When the worlds of summer roadtrips and reading collide

This summer my reading is not really for pleasure. Although, I recently stayed in an amazing bach in Aotea where Te Rauparaha had fought against Northern invaders before making his way south from Kawhia on his Musket War heke.

The caretaker of the bach said Te Rauparaha is known as a terrorist in these parts as he eyed the old pa¯ to my left. I am meant to be reviewing Te Rauparaha’s son Tamihana’s slickly produced version of his life, A Record Of The Life Of The Great Te Rauparaha (AUP, edited by another descendant, Ross Calman). But when I tried to show the caretaker the book he flinched at it which has made me think I should write about Te Rauparaha more. I mention him in all my essays because his history forms part of mine.

After Christmas I drove from Hamilton to Christchurch stopping at places that were significant sites during the Musket Wars. In Waikanae there is a Rauparaha St before you get to the beach with its view of Ka¯piti, the island where my ancestor Tutepourangi and a waka flotilla of 3000 warriors tried to stop

The caretaker of the bach said Te Rauparaha, above, is known as a terrorist in these parts.

him from coming south by seizing back Ka¯piti’s strategic vantage point between the two bigger islands.

At Kaiapoi Pa¯ I did not go in the gate to the looming grey concrete memorial even though I had brought my own water to flick myself with before and after and there were bottles left by the gate for visitors.

This summer I am reading Hilary Mantel’s Mantel Pieces which is a collection of essays produced previously as reviews in the London Review of Books, because I would like my essays to have her precision and I am a magpie when it comes to other people’s writing. I steal the shiny bits. But also I’m trying to learn which gates should be left alone.

For pleasure I am reading Alice Tawhai’s Festival of Miracles again, I think she is our best short story writer.

Finally, I am reading the late Ian Smith’s archaeological survey of early Pa¯keha¯ sites in Aotearoa, Pa¯keha¯ Settlements in a Ma¯ori World because I can’t write about Te Rauparaha without writing about his interactions with Pa¯keha¯, but that’s another story.

Talia Marshall – Nga¯ti Kuia, Nga¯ti Ra¯rua, Rangita¯ne o Wairau, Nga¯ti Takihiku – is a poet and essayist and was the Victoria University inaugural emerging Maori writer in residence in

2020.