Book signing today with photographer Bruce Connew and writer Rangihīroa Panoho. Connew’s accompanying exhibition of photographs and the artist’s book available at Te Uru, Waitakere Contemporary Gallery, Titirangi, AUCKLAND, NZ. Copies of ‘A Vocabulary’ sold out on the night, these are part of the next batch from the binders.
Who said people aren’t reading or buying books! This one is beautifully made. A gorgeous thing. Typography and exhibition design by Catherine Griffiths. Cloth, case-bound, 604 pages, section sewn, round spine, ribbon
written for the opening of Bruce Connew, ‘A Vocabulary’, Te Uru, Waitakere Contemporary Gallery, Titirangi 12 December 2020
E ngā mate. Ka mahara tātou ki ngā mumu Māori e takoto ana kei raro i ngā parekura o ngā pakanga whenua o mua. Haere, haere, haere. Haere ki te poho o te Atua, haere ki Hawaikinui, Hawaiki roa, Hawaiki pāmamao.
rangihīroa, Hato Mikaere, Ōhaeawai
The parekura sits silent no noise at all just the chatter of a tui wrecking putiputi down by the hall just the wind murmuring across the fertile plains he swore he heard their voices around Ngāi Kuku’s last remains
down by the river where the fighting pā once stood or was it just the twittering of pīwakawaka in the woods
the scale of the loss disgusted him it explained why he refused the spirit path to Rēinga instead he would choose to guard over bones and taonga and mourn unmentioned loss hidden from a nearby cenotaph that counted not the cost
raised to his last battle near fields where he had toiled he read the text again and again as if it would reveal some other truth or meaning that might possibly transcend a vocabulary of forgetting bronze letters that won’t bend colourful adjectives murdering rebels, barbarous savages
he struggled with the message they were a people worth forgetting
Indeed not a word of his hapū’s bravery not a mention of their name or that settler greed for land was largely to blame for a war no native asked for how else could one explain an eternity of loss within and this deep gnawing pain
and when archaeologists visit he wishes they’d hear him yell Haere mai E hoa, haul your trig over here, man Yeah map us brother, draft us on that plan
but the grid only measures trenches so we’ll always be missed except by manuhiri that want to take a piss
and summer comes and summer goes and the pōhutukawa bleeds scarlet in the morning 10 shades of crimson when the sun retreats
He pōhutukawa ko tahiHe pōhutukawa, e ruaHe pōhutukawa, e toru..
Some notes regarding ’10 Shades…‘
My wife’s people, Te Aupōuri, live near Cape Rēinga in the ‘far North’ of Aotearoa. They along with other Muri Whenua iwi, like Ngāti Kuri, consider themselves gatekeepers to Te Rerenga o Wairua ‘the leaping off point of the Spirits’ at the northern extremity of Aotearoa. Many Polynesian Islands in the South Pacific have these points of departure. This role of kaitiakitanga ‘guardianship’ at the exit of ēnei wairua ‘these spirits’ journeying to Hawaiki has created family histories where ghost stories are common. At times the Spirits stop along the way and there are visitations. The narratives told at night of encounters with the spirits are the most frightening. These wānanga ‘narratives’ are cherished and remembered and passed on with great relish and drama by the skilled storytellers of Muri Whenua.
10 Shades…then , in essence, is a ghost story taken from the point of view of a toa ‘Māori warrior’, he mumu Māori, who decides not to take the well worn path to Rēinga and determines to remain instead with his whānau and the warriors he fought with on a Ngā Pakanga Whenua o Mua battefield. In the poem one of the greatest struggles the central character has is accepting a memorial inscription raised near the battlefield. History, so the saying goes, is written by the victors. While this may be partly true these are also the days where indigenous voices outside the majority culture may also contest such histories.
