Juggling man’s final farewell

Friends, family and city residents are preparing to farewell Palmerston North’s juggling man in a funeral service next week.

Mike Newman, 68, died this week. He had become a wellknown Palmerston North figure over two decades as a street juggler. Lesser known were his talents as a writer and poet.

John Thornley and a few of Newman’s other friends and family have arranged a funeral service at Wesley Broadway Methodist Church, at 1pm on Monday.

Thornley said the funeral was open to anyone whose life was touched by Newman and who wished to pay their final respects.

The Methodist, Catholic and Baha’i religious communities will all be represented. Newman was involved with, and helped, all three at one point or another.

Thornley and Newman were best friends for 35 years, after meeting at a monthly poetry group gathering in 1983.

Newman was a prolific writer and poet, and Thornley has bound 45 poems Newman gave him over the years into a booklet to return to his family at the funeral.

Thornley said it was a side of the juggling man most never got to see, and poetry was one of his friend’s biggest passions. He idolised New Zealand poets such as Hone Tuwhare, James K Baxter and, especially, Sam Hunt.

‘‘Sam Hunt performed and read poems in pubs and on the streets all around the country. Mike felt a strong bond with him, probably because they were a similar kind of person.’’

Thornley provided an Access Manawatu¯ radio interview the friends did together, almost a decade ago, to help tell Newman’s story in his own words.

Newman grew up in the rural Bay of Plenty and was in a lifealtering car crash when he was 15, leaving him with a brain injury and vision problems.

It could have made him bitter, but he decided to see it as a chance to learn and experience something different.

‘‘It’s a frightening thing to be in a car crash . . . but there is a bright side to it, and that’s the fascination of life after the accident. I’d say it’s fascinating to be someone living with a brain injury,’’ Newman once said.

Between his injuries and a later schizophrenia diagnosis, Newman was on disability benefits most of his life. But he always felt compelled to make his own way.