Encountering Mīharo | from ‘Mr Eagle among the portraits’

Writers encounter Mīharo Wonder

Wonder is a place where writing often begins — and each year, during the first six weeks of the MA in Creative Writing at the International Institute of Modern Letters, we set exercises designed to unlock the kind of wondering unique to each writer. In April 2021 we brought the MA students to the Mīharo exhibition in the hope that some of the resonant objects, images and artefacts might prompt stories, poems or essays. We gave them no brief other than to choose an exhibit and pursue the lines of imagination it prompted.

For these writers, encounters with the past have become acts of invention as well as recovery and re-evaluation. The exhibition becomes an observatory in which old stories give birth to new, the past is encountered with fresh eyes and transformed through the lens of the present. The writing presented here is only a sample of the work produced, and we imagine work by other writers will come to fruition in future. We’re grateful to National Library staff Peter Ireland, Anthony Tedeschi and Fiona Oliver for providing additional insight and background to the exhibition and to Mary Hay and Jay Buzenberg for publishing the student’s work on the website. And we hope you enjoy the wondering Mīharo has produced.

Chris Price, Tina Makereti and Kate Duignan

"While Mīharo Wonder is moored to the walls and arrested in its cases, its imaginative scope ranges freely – here is the best possible evidence of that." — Peter Ireland, Mīharo Wonder co-curator

From ‘Mr Eagle among the portraits’ | Eva Wyles

“But Mr Eagle, can’t we just look at this stuff online?” said Benjamin the fourteen-year-old in the thirteen-year-old class, and Simon Eagle, looking around him, tried to think of a way to explain the value of experiencing art. The cabineted items and filled frames remained silent, looking in every direction but his own.

“How about you have a look around and come back to me in ten minutes if you’re still struggling,” he paused to clear his throat behind a loosely clenched fist. “You might even find something you like.”

Benjamin didn’t seem to have listened, and instead threw his scrunched up worksheet into Simon’s face. It took them both by surprise. Benjamin’s mouth turned into a small ‘o’, while Simon pulled his shoulders back, his single earring rocking back and forth with the movement.

Then, quite suddenly, Benjamin sat down next to Simon.

“I’m sorry I threw that paper at you, mister.”

“It’s okay,” Simon said sadly, “but you’ve got to stop doing stuff like this. You could get in real trouble if Mrs Lee saw you.”

“But I wouldn’t throw it at Mrs Lee,” he replied, picking the paper ball up from the floor and stuffing it into his back pocket.

Simon hesitated for a moment. He looked at Benjamin's lips, which were cracked but at the same time slathered in saliva. Simon thought they were a peculiar shape, thin at the edges and a little lumpy in the join. Then the lips said, “are you okay?”

“Me? Yeah, I’m fine. Are you okay?”

“Yeah, I’m fine too. Hey mister, I was wondering,” he closed and opened his mouth again, “why do you wear that pink button on all your shirts?”

Simon hesitated again. “They’re, they’re my mother’s. I found them in her old sewing kit. So I sew them on my shirts as a sort of...” he paused to pedal his hands through the air, “connection.”

“Oh, that’s cool. Hey, do you have a partner, Mr Eagle?”

There was something in the question that both softened Simon and made him feel hard edged. The heart of a lamington.

“You can’t really ask questions like that, Benjamin. But yes, I do have a partner.”

“Is it a boy or a girl?”

That’s a question for married couples who throw baby showers, Simon wanted to say. “A boy,” he said instead.

“Is that why you wear the pink button?”

“No. Well yes, and no.”

They stared at the ground for a while, avoiding eye contact with one another.“Hey, mister?”

“Yes, Benjamin?”

“I know I’m meant to do it myself, but do you reckon you could help me with that worksheet? The letters, they’ve been,” he moved his left hand in the air as though patting an imaginary basketball, “jumping around.”

Simon leafed through his binder until he found a spare worksheet, and fished a pen out from his satchel.

“Okay, well first things first, choose a piece of art from the gallery.”

“Them,” Benjamin said, pointing towards the portrait hanging the closest. Inside the frame was a seated woman in a thick black dress, who looked tired, loosely holding the hand of a young girl, who looked angry. Simon stood to check the title card beneath the frame and jotted down unidentified woman and child, woman holding child’s hand.

“Okay then, why’d you choose this one?”

“It’s in front of us.”

Simon raised his eyebrows.

“Well… the frame is nice too. Very gold.” He paused to see whether the answer was enough, and after a few beats of silence, quickly added “and there’s that tiny note in the woman’s hand, so I guess that’s kind of interesting. It’s like it could be some kind of special secret.”

Simon scribbled something down. “Nice work. Look, we’re already halfway. Third question. How does it make you feel?”

Benjamin closed his mouth, fumbling around with something inside him. “Can’t you do this one for me, mister?”

Simon paused, fumbling around with something inside of him, too. He looked into the eyes of the older woman, felt the ache of her shoulders and the weight of the letter in her palm. Benjamin peered at the small girl, felt the scowl in her brows and the empty grasp of her mother.

“How about I list off some emotions and you choose one?” Simon said.

“Okay.”

“Happy. Sad. Scared. Angry. Excited. Curious. Any of those stand out?”

“I guess.”

“Which one?”

“All of them.”

Simon took the pen back to the worksheet.

“Okay. And why does it make you feel that way?”

Benjamin stood up then, walked so close to the frame that Simon wondered if he was going to have to tell him to step back. But Benjamin turned to walk back to the bench, and once seated, said, “cause they look just like me and you.”

Simon felt his eyebrows relax. Something very small had shifted inside him. It could have been his breakfast making its way somewhere more comfortable, but in that moment he decided it was the sort of sensation that people find difficult to name. He could remember a few times he had felt it — like the time he received a hug from a girl called Kirana who lived next to him in Waikanae. They were six and he had just stubbed his toe and cried out for help. Then there was the ride back from his first party in the city, when he looked out the window at the Kapiti Coast and felt the ocean was opening up to him. There was a hazy collection of the days he woke with nothing more than a desire to watch whatever was going on outside his window. It was a peculiar game, this act of retrieval. No matter where he put his attention, nothing ever looked the same as it once did. So as Simon looked down at Benjamin biting his nails, his thoughts ballooning as he considered the portraits within himself, within Benjamin, the them within everyone and the everyone within them — he did not know whether this would be one of the moments he would take with him.

Then, a shuffle of footsteps, the chorus of students clicking their pens, a glide of the automatic doors, and the shrill of Mrs Lee's voice saying it was time for lunch. But before standing to help usher students out into the foyer, he brought his hand back to Benjamin’s worksheet, jotted something down, folded it up, and handed it to him.

The image that was the inspiration

A small 1/6 plate daguerreotype in an embossed brown morocco case with missing cover. The dimunitive dimensions of the object itself (9.4 x 8.2 cm) are dwarfed by a much larger, colour print made for the exhibition. Both the print and the original photograph are on display in Mīharo Wonder.

Visit Mīharo Wonder in the gallery and online

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