Two new books from Albert Wendt

In an unusual example of publisher co-operation, two new books from Albert Wendt from different houses – From Mānoa to a Ponsonby Garden (poetry Auckland University Press) and Ancestry (short fiction from Huia) – have just been launched over two days at The University of Auckland. The festivities kicked off with a Pasifika poetry mega-reading at LOUNGE 28 and continued the following night with a formal launch at The University’s Fale Pasifika, which Wendt was so instrumental in establishing. The formal launch was opened by Papali’itele Pita Taouma and featured readings by Albert Wendt and former students or protégées Karlo Mila, Serie Barford and Selina Tusitala Marsh.

Albert Wendt CNZM is of the āiga Sa-Maualaivao of Malie, āiga Sa-Su‘a of Lefaga, āiga Sa-Patu of Vaiala and āiga Sa-Asi of Moata‘a, Sāmoa. An esteemed poet, novelist, short-story writer, playwright and painter, he is emeritus professor of English at the University of Auckland. He has been an influential figure in the developments that have shaped New Zealand and Pacific literature since the 1970s and was made Companion of the NZ Order of Merit in 2001 for his services to literature. His verse novel The Adventures of Vela (2008) won the Commonwealth Writer's Prize for the Asia Pacific Region; his co-edited anthology Whetu Moana: Contemporary Polynesian Poems in English won a Montana NZ Book Award; and the subsequent anthology Mauri Ola: Contemporary Polynesian Poems in English was shortlisted in the 2011 NZ Post Book Awards.

 Sam Elworthy (right), AUP, and Brian Bargh, Huia

Karlo Mila reads.

 More about the new books

From Mānoa to a Ponsonby Garden is an extraordinary, alert and confident book that is ultimately a book about ageing and the consideration of death. These poems move from the warm valley winds of Hawai‘i to the seasons of a garden in Auckland while the poet considers the nature of life. Joints need replacing, poets grow older, tsunami destroy and friends slip away, but a spirit of renewal and humour pervades. Scattered among the garden poems are some of Wendt’s inky, drawn poems about the Sāmoan tsunami / galu afi.

Ancestry is a new collection of short stories that explores the nature of family, tradition and culture through the eyes of those seemingly caught between the realities of modern contemporary life and the ancestral ties of their heritage. It is a masterful meditation on the ties that bind people together across time and place. The unpublished manuscript of Ancestry won the University of the South Pacific Press Literature Prize in 2011.