Farewell Hone Tuwhare, 1922-2008

You have probably all heard about the death of Hone Tuwhare - well all of you in New Zealand anyway. Not too many poets get quite so much coverage when they die, but Tuwhare seems to be even better-known than I thought.

I first remember coming across his poetry in first-year English. We were looking at his poem 'Rain', (which is beautiful) and the main thing I remember is being delighted to see he'd liberated himself from punctuation. It was quite a significant discovery for me and now, in my poetry, I tend to leave it out too.

Earlier today, over at Signposts I wrote another post about Hone Tuwhare and his work. I seem to have become the obituaries writer. I hope no more NZ poets will die for a while, we're losing too many.