The 46th in this occasional series of reprints
from Quote Unquote the magazine is
from the November 1996 issue.
No photo credit
because I don’t know who took it: happy to credit when/if the photographer makes
contact.
The intro read:
Few of us can claim to have shot a poet,
but Mark Derby can. He recalls his time as researcher and associate producer
for the Gaylene Preston TV documentary Hone
Tuwhare, screened last month.
SHARING RICHES
His hospitality elbowing aside his
reclusiveness, Hone Tuwhare agreed without hesitation when I asked to bring a
film crew to invade the privacy of the tiny Southland coastal community where
he now lives. He must have regretted this impulsiveness many times during the
demanding weeks of shooting, with our five-person crew crammed into his tiny
living room and a radio mike wired to his collar. Yet he never objected to our
presence, and went along stoically with requests to drive his car back and
forth along the same stretch of road until every member of the crew was
satisfied. To Hone, the former Worker’s Union branch chairman, a deal’s a deal.
It wasn’t all hard work and disrupted home
life, however. With the camera finally turned off for the night, the whisky
bottle could come out, the neighbours could come over, and the muttonbirds go
on the stove. Like much of his poetry, Hone’s favourite foods are rich in
protein, and most enjoyable when shared.
The finished film, called simply Hone Tuwhare, centres on Hone’s life
today at Kaka Point, the tiny coastal settlement an hour’s drive south of
Dunedin where he’s been living for several years. His house is a two-room crib
with the southern ocean filling its front windows. The shed out the back
ignores the view, and on most days Hone spends some hours there in front of his
elderly computer, working on poems, letters and new projects like the libretto
for an opera.
At 74, his greatest concern is being able
to spend as much time writing as possible, in the face of constant demands to
appear in public. The film follows him to Wellington where he was a featured
writer at this year’s International Arts Festival, sharing a platform with US
Poet Laureate Rita Dove, who asked to be photographed with him afterwards.
On the same trip, Hone was guest of honour
at a gathering for young Maori writers and artists at Wellington’s Taputeranga
marae. Ever generous with his time and encouragement, he still frequently
wished himself back home at Kaka Point, where the local storekeepers are under
instruction to deter uninvited fans.
During one of our conversations in the
early stages of making the film, Hone told me that he wrote his first published
poem because he unexpectedly found time on his hands. In 1956 he was working as a
boilermaker on a hydro dam on the Waikato River, and living in the Mangakino
workers’ village with his wife and young family. As an active Communist Party
member, his evenings and weekends were given over to meetings, discussions and organising. Then he heard how Stalin’s
tanks were brutally suppressing the Hungarian uprising, burned his Party card,
and soon began wondering what to do with all his free time.
The result was a poem, “Thine Own Hands
Have Fashioned”, typed up by the local teacher, Party comrade and novelist Noel
Hilliard, and later published in a small magazine. Other poems followed at long
intervals, eventually attracting the attention of Hamilton bookseller and
publisher Blackwood Paul, who published Hone’s first collection, No Ordinary Sun, in 1964.
It was another 10 years before writing
became a fulltime occupation, instead of something to be fitted in between
welding jobs when the foreman wasn’t looking. Even then, public actions often
took precedence over poetry. Hone travelled the length of the North Island with
the 1975 Maori Land March, visited Inner Mongolia as a guest of China, met
future independence leaders in Bougainville.
The documentary tells very little of his
remarkable life story, largely because of Hone’s discomfort when talking about
his past on camera
– director Gaylene Preston found him a very different
interview subject from the women veterans who lit up the screen in War Stories.
It’s likely that many of the old photos,
anecdotes and press interviews I collected will end up instead in the
forthcoming biography, due to be published to coincide with his 75th birthday
next year.
Having given us so much of his time,
goodwill and reserves of energy during the making of the film, I doubt if Hone
watched it when it screened last month. More likely he was in his writing shed
surrounding himself with crumpled drafts. But I hope those who did watch gained
some further appreciation of Hone’s pungent poetry and huge heart.
UPDATE
The “forthcoming biography” mentioned was Hone Tuwhare: a biography by Janet Hunt,
published in 1998. Mark Derby reports that: “I have since heard from Hone's
relations that both he and they particularly liked the portrayal of him in this
documentary.”
