As Witi Ihimaera marks his 50th anniversary of his first short story collection, he reflects on his career, how Aotearoa is changing, and his future projects.
The 78-year-old says the new edition of Pounamu Pounamu, first published in 1972, is coming out in September.
“It’s going to be really fascinating because I’ve done a new introduction and I’ve looked at the context again and I think it still stands up pretty well seeing that the stories actually come from the 1950s.”
Witi Ihimaera at RNZ Auckland. Photo: Cole Eastham-Farrelly Photo:
The collection famously helped the author achieve a vow he made to himself as a schoolboy after throwing out an old book for its depiction of Māori.
“I got caned for throwing that particular book out the window, but Bryan what happened after that was that I vowed I would start writing a short story collection … I vowed it would be before every school kid like myself.”
So when it became part of the school curriculum, he was thrilled, he says, albeit being banned in one school district.
“I kind of knew that - because I was writing about Māori life and because I was going to be pushing the writing into areas that people didn’t understand - that for the rest of my life, I would be something of a dealbreaker when it came to what you could write about in New Zealand literature.”
It was a ground-breaking piece of literature, but it also became his ticket for a role in diplomacy after then prime minister Norman Kirk read it too.
“I loved that particular profession so much … I often think there’s a Witi who’s out in an alternate universe and he’s become the head of the United Nations.”
If he was in charge of the UN, he says he would get rid of the processes that are “currently stymieing it, especially the security council, from pushing froward on issues to do with war in the Ukraine”.
He believes it will be the next generation that brings about humanitarian change.
“We have to keep on thinking in a liberal manner, and we must maintain some impetus on trying to continue to recreate the world according to a different set of humanitarian objectives.
“I think that this generation has had a good go but I don’t think that we have the kind of insight and intellect and equality that a younger generation has and, after all, that younger generation is the one who will inherit the world.”
Still, he says he could not have imagined the Aotearoa New Zealand of today.
“In those days, New Zealand was a binary construct for Pākehā on one side and Māori on the other and we’re now getting to the point where everybody is engaged in creating a new kind of New Zealand that everybody knows is going to be Aotearoa New Zealand.
“I almost cried my eyes out at the way in which the nation itself was really fully engaging with the mystery and with the sensitivity and with the intellect of Matariki as a new Māori New Year and as a new New Year for New Zealand, and in fact as an indigenous new year for the rest of world.”
He and co-editor Michelle Elvy are putting together an anthology with contributions from 68 New Zealand writers about various global topics.
“I’m really proud of being a co-editor of that book which is going to be called A Kind Of Shelter and will be out around about May or June next year.”
He says his work tends to be ahead of time, so he reckons he has set himself out for 2025-2030.
“It is about trying to get work done that does look at what’s waiting on the horizon, so I’ve gone into science fiction for instance and I’ve gone into environmental fiction.
“It’s because when I came from that small valley of the Waituhi, the world was wide open, and the horizon was not that far away and I’ve always sought that horizon, not just to get to it but to go over it.”
Witi Ihimaera will join New Zealand Society of Author’s roadshow as president of honour on 30 July at AUT’s South Auckland campus.
“It’s fantastic to be able to travel the country and to be able to talk with younger writers and to tell them how easy it is [to be a writer].”
