Interviewed by Olivia Bennett

The trust you have built with the members of the Te Tii must be very strong in order for them to allow you to write about them and their home in your poetry collection The Art of Walking Upright, especially in such a personal manner. How exactly was this trust built up? What responsibility do you, as a writer, have in the portrayal of Te Tii?

Hmmm … so first of all I have to say … don’t listen to me. I say that a lot. Because, in lots of ways, when I write I am just responding to things I see and hear that move me … I usually don’t have a master plan … but when we write it sort of seems that we do … it’s a trick of writing. I write out of doubt a lot … and not knowing … and exploring. Maybe I’m just suspicious of too much knowing. I think my responsibility as a writer is to catch something of what I am looking at that moves me … and to do that you have to do a few things: look well (and this is the great gift of poetry to poets) … craft well (and this either takes years and great stubbornness – or seconds if you steal lines from children) … and try to be honest (try).

Sooo … if you are true to the process of the poem … the poem will look after you and the people you write about … most of the time. The rest of the time … be kind. The truth is I didn’t really think, “How can I build up trust with the people here?” … I came to Te Tii needing some of their care and wisdom and knowledge and I think they recognised that … they looked after me and I built relationships that continue today … many of the people at Te Tii I can say I love or have loved … and I can say they have loved me … I think they saw that the writing came out of something real and solid and out of care … in a way I am still writing for the people there … and to them … that relationship has been one of the most profound experiences of my life. Writing is sticky … be careful …

What was it like having to leave Te Tii after your time there, and how long did you stay? 

I never really left … medicine called … but Te Tii was in me by then … so I went back to complete my medical training and return to the area with that knowledge … the experience changed what I wanted to do in medicine and so in that sense Te Tii came with me … and I went back all the time and still do … less often now because I am much further away … and many people who come from Te Tii do that … live somewhere else and return … that’s a very common experience, I think, for Māori everywhere … I lived there for a year the first time but returned to Northland to practice medicine as soon as I could … I went back to live in Aunty Rongo’s house when Olive was born for another 18 months … I still get phone calls … and make them … the house is still there and leaning … I’m only on loan to my daughter and her Raukawatanga … and then I’m going home …

As for melancholy … I think poems eat melancholy for breakfast, lunch and tea … they are always trying to just fall short of touching the untouchable … that’s where the poem shimmers into existence … in that small gap … the unsayable … so I think that that might be a side effect of the poems … there is pain and sorrow and sadness at Te Tii, of course … but there is such bursting bubbling life too …

Do you think the settlement is at risk from urban sprawl, and what affect would this have on the community there?

Haha … I reckon the people there are more a threat to the city … beware … beware … God help Kerikeri if it gets too close … there is still a winding old road into the distance that one has to disappear down before emerging in Te Tii … it is very much a world of its own … and a law unto itself …

In many interviews you mention your daughter Olive, and you say your relationship with her is changing. Has this influenced your writing in any way? 

Olive is like Te Tii … they are in my bones … and in that sense she is in everything I do … I have written to her lots … most of those poems haven’t been unpublished yet … if I say I am going down to the shop, then I am going down to the shop with Olive and Te Tii in my walking … they are my ghosts … think of fantails circling your head like a small cloud of electrons … that is what they are … a portable village of spooks … I have other ghosts too … we all do … it is lovely getting old …

Also, you describe yourself as having “fallen in love with medicine”; has this influenced your writing, too?

Haha … yes .. yes .. the same set of ghosts … the nice thing is my medicine ghosts talk to my Olive ghosts who talk to my Te Tii ghosts … I often say “Poetry, medicine, Olive … these are my father, son and holy ghost” … but Te Tii is there, too, and my old dad … and my first wife … and … and … and …

I’m writing a lot about medicine now … BWB has just published a small essay of mine called Late Love … that has some thoughts about medicine and poetry …

After discussing your collection with an English teacher at my school, she mentioned that you recently you have developed an interest in mythology, especially Māori myths and legends which inspired your book North South. Could you please tell me more about what sparked this interest? 

Well … I’ve always had the interest … ever since I was a kid … I love stories and I reckon in some ways that’s what made me want to write … and all mythologies have always interested me … so I think it was always natural to be drawn to the mythologies of the country I live in …

Looking back on it I think four things sparked North South: that old love of mythology I had as a child … the experience of working on “Green Fire Islands” – which was a musical project that paired Celtic musicians and Māori musicians … the realisation that mythologies carry on being created and aren’t just old dead things … and the great desire to find a mythology that tied the gods of my Celtic forbears with the gods of the country and landscape that were part of me …

Also, would there possibly be any new collections being released any time soon?

Haha … I’m not sure about any new collections being released soon … but I’m always working on new writing … it’s just that as I’ve got older I have tended to hang onto my poems for longer … it stops them coming out with lines I keep wanting to change … I’ve been working for years on two big collections of oral poetry … one celebrating Māori oral poetry and one celebrating Pākehā oral poetry … and I’ve written a children’s book … and a book that is based on old forms of balladry … I like poems that tell stories and have a strong music in them and play with words … I grew up with poems like that and they were very much part of early New Zealand poetry on farms and at work and on ships … “the highwayman came riding … riding … riding …” they are also generous to the people listening to them and celebrate the language that they use … so I thought I’d have a go at the form again and see if it couldn’t work in a more modern world … and I’m working on another collection again about medicine, too … the books just sit here until they are ready … if I fall over dead, tell someone to come get them out of the drawers … I’ve learnt to do whatever the ghosts tell me to … they’re always right …