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PEOPLE’S POET
S E Á N M C M A H O N W I T H A W H Ā NAU R ESPONSE FROM ROB TU WHAR E
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Hone Peneamine Anatipa Te Pona Tuwhare (Ngāpuhi; 1922–2008) was one of New Zealand’s foremost poets. His early childhood love of reading spurred his own serious writing, which he himself dated from 1957. In the 1960s he began publishing poems in journals and performing them at festivals around Aotearoa. His first collection, No Ordinary Sun, was published to wide acclaim in 1964. He was one of the initiators of the first Māori Writers and Artists Conference, held in 1973, and he walked on the 1975 Māori Land March.
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Performance of poetry was vital to Tuwhare. In her book, Hone Tuwhare: A biography, Janet Hunt writes: ‘[He] believed that poetry is to be spoken, it is an art that lives not only on the page but also in the voice, breath and very being of the writer and the reader … A “people’s poet”, he was loved by New Zealanders from all walks of life.’ The self-portrait shown here was among a collection of Tuwhare’s papers acquired by the Turnbull Library in 2009 as part of its extensive holdings of Aotearoa New Zealand writers.
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