Signposts – a blog about Te Ara the Encyclopedia of New Zealand

This Hone Tuwhare poem is in Te Ara's Northland region entry

National Poetry Day has rolled around once again, and to mark this day I decided to undertake a brief statistical analysis of the poems used in Te Ara. I know this is not a very poetic thing to do, but I think you’ll agree the results are quite interesting.

I need to make a disclaimer to begin: please factor in a margin of error when using these vital statistics. I found myself becoming bamboozled at times because I had to enter a number of different words in the search engine and may have counted something in the same place twice, or may have missed something. Still, I think I’ve got a pretty good impression of the poetry in Te Ara.

Let’s start with the English/Pākehā tradition. There are 52 whole or partial poems transcribed in Te Ara and five of these are sound recordings. The themes these poems are found in is interesting: 31% are in the Bush theme and 21% in the Settled Landscape theme. Both of these deal with the natural environment and human interaction with that environment. It’s not surprising that the enduring importance and impact of the land to and on New Zealanders is reflected in the extent to which poems are used in Te Ara. It’s also fitting that Perceptions of the landscape entry has the most poems (six) of any single entry.

The Places theme, which contains regional entries, is a close third at 19% and is followed by New Zealand peoples (11%), Earth, Sea and Sky (4%), Economy and the City (4%) and Māori New Zealanders (1% – a Hone Tuwhare poem about Whina Cooper).

I wasn’t shocked to see that poetry was sparsely represented in the science-dominated Earth, Sea and Sky, but I did feel that urban New Zealand should have been better represented in verse – after all, more people have lived in urban than rural areas since 1911! Can I boast a little and say that 50% of the poems in this theme are in two of my entries? See City parks and green spaces and Second-hand trade.

So far there are no poems in the Social Connections theme (neither in the published or almost-finished but unpublished entries) which I found surprising. The only time the topic is mentioned is in a resource on poet Robin Hyde in the yet-to-be-published Suicide entry, which is a bit depressing. What does this mean? Do New Zealand poets avoid social themes? I’m sure this is not correct (greater minds will have to speak up here), so it may simply be that Te Ara’s writers are not coming across poems during the research process – perhaps they are not well represented in source material – to the extent they did for past themes. We haven’t completed this theme yet so this throws down a challenge to writers, me included.

And the poets? Though I didn’t count them all, I got the strong impression that James K. Baxter and Denis Glover crop up the most in Te Ara. Baxter’s name is mentioned 19 times and four of his poems are transcribed on the site. Glover is mentioned 16 times and seven of his poems replicated, including two sound recordings of him reciting his poems. His Arawata Bill sequence appears to some degree five times.

Te Ara is rich in Māori poetry, which comes in a number of forms: waiata (songs), oriori (lullabies), laments, proverbs, haka (war songs) and whaikōrero (speeches). My calculations reveal that there are at least 112 of these transcribed in Te Ara. Over half are proverbs or sayings – there are even separate entries on these, such as Kōrero taiao – sayings from the nature. Waiata are well represented (21%). Laments for the dead come in at 12% and haka 8%. The remainder are oriori and whaikōrero.

Many examples are replicated in beautiful sound recordings. I love this waiata about a hill near Pōrangahau in Hawke’s Bay, which is reputed to have the longest place name in the world. The strength of the singing, blending of the different voices and hint of crowd approval are wonderful. I guess you could say Te Ara is strongest in its Māori poetry because this form of communication is such an important part of the Māori world. It’s good to recognise this during Māori Language Week.

Getting ready to enjoy some kai

This year’s Te Wiki o te Reo Māori (Māori Language Week) has the theme, Te Mahi Kai, The Language of Food.

To get you started, here are some kai-related terms: kūmara, rua kūmara, pātaka, whata, kurī, kiore, pūhā, poaka, wīti, rīwai,  kāpia, ipu and kōhatu.

Though Māori ancestors came from Polynesia, one of the plants they brought with them, kūmara (sweet potatoes), originated from South America. The kūmara we eat today is different from kūmara eaten in pre-European times. It was imported in the 19th century.

Māori stored kūmara in elaborate sealed pits located in the ground known as rua kūmara. Other food was stored in pātaka (carved storehouses), or on whata (elevated stages).

Kurī (Polynesian dogs) and kiore (Pacific rats) were delicacies. Along with birds, kurī and kiore were potted in their own fat and considered a luxury item in pre-European times.

Pūhā and porkbones are a classic Māori meal. However, while pūhā is native to New Zealand, poaka (pigs) were only introduced to New Zealand from the late 1700s. Māori bread and rīwai (Māori potatoes) are also post-European developments as wīti (wheat) and potatoes are European introductions.

The gum from the kauri tree was known as kāpia. It was used as chewing gum.

Drinks were warmed by being placed in a ipu (container) and having kōhatu (heated rocks) placed into the container.

Wellington Botanic Garden – this may or may not resemble Nancy's garden

‘Every man should have a hobby,’ the saying goes – and so should every woman in my opinion. High on my list of preferred pastimes is gardening. I spend much of my time indoors working at a computer, so it makes a nice change to put on my gumboots and stride out in the fresh air. In this choice I am not alone – gardening is one of the most popular leisure activities in New Zealand. In 2000 a whopping 60% of New Zealanders got out in the garden, and many are interested in garden design.

Unfortunately, as a resident of Wellington, I picked the wrong place to pursue my hobby. I was raised in Waikato, famous for its colourful exotic trees and lush roses. There, the main problem that gardeners face is rampant growth – plants get too big, too soon. But the possibilities for creative gardening are endless, and Hamilton Gardens showcase some of them.

Here in Wellington, the obstacles are daunting. For a start there is the clay soil – great as a building material, but not so great as a growing medium. During wet weather it turns to cold, sticky mud; in times of drought it sets solid. Then there is the notorious wind, which often rises to gale force. It tears through my garden, ripping at leaves and branches, and literally blowing seedlings out of the ground. In winter it can get so cold at times that to venture outside is to risk hypothermia – making gardening in Wellington an extreme sport comparable with mountaineering, diving or aerial recreation.

All this can be a bit discouraging, but it forces you to adapt. Some people play it safe and go for the ‘low maintenance’ garden style – tufts of mondo grass in a dreary sea of gravel. Others preach the hardy native plant gospel. While I think there is nothing more glorious than pristine New Zealand bush, too many native plants clustered together in a garden can look rather monotonous. To my mind, real gardening is about artifice – carefully mixing different and sometimes surprising elements to create a harmonious effect.

I’m currently experimenting with blending natives and exotics. The highly sculptural and very hardy New Zealand flax is one of our most distinctive and beautiful native plants. Recently I transplanted a small, self-seeded flax from my rose garden into a grey, bucket-shaped container, and dotted thrift around the edge. No, not the sort of thrift described here, but the low-growing plant also known as armeria. Its dusky pink flowerheads are an excellent foil to the reddish strap-like leaves of the flax. Emboldened by this success, I have just planted a larger grey container with a dramatic black flax (‘Black Adder’) surrounded by dianthus. This lovely little plant has blue-grey, spiky foliage and in spring it will be smothered in feathery white fragrant flowers. At least that’s the theory – wish me luck!

Over the last month Te Ara had two new experiences:

• We opened up all our ‘resources’ (the images, film clips, sound files, maps, graphs, and diagrams which enrich every page of the site) for contributions from our users.  It has been a slow and steady start, but we are now starting to get really interesting pieces which really do add value to the information on Te Ara.  It is worth looking, for example, at Sarah Gallagher’s interesting comment about the unique Dunedin tradition of naming student flats, or at Emma Osment’s history of Anglo-Nubian goats, strange-looking animals with large curved noses and pedulous ears which turn out to have been bred to provide milk on sailing ships.
• We were also the subject of a cartoon for the first time.  It appeared in the Waikato Times shortly after the launch of Te Ara’s entry on the Waikato. Appearing in a cartoon can be a fraught enterprise, so we were lucky that this one, by Allan Hawkey, was sympathetic.

And for the second time we issued a new batch of three entries from our forthcoming theme, Social Connections.

The three entries do have some relationship with each other.  The largest, and undoubtedly the most sobering, is an entry on Violent crime, which surveys the tragic stories of murder and other nasty crimes like sexual assaults.  We have tried not to sensationalise this subject, which too often suffers that fate; but we hope that in clear, accurate and unemotional language we give evidence about levels of violent crime in New Zealand and tell the story of some crimes which captured the attention of the nation over the past century and a half.

The second entry, on Parenting, tells about the different ways New Zealanders have looked after their children in the past.  Clearly violent crime is at least in part a product of individuals’ inadequate upbringing.  A surprising number of our most notorious murders have involved the killing of other family members.

The third entry, on Women’s labour organisations, may seem more of an outlier.  But of course good work conditions are essential if women are to fulfil their parenting role effectively, and arguably may make some contribution to reducing violent crime.  So in their way these entries are a package. Take a look at them – you might not ‘enjoy’ them exactly, but we do promise that you will learn new things in an interesting way.

The great uranium rush of the 1950s features in Te Radar's show, and in Te Ara

We’re doing something right, I think, because Te Ara has made it into works of art – or at least the two I discovered this weekend.

Te Ara on mermaids

The weather wasn’t that flash on Saturday morning, so I was doing a bit of reading in bed – the warmest place in the house. I was reading the latest issue of Sport literary magazine, and was quite engrossed in a short story by Alison Glenny, ‘Mermaid Fever’. Its form is a series of extracts from ‘reference works’ and ‘novels’ which relate to the New Zealand mermaid.

Unlike the European version, the New Zealand mermaid apparently has a dark complexion and hair like kelp. People who see one apparently experience ‘a mysterious sense of being “unlocked” or “lifted”‘, and are ‘blessed with the gift of a unique poetic or artistic inspiration’.

I noticed that an ‘extract’ from Te Ara Encyclopedia of New Zealand had been included in this miscellany – a biography of one Olive Burling (1922-) an artist who saw a mermaid at Raumati, on the Kapiti coast. Soon after she painted the artworks that made her name. (The eagle-eyed among you may have noted that Te Ara doesn’t have biographies, yet, though we will soon be integrating the Dictionary of New Zealand Biography.)

Perhaps, inspired by this work of fiction, you will find a new entry for the New Zealand mermaid on Te Ara on the first of April next year.

Te Ara on stage

One of my colleagues had already noted that Te Radar‘s new comedy show, Eating the Dog, covered some similar ground to our fine encyclopedia, and I was delighted to discover that he gave us a plug as one of his useful sources of material (along with NZ On Screen and others).

Te Radar, who is a comedian, writer, tv star, among other things, is currently touring Eating the Dog around the country. It mines New Zealand history for ‘the history that history tried to forget … It is an irreverent and educational look at some of the more notable characters and events from New Zealand’s past, commemorating the bumblers and the near-do-wells, the ones who personify the archetypal “She’ll be right” spirit that made this country great.’ (http://www.radarswebsite.com/projects/eating-the-dog/about).

Using visual aids, he takes you through New Zealand’s ‘uranium rush’, first aeronautical death, incompetent military leaders and more.

So, it isn’t a standard history of New Zealand, but nevertheless is informative as well as fun. And it’s great to see our information used as raw material for a show like this.