AUTHORS’ WEEK

Evening Star, Issue 22327, 1 May 1936, Page 12

AUTHORS’ WEEK

ADDRESS AT CAVERSHAM In Sidey Hall, Caversham. last night a talk was given by Mr C. R. Allen on ‘ New Zealand's Literary Coming of Ago.’ Mr Allen said that Authors’ Week might be said to represent the literary “coming of age” of New’ Zealand. Twenty years ago it might have been alleged that apart from Samuel Butler New Zealand i ould point to no one who had contributed anything memorable to literature in general. It was doubtful if any New Zealand writer bad approached Butler’s performance, but the moment was certainly propitious for the appearance of a writer of genius. William Pember Reeves interpreted New Zealand in the making in such poems as ‘ The Passing of the Forest ’ and ‘ln a Colonist's Garden.’ There were not wanting signs that a later stage bad interpreters as discerning and as I'esoureeful as W. P. Reeves. A curious phenomenon had been the neoHellenic spirit introduced into New Zealand poetry by Eve Langley and others. New Zealand was evolving her national “ geist,” which was something more than the thrall of the old Maori spirit, though Maori folk-lore and Maori nomenclature Would always hold a place in, New Zealand literature. As America had to some extent outgrown ‘Hiawatha,’ so New Zealand had to some extent outgrown! ‘ Hinemoa.’ The domestic life of a European race who were no longer colonists would perforce yield a literature which would reflect the spiritual idiom of that people, and that idiom would differ subtly from that of the parent land. Mr A. L. Burns read a number of New Zealand poems—‘ The Passing of the Forest,’ ‘ Black Sticks,’ ‘ New Zealand Christmas,’ ‘ Milton.’