NO ORDINARY SUN

Te Ao Hou, December 1968, Page 62

NO ORDINARY SUN Hone Tuwhare, read by the author Kiwi LD-12 33⅓ 12 in. L.P. Hone Tuwhare's first volume of poems became justly celebrated within weeks of its first printing; it was received with joy and awe throughout the country and abroad. Some of the poems suggested incantation and memories in their rise and fall, of ancient waiata and karakia; they called for the voice of the poet himself, a return to the oral traditions of bardic delivery, such as is happening all round the world. The desire for more intimate contact with the poet than print makes possible is now world-wide; the poet is in the cafe, on the streets, on television and on records. This note will talk therefore primarily of the poems spoken. Placed close to the microphone, as Mr Tuwhare is for most of his album, he reveals a voice of husky richness, the admirable and—one feels listening—perfect instrument for his images. Many poets reading, can disconcert; Eliot has never seemed to me his ideal interpreter, nor, nearer home, Allen Curnow or Louis Johnson. But set slightly farther off, for more declamatory pieces, Mr Tuwhare loses some richness and flexibility, and in the last poem Monologue, he attempts Scottish intonations for which he is not equipped. I note from the sleeve that ‘some of the poems were recorded at a reading given at the Birkenhead Public Library, during the North Shore Festival of the Arts’, which explains the cough at the end of one poem, and the somewhat easily elicited laughter during Monologue. I think audiences are a mistake; they may help the poet to achieve a performance, less easily secured in a studio, but they fragment the attention of the listener and can sometimes irritate. The listener is the ultimate participator, and he needs no colleagues. But the record is a fine achievement in the best of these beautiful incantatory poems, and their music is as sad as any ever made in this country. With what tender regret this fine poet notes the scarring of land, heart and mind that we have brought to his people! What insolent insects he makes of us, and how justly! This album also includes a waiata, of which I can judge little more, to my shame, than that his Maori is as majestic as his English; odd phrases leapt out of a musical fog at me like shafts of light. This disc is a noble performance, of a poet in action.