<I>

  <&>Wellington Corpus of Spoken New Zealand English Version One</&>
  <&>Copyright 1998 School of Linguistics & Applied Language Studies</&>
  <&>Victoria University of Wellington</&>

  <&>side one</&>
  <&>14:51</&>
  

  <WSC#MUL002:0005:BM>
      <O>coughs</O> er i'm sorry that goes on and on and on but in
      fact it's quite interesting

  <WSC#MUL002:0010:BM>
      i mean he talks like that around and about and in fact he's got
      lots of points very clearly in mind that he wants to make but
      it's a very elaborate er relaxed way of coming to them <O>coughs</O>
      and the poems are interesting in <.>relati</.> relation to that
      way of behaving actually because sometimes they'll ramble and
      then surprise you but many other times they cut away all of that
      rambling talk and are much more er muscular as it were <,>

  <WSC#MUL002:0015:BM>
      anyway er <.>th</.> the reason i put that reference to an issue
      of landfall up there is that because that's got a very long
      interview with hone tuwhare in it er which i happened to do <O>laughs</O>
      but in fact it's a very interesting document because <.>he</.>
      <.>he</.> he says quite a lot of interesting things and i think
      it's probably the most interesting er source of information
      about his writing other than reading the poems of course er <O>tut</O>
      and the interesting thing is that he'll always talk
      autobiographically as he <&>16:00</&> does there

  <WSC#MUL002:0020:BM>
      he's asked a question about <,> physical geography almost there
      and emotional links with it and he tells a tale about his own
      life

  <WSC#MUL002:0025:BM>
      er you ask him about a poem he won't make a literary critical
      answer

  <WSC#MUL002:0030:BM>
      he won't make the kind of comments that you're expected to make
      in english department essays

  <WSC#MUL002:0035:BM>
      instead he'll tell you about the year he wrote the poem er where
      he was living what the circumstances were that prompted the poem
      into being all of that kind of biographical context er but he
      won't talk about the elegant image in the third stanza or any of
      that kind of thing er so there's always the sense with him i
      think that the poetry and the life are one thing or they're
      opposite faces of a single coin er and they're not to be
      separated <,>

  <WSC#MUL002:0040:BM>
      er the one thing that seems to annoy him about his poetry er or
      the one LACK which he strongly feels in it is the absence of
      <&>17:00</&> work which reflects his life as a communist that
      sense of community er that he arrives at there that sense of
      place is one that he finds missing in his work and it seems to
      annoy him

  <WSC#MUL002:0045:BM>
      er <O>tut</O> he talks in biographical notes about himself as an
      activist as a maori as a member of THE working classes you know
      he uses the <.>w</.> the term working classes in a marxist sense
      er and indeed he has written a lot of political poetry but most
      of his poetry is lyrical er and while he's proud of <.>i</.> the
      poetry he feels that it somehow misrepresents the emphases and
      the interests of his life as a whole which have been political

  <WSC#MUL002:0050:BM>
      er <O>tut</O> now <.>y</.> you'll have heard that he mentioned
      the er communist paper <title>the people's voice</title> on the
      tape

  <WSC#MUL002:0055:BM>
      the editor of that newspaper er at the time was a poet you've
      read earlier in the course a poet called r a k <&>18:00</&>
      mason

  <WSC#MUL002:0060:BM>
      er so when er he was a very young man when he was serving this
      apprenticeship in the railway workshops hone tuwhare met another
      poet who was also a communist

  <WSC#MUL002:0065:BM>
      er he didn't find out for a long time that mason was a poet in
      fact when he speaks of mason he speaks always of mason's modesty

  <WSC#MUL002:0070:BM>
      mason didn't run round you know er with a cravat and long
      flowing hair saying i'm a poet or <.>any</.> any of that sort of
      stuff er but when he did find out that mason was a poet he
      showed mason some of his own poems and mason read them and gave
      him advice so mason was a big figure to him and a helpful sort
      of mentor figure in his early years

  <WSC#MUL002:0075:BM>
      er he didn't carry on writing poetry hone tuwhare er though he
      did remain a firm member of the communist party er until
      nineteen fifty six when the soviet troops <&>19:00</&> went into
      hungary at which point he made a public er protest and resigned
      from the party <,>

  <WSC#MUL002:0080:BM>
      er at that time he was working at mangakino which <.>is</.> was
      one of the hydro projects on the waikato river and he was
      married and he had a family and so forth and this is the time
      when he took up writing again so <.>he's</.> he's thirty four
      years old when he begins to write seriously

  <WSC#MUL002:0085:BM>
      he's a sort of late starter really er and i think it's fair to
      say that er <,,> the sense of place the sense of belonging the
      sense of community that he talks about there um etymologically
      of course communism and community i assume are the <.>sa</.> are
      more or less the same word er but he started to regain his sense
      of place through his writing through the act of writing

  <WSC#MUL002:0090:BM>
      it gave him a community of other writers

  <WSC#MUL002:0095:BM>
      it gave him a community of readers er <O>tut</O> and it gave <.>him</.>
      he himself says a far <&>20:00</&> far stronger consciousness of
      himself as maori <,> er though one of the nice ironies when he
      talks about this in the interview <.>he</.> he was er on this
      hydro project with <.>a</.> with a fiction writer called noel
      hilliard whom some of you will have come across

  <WSC#MUL002:0100:BM>
      er hilliard er is pakeha but was busy working on short stories
      and eventually wrote that novel maori girl which some of you
      will know about

  <WSC#MUL002:0105:BM>
      er tuwhare is maori <.>so</.> so <O>voc</O> let me get this
      right er hilliard <.>was</.> was a pakeha was <.>busy</.> busy
      writing texts that looked as if a maori had written them

  <WSC#MUL002:0110:BM>
      er tuwhare who was maori was busy writing lyrical poems that
      looked as if a pakeha had written them

  <WSC#MUL002:0115:BM>
      it was all very er curious <O>inhales</O>

  <WSC#MUL002:0120:BM>
      anyway his first book of poems called no ordinary sun which was
      er a poem within the book an antinuclear poem er that was
      published in nineteen sixty four and was promoted as and
      <&>21:00</&> truly was i think the first book of poems in
      english by a maori

  <WSC#MUL002:0125:BM>
      course there's a huge tradition of er maori poetry <quietly>er
      <,> which er happens not to be in english</quietly>

  <WSC#MUL002:0130:BM>
      er <,> r a k mason wrote a preface to this book no ordinary sun
      er and you'll <.>see</.> so he was an important figure at that
      point as well

  <WSC#MUL002:0135:BM>
      you'll see on the sheet that i've sent around on the second side
      of it there's a poem there which is called ron mason er <,> and
      it's a tribute that hone tuwhare paid to r a k mason er when he
      died <,,>

  <WSC#MUL002:0140:BM>
      so he pays this tribute to the poet you're dead and so forth
      stanza four <quotes>your granite words remain</quotes> <,> which
      in fact isn't a bad description <.>of</.> of the way mason's
      poems operate

  <WSC#MUL002:0145:BM>
      they're sort of tough stone like er chunks of language and then
      of course he makes the point that he himself has his own
      <&>22:00</&> work to attend to as a poet so towards the bottom
      of that first column he says to mason <quotes>easy for you now
      man you've joined your literary ancestors whilst i have problems
      still in finding mine lost somewhere in the confusing swirl now
      thick now thin victoriana missionary fog hiding legalised <.>ramp</.>
      land rape and gentleman thugs</quotes> and so on

  <WSC#MUL002:0150:BM>
      so one poet is dead he makes his tribute and then he
      acknowledges the work that he himself has to do <,>

  <WSC#MUL002:0155:BM>
      er so it's interesting that he sets up this ancestry for himself
      this sense of community for himself er in the world <.>of</.> of
      writers and writing er and that seems to compensate for that <,>
      lack of <,> rootedness that lack of place that was there in his
      early years <,>

  <WSC#MUL002:0160:BM>
      er i want to make some fairly specific comments now about the
      poetic qualities if i can call them those <&>23:00</&> of hone
      tuwhare's work and i want to start with the whole question of
      tone tone of voice er the kinds of noises that are made rather
      than the meanings <O>tut</O> and i want to come to it through
      one er anecdotal thing really one little story which he told me
      in this interview

  <WSC#MUL002:0165:BM>
      if you find the first page of the sheet there's a poem there
      called thine own hands have fashioned <,,>

  <WSC#MUL002:0170:BM>
      er now when tuwhare was working at mangakino er a policeman came
      and knocked on his door and the way he tells it he was <.>very</.>
      he was a bit anxious he thought it was er someone coming after
      him because he was a wicked communist and all the rest of it but
      in fact the policeman er had come with the news that his father
      had died er and <.>what</.> what he says he remembers of it is
      having no reaction at all not even noticing himself having
      <&>24:00</&> feelings er though it's clear from er what he says
      about his life that his father was crucially important to him in
      all sorts of ways especially as his mother was dead er <,>

  <WSC#MUL002:0175:BM>
      i think she died when he was three or four er

  <WSC#MUL002:0180:BM>
      so policeman comes your father's dead he has no reaction at all
      and then a day later he went and wrote this poem called thine
      own hands have fashioned

  <WSC#MUL002:0185:BM>
      er the odd thing about the poem is that it's a love poem for two
      voices er and it's based on the bible story of samson and
      delilah <,> so somehow his reaction to the death is to displace
      everything into this er biblical love tale <,,>

  <WSC#MUL002:0190:BM>
      you can see by the way how it makes sense when he says the king
      james bible was where i learnt my english

  <WSC#MUL002:0195:BM>
      er it's true <.>he</.> you know his first poem is a retelling of
      a bible story really er and then he says after he'd written the
      poem <O>tut</O> the loss of his father hit him with er <O>tut</O>
      the sort of force that these things do hit you but he wrote the
      <&>25:00</&> poem first and it's very curious language <.>y</.>
      you see how the first couple of stanzas go <quotes>oh let the
      vain sun die with a peacock flourish so that i may rise from my
      labours and hasten to light up the dark tent that is delilah
      beloved thine hands are distraught winds waking the dead
      cymbalic reeds at the edge of the lake hear ye the sullen moan
      of yielding trees the forlorn sigh of tormented hills the liquid
      gasp of molten valleys</quotes>

  <WSC#MUL002:0200:BM>
      i mean it's absurdly overwrought it seems to me especially from
      this distance in time er very big er formal biblical language i
      mean he uses the word ye rather than the word you and so forth
      <,>

  <WSC#MUL002:0205:BM>
      <.>remem</.> remember this is a guy working on a dam project on
      waikato river

  <WSC#MUL002:0210:BM>
      these words don't seem to connect to the sort of life he's
      <&>26:00</&> living at all er but this was his first poem and he
      sent it off to the maori <.>magazine</.> magazine <title>te ao
      hou</title> er and it was accepted by them and than it was
      banned by the minister of maori affairs who stepped in because
      he didn't want er poems by er socialists and communists being
      printed with er taxpayers' money

  <WSC#MUL002:0215:BM>
      he was thought to be a dangerous subversive you know as if THIS
      poem which <.>is</.> i mean if you read it forgetting about the
      fact of the death of the father <.>it's</.> it's all sort of er
      <,> you know <,> well it sort of has sex on its mind it seems to
      me <O>laughs</O> that's basically what it's got on its mind and
      it's all sort of elaborate ways of pretending not to be about
      what it's about

  <WSC#MUL002:0220:BM>
      anyway er so it never got into print when it was written but <.>this</.>
      this was his first poem and you notice er the hanging first
      lines of each stanza the lefthand margin on the first line is
      much further to the left than the rest <&>27:00</&>

  <WSC#MUL002:0225:BM>
      <.>that</.> <.>that's</.> that's something he simply copied off
      r a k mason you know remember mason's early poems have that same
      hanging margin er he <.>just</.> he's just got the impression
      that that's how you write poems <&>27:10</&>
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