A large crowd from as far away as Northland and
Wellington attended the launch of Maris O'Rourke's first poetry collection Singing With Both Throats at the Gus
Fisher Gallery on April 9th.
“Maris
and I were at Auckland University together a long time ago. When finally we all
went our separate ways most of us lost track of each other. I was aware some years later that Maris had
become the first Secretary for Education in New Zealand but until recently
didn’t know that she was also the first Director of Education for the World
Bank and worked on the education systems of 50 or so different countries.
Then,
as she says, since leaving that position she has reinvented herself as a poet –
and as a long-distance walker. Her walk on the pilgrim trail from France over
the Pyrenees and across Northern Spain to Santiago de Compostela became the
inspiration for her children’s book Lillibutt’s
Big Adventure which we published last year – and have just now released in
paperback. I’m delighted to say too that Claudia Pond Eyley who illustrated Lillibutt, and whose work features on
the cover of Singing With Both Throats
is here with us this evening.
Those
who know Maris know that she doesn’t do thing by halves. Before Christmas she
told me she was going up to Cape Reinga in the holidays and I suggested she
drop in on us at our bach at Cable Bay on her way back. No, she couldn’t do
that, they were heading down the other coast – walking, walking, all the way back to Auckland. And they did. While
pre-Christmas I was dreaming of lying on the deck with a glass of wine close at
hand, Maris and Greg were planning to walk the length of 90 Mile Beach then
over numerous mountains and up riverbeds, through paddocks and around headlands
all to re-emerge in Auckland about six weeks later. I found it a lot easier to
drive.
Finally,
Maris is always alarmingly positive and cheerful – she is very aware of this as
these three lines from one of her poems show.
Once at a
staff meeting our boss said
I’m going to
tell you all something bad and,
Maris, I
don’t want you to find any good in it.”
Poet Siobhan Harvey then spoke about Maris and her
poetry using her review from Beattie’s book blog as a framework.
“Welcome everybody.
Thank you David and Maris whose combined
endeavours have made this evening and this book happen.
I've worked as a New Zealand Society of
Author's Mentor for 6 years, and the great wonder of being a mentor is finding
one's self companioned through the year of a mentorship by a mentee who is
willing to learn, eager to develop their work, push boundaries, take on board
constructive criticism and act in a professional manner throughout. In Maris, I
found someone who was all of these things. The journey we went on thereafter
has resulted in this wonderful, visually vibrant new collection of poems.
Before I discuss the book, however, I would
like to acknowledge that the journey to its publication was one Maris also went
on with the stellar writers in her writing group. I know Maris will thank these
people herself, but I wanted to do so too, to underscore the value of writing
groups to writers and this writing group’s amazing achievements. So to the
members of Maris' writing group: Sue Fitchett, Zarah Butcher-McGunnigle, Judi
Bagust, Deborah Jones and Rosetta Allan, I say a deep thanks.
So to Singing with Both Throats. I'd
like to conclude with the following:
Singing With Both Throats takes as its’ motif, thematic and visual,
that New Zealand ornithological icon, the tui and its capacity to resonate from
two voice-boxes, a concept which O’Rourke utilizes to explore duality in many
forms – biculturalism; the dynamics of child-adult relationships and so forth.
The examination of cultural and personal doubling is seen vividly in poems like
those dedication to her early life experiences, ‘Fire Alarm’ and ‘Engagements’,
and later, in works of belonging such as ‘Harakeke’ and ‘Aotearoa: a Sonnet’.
The most impressive, lasting poems, though,
are those incantations to survival like the epic, ‘Lifelines’ which stretches
over 6 pages and 16 parts and ‘Spells To Tame Children’ which opens with the
kind of sting and parental dysfunction one can’t help but be confronted by and
self-reflective in light of,
Wear the pram tyres down to the rim; throw
in stones and stories as you walk.
Weep in the bath at the never-ending task;
drink gin and tonic tears.
Collectively, what you get in Singing
with Both Throats is a book as raw as it is accomplished, the poet’s past
lives and enduring obsessions informing the arresting imagery and insight, and
providing a template for narrator and reader to intersect personal history,
poetic travelogue and a survival-map. The result is a work of bite, beauty and
intrigue.
In this vein I salute Maris for the book
she has written, and I say to you gathered her to celebrate this launch, buy
it, buy it, buy it!"
Maris concluded the evening by backgrounding and
reading five of her poems.
"Kia ora everyone. Every year I like to do
something new, something different and something that gives me a 'frisson of
fear'. In April 2008, at exactly this time of year, it was 'Poetica' a course
with Siobhan Harvey through Community Education at Auckland University. After
the first day I knew I had found something difficult, something different, something
challenging and something that I could do for the rest of my life. And after
the second day I visualised myself standing here with a poetry collection in my
hand! And now here I am courtesy of Amanda Lyne of the Auckland Alumnae who
organised this lovely venue and friends and publishers David and Nicky Ling.
David by the way wants you to know this is the first - and last - book of poetry
he will publish! I’m sure it’s nothing to do with me.
Of course no-one does something like this alone and
I've been fortunate to be in a group of marvellous women poets not afraid to
make you go ‘ouch’ and ‘eeek’ with critiques - and make you rewrite. Also
gaining Siobhan as a mentor in 2010 through the NZSA mentor programme. And the
lovely supportive Laurice Gilbert - National Coordinator of the NZ Poetry
Society who made me inaugural poet in 'a fine line' and is here tonight from
Wellington and by the way has recently launched a very good collection of her
own work. And, of course, that long-time supporter of emerging poets Alistair
Paterson who made me Guest Poet in Issue 44 of Poetry NZ. Plus of course all
the others who read, rejected, published and placed my work and let me read at
various venues and events.
My sister and I had a difficult, peripatetic often
violent childhood which is definitely easier to survive when shared and I wrote
this poem War Survivors for her about our childhood.
This got me to thinking about my own sons childhoods -
what had it been like for them? So I interviewed them - a rather traumatic
thing to do actually - and Spells To Tame Children is the
result. It is in couplets contrasting the 'good', nice, conventional person we
expect mothers to be with the 'bad', different sometimes slightly mad mothers
we can be.
Well despite all that you'll be happy to know they grew up into darling men and this next poem Echoes came from a comment Dominic made while he was flying helicopters in Kaikoura and taking people out to see whales and he said 'Mum - do you think there are still whales around who remember whaling? It's also Paddy's favourite poem.
I have always travelled a lot for work and play (and
remembered to return!). Last year the 'Awesome Foursome' - as our kids call me
and my long-term women friends - travelled overland from Beijing to Berlin by
train. I wrote this poem Beijing Boys as a result of an
encounter on that trip and concerns I have about the general lack of regard for
girls in many countries.
Finally I've been
fortunate to find my place of belonging, my place of standing, my turangawaewae
here in NZ and this next work Aotearoa is a sonnet - which is an
ideal form for a love poem.
So to my friends and whanau a profound thank you - I
am so grateful to wake up to you all every day. Enjoy the evening everyone and
buy the book!”
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