heart and hands of a boilermaker in Te Mahoe, among the clatter of pneumatic drills, the settling dust and the raw earth.
Rain may have been voted our favourite poem but another of Tuwhare’s works, Mauri, is one of his most discussed, and a handwritten copy of this resides in the Whakatane Museum and Research Centre collection. It is set on a simple lined page, looking like something torn from an exercise book, and beneath the careful and considered reproduction of the poem is a freehand and busier postscript that is signed – simply - “Sincerely, Hone Tuwhare”.
