Tūwhare, Hone

New Zealand, (1922-2008)

My Pork & Puha Anthem

  1. My mirror angled low, swivels on two upright
  2. props fixed firmly to the back of my dresser –
  3. At this angle of tilt, the mirror is reflectively
  4. focused instead on my hairiness – just below
  5. my pito* – and notable only for the evidence of
  6. tell-tale streaks of greyness in among my bush – or,
  7. the blush of graininess there (to put a
  8. kindlier twist to my masculinity). Well, who the
  9. hell else is going to give a damn? I love me;
  10. my cheeky ‘Oldie’ -ness.
  11. Well, I’m not into tilting the crap out of windmills.
  12.  
  13. I tilt the mirror. My face leaps out more squarely
  14. into view. I’m not enthused. It’s my face, alright,
  15. but it’s not infused with that inner spread of
  16. joy and satisfaction it wears after a feast of
  17. pork-bones, puha** — and, O, boy — dough boy!
  18.  
  19. Ahhh… what religious gifts of beautification Nature
  20. gives to us, in all her colourful variety, of wheaten
  21. and green produce – the wild ones unsown by
  22. human hands, together with the domesticated
  23. porker sans grunt; and its high-pitched scream
  24. before getting its throat cut. I betake myself –
  25. by getting off my arse to arrange a musical
  26. scherzo of kitchenware / a saucepan filled with
  27. herbal / meatie nourishment, coming to the boil. O yea!
  28.  

* pito — naval, tummy button

** puha — the perennial sowthistle, a small leafy plants with thistle-like leaves and milky juice. They are boiled and eaten as a green vegetable, rich in iron and vitamin C

Te Aka Online Māori Dictionary

 Hone Tūwhare. Piggy-Back Moon. Auckland, NZ: Godwit/Random House.

About the Poet:

Hone Tūwhare, New Zealand, (1922-2008), was a indigenous Māori poet, and a qualified boilermaker for the railroad and a member of the trade union movement and the Communist Party. He remained passionate about human rights all of his life.

In 1956, Tūwhare started writing seriously after resigning from a local branch of the Communist party. His first, and arguably best known work, No Ordinary Sun, was published in 1964 to widespread acclaim and subsequently reprinted ten times over the next thirty years, becoming one of the most widely read individual collections of poetry in New Zealand history.

When Tūwhare’s poems began to appear in the late 1950s and early 1960s they were recognised as a new departure in New Zealand poetry. Much of the works’ originality was the result of their distinctly Māori perspective. The poems were marked by their tonal variety, the naturalness with which they could move between formal and informal registers, between humour and pathos, intimacy and controlled anger and, especially, in their assumption of easy vernacular familiarity with New Zealand readers.

Tūwhare was the recipient of many awards and fellowships and was twice winner of the Montana NZ poetry award. Hone was Te Mata Poet Laureate in 1999 and received two honorary doctorates in literature. He was named one of New Zealand’s ten greatest living artists in 2003 and awarded one of the three inaugural Prime Minister’s Awards for Literary Achievement. [DES-04/18]

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