Two writers report back from two different festivals on two islands over the same weekend.<\/p>\n
It is with the plan of killing two birds with one stone (or rather, to mate e rua ng\u0101 manu with kotahi whatu) that I steer my waka to the Kupu Festival in Rotorua where I\u2019m looking to upskill my reo because for the first time ever, they are offering the first day of their two-day schedule completely in reo M\u0101ori only.\u00a0<\/p>\n
As an akunga houhare \u2013 a diligent disciple of the reo, it is day one that I am here for the most: to sit in a wharenui with these m\u0101tanga M\u0101ori \u2013 experts in the reo. And what a line-up! Kupu\u2019s directors have gathered skilled experts like H\u0113mi Kelly, Hona Black, and publishing sensations including Atua W\u0101hine author Hana Tapiata. Their kupu whakanikoninko \u2013 embellished speech \u2013 is an inspiration and a motivation for those of us who want to speak like that too one day.<\/p>\n
Kupu is unrivalled in terms of the beauty of its location. The venue on day one is the breathtakingly beautiful Te Papaiouru Marae. On the shore of Lake Rotorua, a stone\u2019s throw from downtown, it\u2019s the home of the six hapu of Ng\u0101ti Whakaue. The wharenui, Tamatekapoa, is a stunner, with spectacular whakairo and matching stained glass windows, and across the atea, perched right on the water there\u2019s an even greater beauty, the Anglican marae church, St Faiths, which has a sort of mock-tudor-meets-M\u0101ori facade and an intricate tukutuku interior that is so outrageously gorgeous I might give up my devout atheism if this were my t\u016brangawaewae.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The church is the final location of the day, where we sit as the sun begins to set and poet Matariki Bennett recites her work standing beside the tomb of her tupuna. The stained glass around her is all magnificent but the real corker is the modernist window which cunningly depicts Jesus floating over the lake outside as if he is literally walking on the water.<\/p>\n
Matariki Bennett speaking at Kupu Festival. (Photo: Kararaina Pene).<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, doing a pretty good impression of Jesus at his best, knocking out the loaves and fishes trick, is festival organiser Ruakiri Fairhall and his offsider Jemma Moreira. The Kupu team effortlessly pull together a schedule that manages to be both super-chill tikanga M\u0101ori vibe but also miraculously run on time. Fairhall tells me he\u2019s got big plans too to build further on the reo-only day next year with headsets provided that translate the speakers. Now that\u2019s some top level UN shit! This festival is nothing if not ambitious.<\/p>\n
Day two dawns with a p\u014dwhiri at stunning location number two: Whakarewarewa. The crowd is possibly a little larger than the day before and once again the venue is a wharenui. There\u2019s something about making authors leave their shoes at the door that makes them leave their pretentions there too and lots of the writers who speak today are honest about their struggles with language acquisition, and with writing. Mike McRoberts tears up several times as he talks about his journey.<\/p>\n
\u201cI had nothing,\u201d he says of growing up in Christchurch and never speaking M\u0101ori. \u201cWillie Jackson called me out, inferring I wasn\u2019t a real M\u0101ori.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cAnyone in this room who hasn\u2019t been called out by Willie Jackon?\u201d MC and TVNZ political editor Maiki Sherman laughs.<\/p>\n
In his session Airana Ngarewa says that it\u2019s not the reo that is his greatest struggle so much as writing in english. He suspects he might be profoundly dyslexic. To combat this, his writing technique involves him prowling around the room and then almost sneaking up on a sentence by expressing it out loud before he scurries back to his desk to write it down. It sounds frankly exhausting.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Actually a lot of the authors\u2019 techniques that they speak of leave me feeling faint or perplexed. JP Pomare who shares the stage with Airana Ngarewa talks about the importance of not knowing what is going to happen next when he writes. \u201cIf you want a predictable book then plan it,\u201d he says dismissively. Uh \u2013 hard disagree. But I like JP and he\u2019s sold a lot of books and crime writers are different to the rest of us so what would I know?\u00a0<\/p>\n
He speaks too about his difficulties reconciling himself to a life of crime. He wanted to be literary. Instead, I guess he will just have to cry himself to sleep on his giant bed of money. Two of his books have now been adapted to screen and his writing is very, very good and his fan base reflects that. He has been in Melbourne for 17 years now but he\u2019s still a Rotorua boy at heart. His dad is a racehorse trainer and he grew up in Ngongotah\u0101. \u201cProbably half of this room has bought a fridge from Pomare Electrical.\u201d<\/p>\n
JP Pomare (left) and Airana Ngawera (right). (Photo: Kararaina Pene).<\/p>\n
There is a film session where writers Tim Worrall, Ramon Te Wake, Hamish Bennett and Karen Te O Kahurangi Waaka talk about the craft. Karen says something profound about decolonising the writing process. Ramon, who wrote The Boy, The Queen and Everything In Between, brings a showgirl quality to the line-up. \u201cI literally came out of my mother with jazz hands\u201d. If I have one gripe (and I really don\u2019t) about the festival it is that sometimes the panels mean I don\u2019t get to hear more from fabulous people who have much knowledge to impart.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Ultimately, I came away with a profound respect for the tikanga of this special festival. Is there any other hui ahurei in Aotearoa right now with more heart, more verve, more ambition than this one? I doubt it.<\/p>\n
The theme of this year\u2019s festival was Ahi K\u0101: keeping the home fires burning. Dunedin for me is a home and I love going back there to huddle in its hilly embrace. The festival\u2019s warmth, manaakitanga and vibrancy stoked my love of this stunning city and the community of writers and readers it holds.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The opening event and p\u014dwhiri at the gorgeous \u014ct\u0101kou marae<\/a> on the Peninsula was a highlight. The kai! T\u012bt\u012b, boil up, a pot of cockle chowder large enough to bathe in, salads Ottolenghi would envy. And the post-kai k\u014drero in the wharenui, Tamatea! Megan P\u014dtiki \u2013 stunning; Apirana Taylor \u2013 electrifying; T\u0101me Iti \u2013 mesmerising; Nadine Hura \u2013 hilarious; Victor Rodger \u2013 heartwarming; Jeanette Wikaira \u2013 seismic; Rob Tuwhare \u2013 moving; Talia Marshall \u2013 sensational; Tina Makereti \u2013 gentle; Ati Teepa \u2013 stirring; Waiariki Parata-Taiapa \u2013 joyful.\u00a0<\/p>\n After that satiating start, the weekend unfolded like a dream with the Dunedin Centre teeming with festival-goers over two days of back-to-back events in two separate theatre spaces. Becky Manawatu, Talia Marshall and Victor Rodger were first up on Saturday and were an inspired holy trinity \u2013 their conversation, built on their mutual love of Fleetwood Mac, was funny and surprising. Some insights: Marshall said that Maurice Gee\u2019s Halfmen of O books are her most sacred NZ texts. Manawatu said she likes to have a truth in her fiction \u2013 as small as an object or as a big as a relationship \u2013 to build a narrative from there; and when Marshall offered that the fiction was a way of hiding, Manawatu agreed. Marshall said that when she writes she often has a song in her mind and that while she\u2019s working the whole world glows with it, and then once finished, it\u2019s gone. Manawatu said that when rats washed up on the beach in Westport she thought it was a tohu for her and that she was in trouble for Au\u0113 and so, at one point, she was trying to use the sequel, Kataraina, to erase everything that had happened in the first book. At question time Marshall elegantly handled a clunky, but curious, inquiry about whether she lumped her readers in to P\u0101keh\u0101 and M\u0101ori. Marshall responded generously, explaining she has an ideal reader (her son\u2019s Aunty).<\/p>\n Nadine Hura drew a large crowd for a conversation based on her essay collection on climate change, Slowing the Sun<\/a>. It was an extraordinary hour, beautifully chaired by Metiria Turei Stanton. I\u2019ve never heard so many collective \u201cmmmm\u201ds. Hura\u2019s kaupapa for finding a te ao M\u0101ori lens for climate conversations feels at once bone logical and revolutionary. Te reo M\u0101ori contains within it how to see ourselves in relationship to the planet and withdraw from this colonial, extractive madness we\u2019re living: it\u2019s all there in the kupu. Like \u201cwhenua\u201d and its multiplicity of meanings: land and placenta. \u201cYou wouldn\u2019t attack the organ that sustains a baby? That\u2019s dumb? So why attack the land?\u201d Hura said the best feedback she\u2019s had on the book so far is that librarians don\u2019t know whether to categorise her book into science or literature.\u00a0<\/p>\n On Saturday night, legendary watering hole WOOF! came alive with the sound of poetry to the theme of \u201cGo tell your racist jokes to someone else\u201d, a line from Tuwhare himself. The format was inspired: a line-up of seven poets would do one poem each, interspersed with a bell commandeered by former Dunedin mayor Aaron Hawkins, that signalled when the crowd could get back to chatting and drinking, and then would tinkle again to hush us for the start of another poem, and so on for three rounds. Energising, community-building, rousing and fun.\u00a0<\/p>\n My last event was with the brilliant, and in my opinion sorely under-appreciated, writer of 13 novels Laurence Fearnley<\/a> and the equally brilliant Louise Wallace, discussing the elemental threads between their two books, The Grand Glacier Hotel, and Ash. Fearnley is charming, and went off piste a couple of times, letting us in on a harrowing antenatal experience in Germany. Wallace is incredibly astute (as you\u2019ll know if you\u2019ve read Ash<\/a>) and read from a particularly funny part of her novel before explaining that she always writes from an emotional centre and is always trying to use the page to evoke a particular feeling in the reader. Fearnley spoke movingly about her passion for the wild landscapes in Aotearoa, some of which we are losing: \u201cit\u2019s a vandalism\u201d. She also spoke about her love of the slow nature of the novel: the excitement of sitting down and wondering what was going to happen in the world of the book that day.\u00a0<\/p>\n All in all an absolutely wonderful time at a wonderful festival where the organisers worked incredibly hard for a smooth, joy-filled time of connection and care.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Two writers report back from two different festivals on two islands over the same weekend. It is with…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":95064,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[67199,489,70412,156,70413,70414,111,139,69],"class_list":["post-95063","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-entertainment","tag-becky-manawatu","tag-books","tag-dunedin-writers-festival","tag-entertainment","tag-jp-pomare","tag-kupu-festival","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/95063","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=95063"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/95063\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/95064"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=95063"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=95063"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=95063"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}From left to right: Jeanette Wikaira (chair of Dunedin Writers & Readers Festival board), Apirana Taylor, Rob Tuwhare, Megan P\u014dtiki and T\u0101me Iti. At the Ahi K\u0101 opening event at \u014ct\u0101kou Marae. (Photo: Kaiwhakaahua Studio.)<\/p>\n
Nadine Hura speaks to her book, Slowing the Sun. (Photo: Kaiwhakaahua Studio.)<\/p>\n
Laurence Fearnley (left) and Louise Wallace (right). (Photo: Kaiwhakaahua Studio.)<\/p>\n