Auckland Writers and Readers Festival is on!

The AWRF 2011 arrived in town last night drawn by an exciting great locomotive with fire in its belly called "Works with words". What an opening! I didn't know what to expect from "a programme of uniquely New Zealand orchestral and "spoken word" works and in particular what I didn't expect was how the two hearts, music and poetry, would beat as one. In fact, the conductor conducted both (and very well). What was the wonderful phrase one of the esteemed guests introducing the event said? I think it was "Poetry has no correct meaning. This it has in common with music." 

The climax of the evening was certainly for me "Witnessing Parihaka" by Stephen Matthews, with words by Robert Sullivan. As somber and stirring as it should have been, a memorial which lived and breathed, and we along with it.

But also, let me spend a word for the part in John Elmsly's "White Feathers" when Stuart Devenie recited Hone Tuwhare's poem "Papa-tu-a-nuku (Earth Mother)" about the Awakening, the Maori land march of 1975,  while wriggling all over and the music clamouring and pealing all around him:

We are stroking, caressing the spine
     of the land.

We are massaging the ricked
     back of the land

with our sore but ever-loving feet:
     hell, she loves it!

Squirming, the land wriggles
     in delight.

     We love her.