Encountering Mīharo | ‘Patched gang members in the Māori Affairs Committee Room’, 1979
The 30 students in the MA (Creative Writing) workshops at Victoria University’s International Institute of Modern Letters visited Mīharo Wonder. Our ‘Encountering Mīharo’ blog series will share students’ thoughtful and eclectic responses.
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
‘Patched gang members in the Māori Affairs Committee Room’, 1979 | Leah Dodd
Starr said her dad was a mob leader
busy saving lives that’s why he’s been
gone since she was a baby
her mum stood doorway small
holding their pet chicken
and laughing and laughing
her mum said if that’s what you think
eh sweets then gave us deep-fried
oven chips and a crystal for the sun
on their street you drove with locked
doors and rolled up windows, the region
bracketed by Black Power and West Side
in this city you either ate
shroom sandwiches in parking lots
or had a family bach in Raglan
sometimes worlds collide
like last year, when a kid
found a body in a river
at Farmers, gang members
tried flirting their way
into discounts
but they had nothing
on Deb, department manager
with her coke nail and lung cancer
once, cornered in the break room
by the Nescafé tin she said birth control
doesn’t work and this is why she has five kids
in this city the council blasts
Debussy and Mozart loud
outside the library
to dispel brown kids
who linger outside and drink
and fight and if that’s not colonialism
after seeing the photo (small, black
and white, soft light, fuzzy grain)
I thought of teachers with stories
of glass-bottled milk delivered free
that sat outside all day in large crates
and made them sick
I thought of Mrs. Old lining up the lyrics
to ‘Octopus’s Garden’ under the projector
and making kapa haka optional
in other shots, a barefoot man moons
the lens in ’74, a mutton-chopped
mob member holds baby and bottle
but here, a broad back reads
HEAD HUNTERS over a flaming skull
and sun glows in through the carvings
The image that was the inspiration
Patched gang members in the Māori Affairs Committee Room ‘Matangireia’ at Parliament, 1979, by Ans Westra. Ref: AW-1820. Alexander Turnbull Library.
Visit Mīharo Wonder in the gallery and online
Experience the Mīharo Wonder online exhibition
Read the Encountering Mīharo blog series
Read the Mīharo Wonder blogs
Visit Mīharo Wonder at the National Library in Wellington