Posted here with permission.<\/p>\n
—<\/p>\n
About the Poem:<\/h3>\n
I first encountered this poem in 2009, when I featured it in the “Poet’s Corner,” an email series I ran where I invited poets to feature a work and also “speak” to it—so the reader got to hear the poet’s voice twice: through the poem itself and through the “Poet’s Note” on their own work.<\/p>\n
I—together with many far better qualified folk—think Jan is a wonderful poet and I have been meaning to ask if I could feature “Unwinding Matariki’s Hair”<\/em>, plus the “note” here for some time. Over the weekend I learned that Jan had just won the Takahe Poetry Prize 2011, judged by Sue Wootton, for another poem “Reading the Book Aloud”<\/em>—which spurred me on to do this post.<\/p>\n And here, as promised, is Jan’s “Poet’s Note”<\/strong>:<\/p>\n “When I first thought of writing <\/em>“Unwinding Matariki’s Hair,” I was staying with our daughter and her family in Hamilton. One night, when we sat by the fire, I watched my daughter combing out the younger child’s long plaits. Light fell on the child’s head and I imagined myself as a hunter of nits and their dreaded darkness. In the poem, I hoped to capture the rhythm of the comb, the wonder of a quest and something not yet visible.\u00a0 Images were all around me. Here I was in a suburban house close to Waikato swamps and mists where mythic shapes might emerge from water and forest. And here, in this house, all the whanau, old and young alike, dipped in two language pools — Maori and English — in daily conversation. The house added its own voice. Kete, which lay about its floors, sparkled like flounders’ fins. Strips of flax hung from racks in the verandah to dry and sang when the wind blew through them. Tree weta, whose behaviour was recorded with scientific exactitude by our daughter, continued their private lives in a cool, dim room at the back. I imagined vines growing there and climbing ever higher. As I wrote the poem, I thought about hair and its mystery. I did not know what was going to happen in the last line. Words and music led me there. The meaning of Matariki’s own name offered hope.”<\/em><\/p>\n Notes<\/span> (for non NZ readers):<\/p>\n ‘kete’ — a traditional Maori kit bag, woven from flax<\/p>\n ‘Matariki’ — Literally “little eyes”, Matariki is the Maori name for the Pleiades constellation, which rises at midwinter in New Zealand to mark the Maori New Year. Last year, I posted about it at winter solstice, here<\/a>.<\/p>\n ‘whanau’ — extended family group<\/p>\n —<\/p>\n About the Poet:<\/strong><\/p>\n Jan provided this typically modest bio for herself:<\/p>\n “Jan Hutchison lives with her husband Hamish in Christchurch.\u00a0 From time to time, she\u00a0writes letters for\u00a0Amnesty International. A new collection of her poems will be published next\u00a0February by Steele Roberts called “The Happiness of Rain”<\/span>.\u00a0\u00a0Her poems are represented in Snorkel, N.Z. Books, Takahe, Quadrant (Australia) and other publications.”<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/12\/Days-Among-Trees1-106x150.jpg\" "\\"Days")
<\/a>I would add that Jan has published two prior collections, Days Among Trees<\/em> (2005) and The Long Sleep Is Over<\/em> (1999) both from Steele Roberts and I believe<\/em> has\u00a0 enjoyed success in previous poetry awards. At any rate, I unreservedly recommend Days Among Trees<\/em>, which remains one of my favourite collections of recent years.<\/p>\n