In personal memoriam
Ending Song by Whanganui poet Airini Beautrais may have been commissioned to be part of the national commemoration of the centennial of the Armistice, but for her, the work is personal. “The First World War was so tragic. It’s something that affects me deeply when I think about it and yet I’m drawn to writing about historic events like this as a way to work though those emotions.
“When I wrote this poem, I had in mind my two great-great-uncles, both teachers, who were killed in the war, and their mother, my great-great-grandmother. I tried to imagine her heartache. Then there was their younger brother, my great-grandfather, who was too young to fight, and their littlest sister, my greatgreat-aunt, who I remember from my childhood. I thought of them, too, and I imagined them on Armistice Day and wondered how they made sense of it all. Families all over New Zealand have stories like these. With Ending Song, I tried to bring about a communal voice that represents the diversity of stories.”
The poem will form part of He Wawā Waraki: Roaring Chorus 2018, a 20-minute performance piece that will feature in the service at Wellington’s Pukeahu National War Memorial Park on November 11.
The national commemoration in the capital will start with a 100-gun salute in front of Te Papa at 10.45am, symbolically finishing at 11am when a two-minute silence will be observed.
He Wawā Waraki is the centrepiece of the Pukeahu event and will feature a 50-strong cast of dancers and drummers choreographed by Malia Johnson to an original score by Eden Mulholland. Performers in the piece include Jennifer Ward-Lealand, Maisey Rika, the choir Supertonic and taonga pūoro group Hau Manu ki Te Papa.
“So much of what we know about World War I is shaped by the artists of the time – the poets, the writers, the photographers and the film-makers,” says Sarah
Davies, director of the centenary programme, WW100. “For the centenary of Armistice, we wanted to make space for our contemporary artists to do the same – to help us try to make sense of the past but also to consider what these events mean for us today. The story of Armistice is one of complex and conflicting emotions – joy, sadness, relief, sorrow and hope.”
Later in the day, the park will also host the Sunset Ceremony, with period music from the New Zealand Defence Force Band and military ceremonial personnel.
Elsewhere, Auckland War Memorial Museum’s Illuminate will project a looped 15-minute film onto the building each evening over the Armistice weekend starting on Friday, November 9. The film will include images from the museum’s collection showing faces of those who served in World War I, many of whom are also remembered in the 18,000 white crosses dotted over the Auckland Domain lawn in front of the museum.
A centenary service will be held on the museum’s forecourt on the Sunday at 11am, one of many events taking place at cenotaphs and war memorials around the country.
In the small North Otago town of Maheno, a memorial will be unveiled to its namesake hospital ship, HMHS Maheno, which carried the wounded home from Gallipoli and the Western Front.
Among cultural events marking the day, Wellington’s LitCrawl literary event will feature eight writers at the National Library. One of them is Harry Ricketts, whose biographies include Strange Meetings: the Poets of the Great
War.
On a lighter note, the weekend also features performances of the stage adaptation of the WWI television comedy Blackadder Goes Forth by amateur theatre groups in Cambridge and Timaru.
Veteran musician-poet Bill Direen is taking his Bill Direen Armistice Ensemble and a show that also touches on the Great Depression to Dunedin’s New Athenaeum Theatre (November 9 and 10) and Ōamaru’s Grainstore (November 11).