Hone Tuwhare’s first poet­ry book, No Ordi­nary Sun turned 60 last year. It was the first sin­­gle-author poet­ry col­lec­tion by a Maori author. This sig­nif­i­cant mile­stone for Aotearoa’s lit­er­ary land­scape passed large­ly unnoticed.

Thank you to Jor­dyn at Maori Lit­er­a­ture Blog for this thought­ful post. Pos­si­bly the only per­son to fly a flag for the 60th anniver­sary of Hone’s debut 1964 col­lec­tion of icon­ic poems.

Nga mihi ki a koe Jor­dyn. Read Jor­dyn’s online arti­cle at Maori Lit­er­arure Blog 

Lis­ten to Hone recite No Ordi­nary Sun.

Above image: Hone Tuwhare read­ing No Ordi­nary Sun — Ref­er­ence: New Zealand Her­ald [250208NZHTUWHARE]

Below: Tuwhare, H. No Ordi­nary Sun. Auck­land: Black­wood and Janet Paul, 1964. First edition.

There were the 9 print runs over 18 years of No Ordi­nary Sun that pro­duced an array of stun­ning book cov­ers by some of Aotearoa’s most notable artists, many of whom were whanau, friends and col­leagues of Hone’s. This grey­ish-off-white and black 1964 first edi­tion cov­er was designed by War­wick Brad­shaw a friend of Hone’s from Whakatane and fea­tured a print that rep­re­sent­ed the effect of an atom­ic bomb blast, viewed from out of space. (Janet Hunt, 1998)