Wellington Writers Walk, North Island, New Zealand

Inspired by Wellington is a fascinating little book of fifty pages and came free of charge courtesy of the Wellington i-site. It contains detailed information (including a necessary map) on the quotations by various New Zealand writers that have been placed in rather haphazard fashion around Wellington harbour (either in the form of concrete plaques or metal on benches), and also provides a little information about the writers. There were 19 quotations, but for reasons unknown to me there are now only 16 of the original ones, although (interestingly) four more were unveiled on the day we left Wellington. I keep to the same number pattern as the book.

1. Eileen Duggan (1894–1972)

As it turned out, the first is one of the missing ones, so I could only take a rather useless photo of where it should have been:

'MY QUIET MORNING HILL
STANDS LIKE AN ALTAR DRAWN
WHEREON HUSHED HANDS SHALL LAY
THE SHINING PYX OF DAWN.

WITH PENITENCE AND STIR,
AND DROWSY FLURRY BY,
THE WIND, A SHAMEFACED SERVING-BOY,
COMES RUNNING UP THE SKY.'

'The Acolyte', from Selected Poems: Eileen Duggan (ed. Peter Whiteford) (1977).

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2. Dennis Glover (1912–80)

'THE HARBOUR IS AN IRONING BOARD;
FLAT IRON TUGS DASH SMOOTHING TOWARD
ANY SHIRT OF A SHIP, ANY PILLOWSLIP
OF A FREIGHTER THEY DECREE
MUST BE IRONED FLAT AS WASHING FROM THE SEA.'

From 'Wellington Harbour is a Laundry' in Come High Water (1977)

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3. Michael King (1945–2004)

'I baited my line, watched it sink, and waited with exquisite anticipation for the pecking of mullet, the sucking of trevally, or – best of all – the sudden pull of kahawai or kingfish.'

From Being Pakeha Now (1999).

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4. Louis Johnson (1924–88)

'From Brooklyn hill, ours is a doll-size city
A formal structure of handpicked squares and bricks
Apprehensible as a child’s construction
Signifying community.'

From 'Last View of Wellington' in Fires and Patterns (1975).

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5. Lauris Edmond (1924–2000)

'IT'S TRUE YOU CAN'T LIVE HERE BY CHANCE,
YOU HAVE TO DO AND BE, NOT SIMPLY WATCH
OR EVEN DESCRIBE. THIS IS THE CITY OF ACTION,
THE WORLD HEADQUARTERS OF THE VERB'

From 'The Active Voice' in Scenes from a Small City (1994).

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6. Vincent O'Sullivan (born 1937)

'THEN IT'S WELLINGTON WE'RE COMING TO!
IT'S TIME, SHE SAYS, IT'S TIME SURELY
FOR US TO CHANGE LANES, CHANGE TONGUES,

THEY SPEAK SO DIFFERENTLY DOWN HERE.'

From 'Driving South with Lucy to the Big Blue Hills' in Seeing You Asked (1998).

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7. Patrick Lawlor

Again, the plaque is missing, but the quotation read:

'AND NOW, AS I GROW IN YEARS,
I FEEL AT TIMES LIKE AN OLD
VIOLIN PLAYED ON BY A MASTER
HAND. YOU, DEAR CITY, ARE
THE MAESTRO DRAWING THE BOW
OVER THE SENSIBILITIES OF MY
MIND, ECHOING THE MUSIC
OF MY DAYS'

From Old Wellington Days (1959)

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8. Maurice Gee (born 1931).

'THEN OUT OF THE TUNNEL AND
WELLINGTON BURST LIKE A BOMB.
IT OPENED LIKE A FLOWER, WAS
LIT UP LIKE A ROOM, EXPLAINED
ITSELF EXACTLY, BECAME THE
CAPITAL.'

From Going West (1992).

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9. Patricia Grace

'I LOVE THIS CITY, THE HILLS, THE HARBOUR, THE
WIND THAT BLASTS THROUGH IT. I LOVE
THE LIFE AND PULSE AND ACTIVITY, AND THE
WARM DECREPITUDE ... THERE'S ALWAYS AN EDGE
HERE THAT ONE MUST WALK WHICH IS SHARP
AND PRECARIOUS, REQUIRING VIGILANCE.'

From Cousins (1992)

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10. Bill Manhire (born 1946)

'I LIVE ON THE EDGE
OF THE UNIVERSE,
LIKE EVERYONE ELSE'

From 'Milky Way Bar' in Milky Way Bar (1991).

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11. Sam Hunt (born 1946)

'TALL BUILDINGS NO BIGGER THAN BLOCKS ON THE FLOOR,
WELLINGTON AFLOAT ON THE HARBOUR HAZE ...
YOU THINK OF HOW MOST MEN SPEND THEIR DAYS
IN OFFICES AS CRAMPED AS ELEVATORS –'

From 'Letter to Jerusalem 2' in Collected Poems 1963–1980 (1980).

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12. Bruce Mason (1921–82)

'I ASK THAT NOT ONLY MY CITY,
BUT ALL, GIVE THEMSELVES
TO THE ESSENCE OF OUR CULT
– THE RITUAL ASSEMBLY OF AN
INTERESTED COTERIE IN A SPACE
WHERE MAGIC CAN BE MADE
AND MIRACLES OCCUR.'

From 'Theatre in 1981: Omens and Portents', an unpublished manuscript, Bruce Mason papers, J. C. Beaglehole Room, Victoria University of Wellington.

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13. Alistair Te Ariki Campbell (1925–2009)

'BLUE RAIN FROM A CLEAR SKY.
OUR WORLD A CUBE OF SUNLIGHT –
BUT TO THE SOUTH
THE VIOLET ADMONITION
OF THUNDER.'

From 'Blue Rain' in The Dark Lord of Savaiki: Collected Poems (2003).

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14. Robin Hyde (1906–39)

'YET I THINK, HAVING USED MY WORDS AS THE KINGS USED GOLD,
ERE WE CAME BY THE RUSTLING JEST OF THE PAPER KINGS,
I WHO AM OVERBOLD WILL BE STEADILY BOLD,
IN THE COUNTED TALE OF THINGS.'

From 'Words' in Young Knowledge: The Poems of Robin Hyde (ed. Michele Leggott) (2003).

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15. James K. Baxter (1926–72)

This is the final plaque that's missing, and from photos it does seem to have been floating in the sea. The words are well known:

'I SAW THE MAORI JESUS
WALKING ON WELLINGTON HARBOUR.
HE WORE BLUE DUNGAREES.
HIS BEARD AND HAIR WERE LONG.
HIS BREATH SMELT OF MUSSELS AND PARAOA.
WHEN HE SMILED IT LOOKED LIKE THE DAWN.'

From 'The Maori Jesus' in Collected Poems of James K. Baxter (ed. J. E. Weir) (2003).

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16. Katherine Mansfield (1888–1923).

'THEIR HEADS BENT, THEIR
LEGS JUST TOUCHING, THEY
STRIDE LIKE ONE EAGER
PERSON THROUGH THE TOWN,
DOWN THE ASHPHALT ZIGZAG
WHERE THE FENNEL GROWS
WILD... THE WIND IS SO
STRONG THAT THEY HAVE
TO FIGHT THEIR WAY
THROUGH IT, ROCKING LIKE
TWO OLD DRUNKARDS.'

From 'The Wind Blows' in Bliss and Other Stories (1920).

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17. Marilyn Duckworth (born 1935)

'Then with the coming of darkness the
bay opened up beneath us, like a shell splashed
with beads of light.'
 

From  Barbarous Tongue (1963).

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18. Fiona Kidman (born 1940)

The remaining two plaques are a little beyond central Wellington, this one being in the suburb Oriental Bay:

'THIS TOWN OF OURS KIND OF FLATTENED
ACROSS THE CREASES
OF AN IMAGINARY MAP
A TOUCH OF PARCHMENT SURREALISM HERE
NO WONDER THE LIGHTS
ARE WAVERING
ALL OVER THE PLACE
TONIGHT
NOT A STRAIGHT TOWN AT ALL'

From 'Speaking with my Grandmothers' in Writing Wellington (ed. Roger Robinson) (1999).

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19. Barbara Anderson (1925–2013)

The final plaque of the original walk is in the suburb of Roseneath. Barbara Anderson died five days after I took this photo.

'EVERYTHING ABOUT IT WAS
GOOD. THE TUGGING WIND
TRAPPED AND CORNERED BY
BUILDINGS, STEEP SHORT
CUTS BORDERED BY GARDEN
ESCAPES, PRECIPITOUS GULLIES,
WHERE THROTTLING GREEN
CREEPERS BLANKETED THE
TREES BENEATH.'

From 'The Girls' in I Think We Should Go into the Jungle (1989).

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I took the above photos on 19–20 March this year, and by chance noted that there were three more unrecorded quotations added. On the same evening that I took the last photo, I noticed an article in the Dominion Post of that day titled 'Walk on the Write Side' saying that the plaques would be unveiled the following day, only there were four of them: I'd taken photos of three, but missed Jack Lasenby's – but it was too late to search for that, as the following morning we'd be on our way from our hotel in Johnsonville to Wanganui.

(As you can see at the bottom right of the photos below, it's the names of the writers and the sources of the quotations that were unveiled, not the quotations themselves.)

Elizabeth Knox (born 1959)

'The evening light concentrated, till the city and the
topped-up trembling horizon beyond Pencarrow Head would
begin to look like a seaport in someone's lost paradise.'

From 'Provenance' (2001)

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Joy Cowley (born 1936)

'Light dances on hills and office windows
and shakes its skirts over the harbour
in a wild fandango that attracts

the pale moths of yachts in droves.'

From 'After the Southerly'.

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There are several differences between this verse and the one published on Joy Cowley's web site in February this year announcing (very modestly, as she says she doesn't consider herself a poet) the unveiling, and these are no doubt an indication of different states of the poem.

James McNeish (born 1931)

'A ruffian wind is bliss, a blind man's
comfort station. When I get tired of walking
around it, I can always lean against it.'

From The Crime of Huey Dunstan (2010).

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Jack Lasenby (born 1932)

Lasenby's quotation was actually largely hidden before the unveiling, and it is vertical as it is on a pole – there are a few photos of the unveiling on flickr, although I don't know the source of this admirable (albeit utopian) quotation:

'I want to live among people who believe in truth and freedom...
I want to discuss ideas... I want books...'

The links to my posts below may also be of interest:

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The Writers' Plaques, Christchurch, New Zealand
Writers' Walk, Dunedin, New Zealand