THE SKY WE SHARE

© Rangihīroa Panoho, 2020-2024. No part of this document (text or imagery) is free to be copied, plagiarised or shared for publication or for uses neither intended nor agreed on by the author without his express permission. Details for writing to the author are as follows: blueskypanoho@icloud.com             

5 January 2020 (revised)



E hoa mā

Titiro atu ake ki te au pōuri

How can we not think of you?

You turn our days into evenings

our sun into a giant apocalyptic orange

that fills our horizon

a haze that hangs around for days



Up there

big brother

the atmosphere we share

is turning red

red like your soil

red like the blood

and the antipodean sky

we share



Friends

we are not so far away

that we cannot sense your nightmares

the smell of ash in the air

the death of eucalypts

the cry of the koala and the waratah

of heath and of kangaroos

of bush and of lizards

of birds above, of insects and of reptiles below

of adrenalin that rises up from every living creature

of homes and towns under siege




Neighbours

we are not too far away

that this devastation does not reach our nostrils

and touch our hearts



Tā tātou aroha ki Te Whenua Moemoeā

E ngā mate, moe mai, takoto mai rā

E te Atua

tahuri mai ki taku karanga

kia titaha mai tou taringa ki taku inoi…

whakatitahatia mai tou taringa ki ahau

whakarongo ki taku kupu

He inoi tātou mō te mutunga ki ēnei ahi whakamōtī



E te tuākana

Mā te Atua koutou

e manaaki e tiaki e ora e wairua ake tonu atu.

The Cherry Tree

© Rangihīroa Panoho, 2020-2024. No part of this document (text or imagery) is free to be copied, plagiarised or shared for publication or for uses neither intended nor agreed on by the author without his express permission. Details for writing to the author are as follows: blueskypanoho@icloud.com             

He Rākau Tiere

(+ In memorium – R.M.P, 1935-2014)



Kōanga

is the time

the cherry shakes her flower

when the tui raises hell

up high

flurry scuffle sigh

and petals

give up the fight

and float away

softly now

blown

on purse lipped

nautilus

rangihīroa, cherry blossom, Ōwairaka, 2017
Continue reading “The Cherry Tree”

Em i no Paradais Long Hia

© Rangihīroa Panoho, 2020-2024. No part of this document (text or imagery) is free to be copied, plagiarised or shared for publication or for uses neither intended nor agreed on by the author without his express permission. Details for writing to the author are as follows: blueskypanoho@icloud.com                   
rangihīroa, Anguganak, 2018





Credit: featured image above, Tim Laman, cape presentation form of Vogelkop Bird of Paradise, PeerJ , 16 April 2018

EM I NO PARADAIS LONG HIA

( + In memorium C PP & RMP)

26 September 2020


THE
 KUMUL
struts out on patrol
karanga atu e ia te
SINGSING
 
In WEST SEPIK green
calling into being
sink hole black
half disk LUKLUK
pāua paint jig
 
St Heliers girl
branch dancing
paradise voyeur
Em i gat laik
 
Porotī boy
b-b-b-bobbing and sh-sh-sh-shakin’
and fl-fl-fl-flitting and movin’
and quaking
mist fingers
stretching
down TORRICELLI’S rain drenched back
 
so that visibility is attacked
at ANGUGANAK
sad sack sky
is covered
near the bluff
where village children stare
wondering if
there will be
a returning
mountain gazing
on slashed grass strip below
a single yellow sesna
jumpily climbs high
over braided ORPAN
into
a cloud hole
asunción
‘attention
all locals’
there will be no rapture
KEI KŌNEI
 
TRUE, A
‘this is no paradise’

I WAS BORN IN PARADISE Niuean painter/poet John Pule once began a poem, at an exhibition opening I helped organise. Pule was talking about his home village Liku on the remote Pacific island of Niue. Recently perusing an archive of photographs I pondered my own beginnings in an equally remote area of the South Pacific. The image showed my parents and I on the Northern coast of Papua New Guinea at Moem beach at Wewak, the main port of entry into the Western Sepik. The picture featuring locals with outriggers is also shot in Wewak. My entry point to this thinking about beginnings and arcadia (as sometimes is the case) was a plant. I was busy photographing a bird of paradise ‘flower’ (South African in origin) which finally decided to bloom a few weeks ago. It’s arrival happily coincided with my sorting through research files including these references to Papua New Guinea. The puawai got me thinking about the wider issue of provenance and associative names. The sorting process led me back to my place of birth and the stunning birds of paradise (the natural point of inspiration I presume) that still survive in the more remote parts of Papua New Guinea and Northern Australia. I don’t know for sure whether I saw and heard the kumul when I was a child but when you consider the location in some of the images below its certainly possible, even highly likely.

My personal favourite is the Vogelkop Bird of Paradise native to the Indonesian run side of Papua. In my opinion it posseses the most spectacular show of colour in the male mating rituals. Its’ visual impact has to do with a half disk of the deepest black and almost florescent aquamarine streaks and dots at the centre and the base of the ‘cape’ used to flit, swish and lure the females. There is definitely another essay here about colour in nature, the copyright attempts by sculptor Anish Kapoor to own Vantablack (the world’s blackest black) and the ongoing backlash in England. This kumul is a worthy rival to Kapoor’s Vantablack. It is said to have the blackest colouring on earth with the microscopic structure of its feathers absorbing nearly 100% of the light hitting it. There are incredible images of birds of paradise in Attenborough’s films and the research work of the Cornell Lab of Ornithology featuring the fuller range of kumul in their expeditions in the northern western rain forests of West Papua. I also wanted to acknowledge Tim Laman’s breathtaking imagery of this rare and utterly captivating manu, he kumul.

I WAS BORN IN A WEST SEPIK VILLAGE CALLED ANGUGANAK later moving to Amanab closer to the recently occupied border of West Papua. My mother later told me this proximity to this zone of conflict provided opportunity to witness hospitals and schools going up in smoke on the skyline as the Indonesians were busy removing the earlier Dutch layer. I include some images from the vantage point of the house Dad built (at Anguganak I am assuming because the bluff – that rises sharply 300 metres into the air – sits prominently in a window in the background of one of the archived photographs).

I dedicate my poem and the images, reclaimed and researched from family letters and fire damaged black and white photographs and 35mm colour transparencies my father took in the 1960s, to my mother and the paradise she pined for but to which she never returned. This strange body of material is the beginning of a range of investigative research work including the odd diary accounts of Australian field officers working in this region (Australia took over from the Germans until 1975 when PNG finally gained it’s independence). These documents, a more official background to our presence in Australian occupied PNG, involved variously taking census figures, ‘spying’ (the region shares a northern boundary that buffers Australia from Asia and which became a sensitive zone when the Indonesians annexed the region) and what can only be described as colonial – odd village – etic inspections, penned outsider observations.

My father accompanied some of these survey patrols to villages, ‘…that extended from Inabu to Amanab and out to the coast to Vanimo covering hundreds of miles of jungles, swamps and bush clad mountain ranges.’ The records of these gruelling trips are now available in the University of California, San Diego archive of PNG patrol reports and I have been matching them with personal letters. They reveal a great deal about the way in which outsiders are coming into contact with a beautiful and extremely complex range of tribal peoples who continue (thankfully) to occupy an incredibly remote yet increasingly threatened portion of the indigenous world. I am not making a statement here about precious ‘authenticity’. All cultures change and adapt. However, one hopes that indigenous Papua Nūkini peoples locate a future that suits and which expresses their uniqueness and not the ambitions of the many surrounding nations that want to commercially and culturally exploit their bountiful natural resources.

I say let the kumul sing and dance and jig and do his thing.

rangihīroa, 4 pink impatiens floating, 25 March 2018

LAVENDER

© Rangihīroa Panoho, 2020-2024. No part of this document (text or imagery) is free to be copied, plagiarised or shared for publication or for uses neither intended nor agreed on by the author without his express permission. Details for writing to the author are as follows: blueskypanoho@icloud.com                 
rangihīroa, lavender in blue glass vase, 2019

Pale lilac blooms

stolen In Memorium…

on a hillside

steeply launched

jet out memories like medicine

dropped out sound wave

on white cracked concrete

lazily warmed by evening sun

but no kind words hang in the air


since you passed

I never knew your name

looking around – it’s pretty much the same

you are not alone

the wind and the rain

have wiped remembrance here

but one trace remains

103 years after dust was cast

rotten pipe clay task

wiped from holy hands

one very particular scent still hangs


French Lavender

what began as a twig

a premonition piercing mounded clay

your lover day after day

returning

yearning

learning the way the ship soared

out through the mouth

like birth


and I too turning

seaward

across Granny’s bay towards Āwhitu

imagining you eager

to fight the Boers



I catch Maunga Māngere watching jealously

in the distance

lazily spitting clouds

like melon pips

as if to say e hoa, it’s just a scraggy old bush there

kaore ngā ahi kā kei kōna

anake ngā tauiwi e okioki ana

ae, koinā te kōrero he maunga ariki


but its roots were watered

with the tears of loved ones

it’s true that on this crowded hill

they too rest somewhere else

but in off shore breezes

this old lavender

knows no boundaries on this headland


crush its healing oil in palm

and you too will see memory

and loved ones

resurrected

upon the wind


Maunga Māngere titiro ki Maungakiekie, Māngere mountain looks towards ‘One tree Hill’, Tāmaki Makaurau, 2020

This short poem concerns a visit 13 February 2019 to the urupā at the top of Hillsborough. It is steeply situated with spectacular harbourside views across Manukau south to Maunga Māngere and west seawards out to Awhitu peninsula- south Manukau Heads. One of the nineeteenth century graves featured a remarkably hardy bush of lavender. I photographed a few of its many blooms. This extremely weathered and hardy shrub had been left to fend for itself but in the late afternoon sun a gentle breeze was picking up and the air around that grave was filled with the delicate scent of French Lavender. It occurred to me that a number of the shrubs and trees deliberately planted by loved ones involved broader narratives of connection. Was there something particular about the chosen plant? What might it have signified, what emotion is conveyed? Who were these people who planted these shrubs and how often did they return to pay their respects and perhaps just to talk…?

rangihīroa, lavender in heritage blue glass vase, 2019

A Conversation With Mr ‘T’

© Rangihīroa Panoho, 2020-2024. No part of this document (text or imagery) is free to be copied, plagiarised or shared for publication or for uses neither intended nor agreed on by the author without his express permission. Details for writing to the author are as follows: blueskypanoho@icloud.com          

(revised)

rangihīroa, Tī ‘cabbage tree’ with kāroro circling, Te Atatū, 10 June 2018

I was told

kākaho was the proud one

spurning the love of pingao

as she wistfully sought his plumes

waving in the wind

exalted above the sandy ridge

and with her rich toothy, green grin

dragging her vines ‘cross hot sand

not an introduction she’d planned

but that wānanga is wrong

isn’t it Mr Tī?


the light that reaches over Ōwairaka, Maungawhau and me

casts long shadows where we stand

and you demanded I shoot you, not kākaho, early afternoon

‘the light is more flattering’

a rustle in your messy top

broad, bright fluttering green leaves

as you casually explained

heroic

I want frontal, central, imposing

and if the shoot doesn’t give it

use Photoshop


you know, more than the Nor-Western motorway

I am Te Atatū

Don’t worry Mr Tī, I replied nervously,

there will be no rivals – not even kākaho

rangihīroa, kākaho, Te Atatū waterfront, 2018

I have followed your client brief to the t…

harakeke sits at your feet submissively

and proud kākaho (toetoe stem) has been banished

to the edge of Waitematā’s cloak

outside the shot


oh and one more thing: a small detail I must confide

I squinted up his textured trunk towards the sun radiating

behind his crown

him looking down murmuring a deep single syllable ‘ae’

and then softly, so softly one could barely hear it

above the chirp of matata and the squeeky toy twittering of the tōrea

rangihīroa, Mātātā ‘fernbird’, Te Atatū waterfront

a shake began

leaves clattering nor-wester

and around his trunk

a ghost hand massaging wīwī and coercing marshland grasses


I cleared my throat, perhaps a little self-consciously now

if you look closely at the photo

there are kāroro moving around your crown

they were squawking and laughing at me trying to get the shot

He said, no

they are admirers singling me out.


S O M E N O T E S

rangihīroa, Te Atatū shore line looking north-east towards Northcote

This is a revised post from 10 June 2018 and concerns two things – conservation and conceit against a backdrop of images taken on one of a couple of waterfront walks at Te Atatū ‘sunrise’. The dialogue is based on quite a different indigenous story concerning the native plants kākaho and pingao which similarly occupy the threshold domain between Tangaroa (the sea) and of Tāne (the forest). There are no sand dunes in the tidal mudflats of Te Atatū so I have singled out the most prominent native on location – tī, the native cabbage tree – for a more narcissistic version of the role kākaho demonstrates in the traditional story of unrequited love.

The setting is suitable for love but perhaps not self-love. The Waitematā tide was in and there was a view across to Chelsea Sugarworks, Northcote and further to the East – the Viaduct and the three Tāmaki maunga (ko Maungawhau, Maungakiekie and Ōwairaka) rising in the distance behind the rumbling northwestern motorway as it heads towards the Rosebank, Avondale turnoff and further on the Te Atatū turnoffs.

My short dialogue involving Mr Tī had been brewing for quite a while since I first encountered the delightful story of pingao and kākaho in a publication produced by weavers who harvest the native fibre for their mahi ringa (tukutuku, kete and whāriki) and who also belonged to Ngā Puna Waihanga during the 1980s. I once accompanied a ranger in the Kaipara to gather the material for a meetinghouse, involving tukutuku utilising pingao, called Ihenga in Rotorua that celebrated ancestral traveller’s connection to the large northern harbour and to sites around Te Tai Tokerau. Weavers who use the material, as with those utilising harakeke, are intimately involved with the maintenance and care of the sedge and its surrounding ecosystem. Utilising the ‘eyebrows’ of Tāne means they must care for their resource if they are to access the beautiful sedge for their work. It is important to note here that perched in such a vulnerable position this plant continues to exist in an increasingly fragile state on New Zealand coastal sand dunes. As I understood it these weavers were exemplary kaitiaki, truly practitioners of the whakataukī:

Manaakitia ngā tukemata o Tāne ‘caring for the eyebrows of Tāne’

rangihīroa, pingao, Whāngārei Heads, 2020

The following account of kākaho and pingao is one of a number that tell the compelling love story:

From her home she [i.e. ko Pingao] looked up to the land and saw the young and handsome kakaho dancing on the sand dunes. Each time the kakaho made his appearance Pingao became more and more enamoured. Finally she asked permission from Tangaroa to leave the sea to meet her lover. Tangaroa granted her permission with words of warning that she would never make it.

However driven by blind love, she left the seaweed and crawled across the hot sand. As she struggled up she began to call to the kakaho – but he was interested only in himself. He was in love with his own shape and did not answer pingao’s calls. In desperation she called back to Tangaroa, who could do nothing but shower her with spray. And there on the sand dunes, the pingao remains to this day.Rangitane wānanga

For those sceptical regarding nature speaking. It’s not so much that nature talks perhaps more that we should listen. In my version singling out the tī is appropriate as it is a special tree whose name is contained within that of my Te Uriroroi affiliation with Porotī. It was there (outside Whāngārei on the way to Kaikohe) that a special ceremony was held to marry our ancestors with Waikato women and the cutting of the tī was the sign of the tomo ‘marriage negotiations’. This may relate to the raids of southern tribes on Whāngārei (Ōparakau, Parihaka, 1828) in retaliation for the raupatu conducted by Hika and our ancestral leaders who accompanied him in Tāmaki, Waikato and in Hauraki. So my choice of images is, as with any tribally based Māori, biased. Murua mai āku hara nei ne!

rangihīroa, tī flowering, Ōwairaka, 2019

I Will Need Words

dendroglyph, bamboo at Tā Hori Kerei, Givernor’s Mansion, Motu Kawau, Hauraki Gulf

© Rangihīroa Panoho, 2020-2024. No part of this document (text or imagery) is free to be copied, plagiarised or shared for publication or for uses neither intended nor agreed on by the author without his express permission. Details for writing to the author are as follows: blueskypanoho@icloud.com         

ranghīroa, ‘Melanie Picked big Leaf‘, [student graffiti on native leafs] Manoa Campus, University of Hawai’i, January 1999
‘Stupid x3 Marco’, Dendroglyph, Ngā Mara Hainamana o Kirikiriroa, 2021

He Kōrero Tairitenga

Te Uru, Waitākere Contemporary Gallery, Titirangi, 13 February 2021

rangihīroa, Ātarangi, Hato Mikaere, Ōhaeawai, tata atu ki te Pū o te Wheke

I

W I L L

N E E D

W O R D S

rangihīroa, Northern Wars, 2020, coloured inks on paper, matai me Japanese cherry

rangihīroa, ngā parekura o Ngā Pakanga Whenua o Mua, Ruapekapeka, 1845/1846
rangihīroa, The Road to Ruapekapeka, 2020
He rua tūpāpaku mō ngā hōia Ingarihi i hinga ki te parekura kei kōnei
St Michaels, urupā, Ōhaeawai, 2021

REVIEWS

publicity Maori Art book

Tafanua as a kōtiro, Hunua Room, Aotea Centre, 14 July 2022

TAFANUA.

Performance and hākari ‘feast’, Hunua Room, Aotea Centre, Tāmaki Makaurau, 14 – 23 July 2022 Directed by Tausani Simei-Papali’i and brought to life by Tala Pasifika Productions and Pacific Women’s dance collective Ura Tabu. Costumes: Shona Tawhio.

I attended the first showing of ‘Tafanua’ last night at the Hunua Room with my wife. The whole performance was deeply refreshing. I would go so far as to say ‘Tafanua’ was a spiritual experience because of the values you could feel being gently pushed at one as an audience. If fa’a ‘the Samoan way’ (i.e. culture) is based on the principles of alofa ‘love’, faaaloalo ‘mutual respect’ feosia’i ‘reciprocity’, fetufaa’i ‘sharing’ and felagolagoma’i ‘mutual support’ then I sensed, without fully being able to explain why, these values or tikanga were present and bubbling. There simply isn’t any other way to describe it and we, Aucklanders, are lucky to be at the epicentre of a creative performance fabric that is being woven before our very eyes on our stages. Go and see this performance, it will move you and you will be confronted with the challenge to interact with these wonderful performers. Go and support the ongoing development of these extraordinary outpourings of creativity and generous sharing of wānanga, Samoan narratives, legacy, tā rātou kupu ‘their stories’. It’s only on for a short 4 nights from tonight. Don’t miss out (14 Jul – 23 Jul 2022). Plan an evening in town, it is 2 hours and 30 minutes with a 20 min interval. Parking is available at the Civic Centre (Entry from Greys Ave) and the venue is the Hunua Room, on level 1, Aotea Centre.


https://pihirau.co.nz/wp-content/uploads/2021/02/tafanua-720p-1.mp4

https://vimeo.com/manage/videos/730234672

ĀTĀROA, Mahara Gallery, Waikanae

Mark Amery ‘The Dominion’, Wellington 14 August 2021

https://www.stuff.co.nz/entertainment/arts/300380986/te-hkoi-toi-creating-new-zealand-antiwar-memorials

William Dart, Review, (Editor for Art New Zealand) February 2021
John Hurrell, Review ‘A Vocabulary’ for eyecontact social media site dedicated to critical commentary on NZ visual art

BEST BOOKS OF 2020

The publication_A Vocabulary

A fair and supportive response to my Ngā Pakanga Whenua o Mua mōteatea and pito kōrero in Bruce Connew’s ‘A Vocabulary…’

Review by Paul Diamond interviewed by Catherine Ryan on Radio New Zealand. The particular part of the sound byte concerning ‘A Vocabulary’ starts at 2 minutes…

The show ‘A Vocabulary’ is still on at Te Uru in Titirangi for another couple of weeks. And I just signed another 60 books this morning so I know there are now more books available from Te Uru, Waitakere Contemporary Gallery. There is also a panel discussion planned with Bruce Connew, myself and the typography artist Catherine Griffiths who designed both the book and the exhibition, prior to the completion of the show at Te Uru (details to come). Best Rangihīroa

P.S Nice to know I am still a curator, perhaps Māori Curator 🙂

See also Bruce Connew’s interview on Radio New Zealand with Kim Hill ‘NZ’s Colonial Memorials’ 19 December 2020

Bruce Connew, A Vocabulary, Vapour Momenta Press

Lament

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

10 SHADES OF CRIMSON

© Rangihīroa Panoho, 2020-2024. No part of this document (text or imagery) is free to be copied, plagiarised or shared for publication or for uses neither intended nor agreed on by the author without his express permission.  Details for writing to the author are as follows: blueskypanoho@icloud.com          

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 tahi

He pōhutukawa, e rua
He 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.