Once Were Pacific: Maori Connections to Oceania

2. Pacific-Based Māori Writers

· 37 ·· CHAPTER 2 · Pacific-Based Māori Writers Agreat deal of energy, both contemporary and historical, has been expended on exploring the historical migration of Māori people through the Pacific to Aotearoa. The Māori poets Vernice Wineera, Evelyn Patuawa-Nathan, and Robert Sullivan all write about and demonstrate journeys in which Māori start at Aotearoa and venture out into the region. Vernice Wineera and Robert Sullivan are two very different poets: one older, one younger; one woman, one man; one from lower North Island iwi, one from iwi based at the northern and southern ends of Aotearoa; one with long-standing residence in Hawai̒i, whose link to Aotearoa derives its strength from emotional connection, and one who was there for a comparatively short time, with a view to returning home. Evelyn PatuawaNathan is the only Māori writer published by the South Pacific Creative Arts Society (SPCAS) in Fiji.1 Originally from the north of the North Island (Kaihu valley), she wrote her collection while living and teaching in Sydney. Māori writers based outside Aotearoa negotiate their ongoing membership of Māori and iwi communities in different ways to those based inAotearoa,anditisunfortunateforthewriters,butalsoforapotentialNew Zealand (including Māori) readership, that with the exception of Robert Sullivan, who mostly publishes with Auckland University Press, diasporic Māori writing is virtually inaccessible in New Zealand. As a result, the first two collections of English-language poetry by Māori women (Wineera’s Mahanga and Patuawa-Nathan’s Opening Doors) are impossible to buy and rarely acknowledged; it is only when the Māori connection with the Pacific is explored that their work becomes visible. “Ocean of Possibilities”: Vernice Wineera In1978,thefirstbookof poetryinEnglishbyaMāoriwomanwaspublished. The first published work of Māori creative nonfiction had appeared in 1951 (Rewiti Kohere’s The Autobiography of a Maori); the first book of poetry 38 PACIFIC-BASED MA ORI WRITERS in English by a male Māori writer had been Hone Tuwhare’s No Ordinary Sun in 1964; and the first books of fiction by a Māori man (Witi Ihimaera’s Pounamu Pounamu) and by a Māori woman (Patricia Grace’s Waiariki) appeared in 1972 and 1975, respectively.2 It remained for a Māori woman to publish a collection of poetry in English. However, when Vernice Wineera’s Mahanga: Pacific Poems was published in 1978, it did not as loudly enter the list of firsts as the others had.3 To be frank, if the poetry had been published but was a little ho-hum in terms of poetic quality, this quietness around its publication might be understandable, but Wineera’s collection is packed full of rich, lively, compelling poetry. The themes of the collection are wide ranging:family,maternity,childhoodandchildren,locationandplace,teaching and knowledges. Wineera’s ongoing residence in Hawai̒i prevented her publication from being hooked into the worlds of New Zealand literature by the usual means of literary geography, and this has dropped her out of the dominant Māori literary horizon as well.4 Ironically, this distance from New Zealand and from Aotearoa may be precisely what enabled her to achieve publication in 1978, when Māori women poets at home could not. Inside the front cover of Mahanga, bibliographic notes suggest the multiple spaces in which Wineera and her work had already circulated: her poetry had previously appeared in Te Ao Hou (Māori), Marae (Māori), Kula Manu (a Brigham Young University–Hawai̒i student–staff creative magazinebasedinHawai̒i),andEnsign(aMormoncreativewritingjournal). Mahanga is subtitled Pacific Poems, and in the preface, Wineera is described as “a sensitive, soul-searching Pacific poet” as well as “of Maori, English, and French ancestors.”5 In her own introductory poem, she writes, The Maori has always been an artist and poet, and I hope herein to convey in English my respect for Maoritanga and the Polynesian heritage which enriches my twentieth-century life. Even though the slippage between Pacific and Polynesian is rightly contested , what I am interested in is the inextricability of the specific term Māori (“The Maori,” “Maoritanga”) from the regional configuration of the Pacific (“Pacific poet,” “Polynesian heritage”). The year after Mahanga was published, Wineera edited a literary collection, Ka Po̒e o La̒ie,6 in which PACIFIC-BASED MA ORI WRITERS 39 her writer’s statement echoes Wineera’s articulation of the “Pacific heritage” described in Mahanga and looks forward...