Tuwhare, Hone

[Photograph: Meg Davidson]

Hone Tuwhare (1922-2008)

Contents:

Classic New Zealand Poets in Performance (2006):

Rain
No ordinary sun
cummings

Aotearoa NZ Poetry Sound Archive (2004):

CD37

1. Sun o (2)
2. Roads
3. Rain
4. Papa-tu-a-nuku
5. No ordinary sun
6. Miles Davis
7. Da, da, dumm…
8. cummings
9. Child coming home in the rain from the store
10. Time out
11. That morning early
12. Sandra
13. Kākā Point

Bio /Bibliography:

Hone Tuwhare was born at Kokewai, near Kaikohe, in 1922, of Ngā Puhi, Ngāti Korokoro, Tautahi, Uri O Hau and Te Popoto descent. When he was four, he moved with his parents to Auckland, where he attended primary school - financial constraints meant that he was unable to go any further in the education system. After leaving school, he took a boilermaking apprenticeship with New Zealand Railways; after receiving his trade certificate, he served with the Japan Section of the 2nd N.Z.E.F. in 1946-7, worked on North Island hydroelectric schemes, and became a union organizer. He began writing seriously in 1956, and had his first poems published soon after; one appeared in Landfall in 1958. Tuwhare’s first collection of poetry, No Ordinary Sun, was published in 1964; it has subsequently gone through four editions, and is still in print. After receiving a Burns Fellowship in 1969, Tuwhare moved to Dunedin, becoming involved with the local arts and writing communities. In 1973, he was instrumental in organizing the first Maori Artists and Writers Conference, and later that year he visited the People’s Republic of China, meeting Rewi Alley. In 1974, after a period spent working in the Pacific, he received a second Burns Fellowship, and, the following year, participated in the New Zealand Land March. The latter experience led to the writing of his first play, "In the Wilderness Without a Hat". He was a member of the Four New Zealand Poets tours of 1975 and 1979, and continued to perform in front of South Island audiences throughout the late 1970s and 1980s. In 1998, he was awarded an honorary D.Phil. by the University of Otago. He was named poet laureate in 1999, and, in 2002, his collection Piggy-Back Moon was shortlisted for the New Zealand Book Awards. In 2003, he received the Prime Minister’s Award for Literary Achievement (poetry). He died in January 2008.

Poetry:

No Ordinary Sun, Auckland: Blackwood and Janet Paul, 1964
Come Rain Hail: Poems, Dunedin: Bibliography Room, University of Otago, 1970
Sap-wood and Milk: Poems, Dunedin: Caveman Press, 1972
Something Nothing: Poems, Dunedin: Caveman Press, 1974
Making a Fist of It: Poems and Short Stories, Dunedin: Jackstraw Press, 1978
Selected Poems, Dunedin: McIndoe, 1980
Year of the Dog: Poems New and Selected, Dunedin: McIndoe, 1982
Mihi: Collected Poems, Auckland: Penguin, 1987
Short Back & Sideways: Poems and Prose, Auckland: Godwit, 1992
Deep River Talk: Collected Poems, Auckland: Godwit, 1993
Shape-shifter, Wellington: Steele Roberts, 1997
Piggy-Back Moon, Auckland: Godwit, 2001
Oooooo......!!! , Wellington: Steele Roberts, 2005

Drama:

‘In the Wilderness Without a Hat’, in He Reo Hou: 5 Plays by Maori Playwrights, Wellington: Playmarket, 1991