The Tuwhare Trust opened the crib to the Kaka Point Community this last weekend as a fundraiser for the local Romahapa School. We welcomed manuhiri throughout the day who came to have a look through the fully restored Tuwhare crib, learn about our restoration journey and hang out with us on the back lawn, eat, drink and share stories about Hone Tuwhare and his life in Kaka Point. A beautiful kaupapa on a stunning Kaka Point day and an early hari huri tau for Hone on his 102nd birthday today, October 21. Arohanui.
The Hone Tuwhare Trust has been deeply saddened by the passing of Selwyn Muru and offer our love to the wh?nau and these words of love to our friend.
Selwyn had an enormous empathy for people of all walks of life and in all human situations. Joy and anguish, love and hate, tears and laughter. He had a personality without reserve and led a life sampled in all its paradoxes. In a 1984 interview with Katerina Mataira, Selwyn expressed that “art should cover the whole spectrum of human experience. It should reflect at one extreme the pain and anguish of people and pursue every mood they feel right through to their capacity for fun and frivolity”. He was an artist in all ways, his resonant voice was tuned to waiata, whaikorero and dramatic performance. Musical instruments were explored with comfortable abandon, and he composed songs, plays and poetry. But it was his creative talent in the visual arts where he made his strongest statements about life. Hone Tuwhare and Selwyn Muru were contemporaries, mates, northern relations, hoa aroha. One of Selwyn’s well known and loved works is his waharoa in Aotea Square in Tamaki Makaurau, which features one of Hone’s well known and loved Haiku poems. Tuwhare’s Haiku was both a tribute to his friend Selwyn and a reference to the Horotiu awa that once ran through the middle of the city.
Travel well e Murupaenga. Your work provoked tears and laughter, you are a continuing source of inspiration and your contribution to the world is a taonga for us all. Laugh again e hoa. Arohanui, The Hone Tuwhare Trust.
The Tuwhare Trust in partnership with the Dunedin Writers and Readers Festival Trust presented the DEEPRIVERTALK poetry series as part of the 2023 Festival.
Over three events we delivered a celebration of Hone’s 100th year with a poetry nod to Hone’s crib at Kaka Point, a stonking political poetry night at the pub & a poetry hari huri tau for Aotearoa’s Poet Laureate, Chris Tse.
Deep River Talk brought together poets from across Aotearoa and across generations. Those who attended experienced some of our finest poets & some of our newest voices. Deep River Talk delivered fresh, seering, activated & reflective poetry.
Keep an eye out for the 2025 Dunedin Writers and Readers Festival, we will be back to provide you with another banger of a poetry weekend.
The Tuwhare Trust is proud to announce Tame Iti, Tracey Tawhiao and Ati Teepa as recipients of the inaugural Tuwhare Creative Residency at Kaka Point.
The opening of Hone’s crib at Kaka Point on October 21, 2022, marked the 100th Birthday of Hone Tuwhare. It also marked the beginning of an exciting future for the Tuwhare Trust as we embarked on the next chapter of our journey to celebrate the Hone Tuwhare legacy through the Tuwhare Residency programme.
The first residency the Trust has developed as part of our residency programme is the Tuwhare Creative Residency, it is the first residency to be developed in Aotearoa in the home and name of a Maori writer and artist.
Tuwhare Trust Chair, Jeanette Wikaira says “as the inaugural Tuwhare creative residents, a Tame Iti, Tracey Tawhiao and Ati Teepa collaboration brings together intergenerational, multidisciplinary, experienced, and highly creative like minds. Tame, Tracey and Ati have collaborated over many years, they draw deeply from the Maori world, bringing together the poetics of Maori thinking with politically searing insight”.
The Tuwhare Trust is honoured to award Tame, Tracey and Ati this special inaugural residency and support their work in Hone’s home at Kaka Point, to bring indigenous storytelling to the world.