A writer returns to walk the land

Tu Tangata, Issue 28, 1 February 1986, Page 24

A writer returns to walk the land

Kupu whakamihi

Walking the land has been Rowley Habib’s way of readjusting to the New Zealand way of life after having spent over eighteen months in Europe.

Rowley was a year in Menton, France as a Katherine Mansfield scholar and also travelled to England and around Europe.

He spoke with Tu Tangata about the reverse culture shock he experienced in returning as a changed person to an equally changed Aotearoa.

“I wasn’t happy with New Zealand before I left, the National government and other things. I also wasn’t free to work on my short stories, my babies, be-

cause of pressure to write drama, plays for the theatre. I was glad to be able to go overseas cause that had always been my desire.”

Rowley said he was like a puppy off the lead whilst overseas. For the first three months he soaked up the theatre in London, saw a lot, learned a lot, quite outside of the New Zealand experience. In doing so, he said he cut himself off from this country. He found other cultures overpowering but also

stimulating and he wanted to learn more. One result of this was he wasn't able to write what he thought he would be able to. Plays, dramas eluded him, because he said the people in them had to come out of the land, and he was far removed from that. And the short stories were also elusive. He said he had heard about writers who couldn't write outside of their country and others who found it easier. He points to a previous Mansfield scholar, Michael King who completed his book Te Puea while in France. So Rowley got onto a poetry kick. With two english-reading libraries in Menton and new-found friends offering their libraries, a whole new world of verse was opened to him. He started back at Anonymous, through Spenser, Chaucer and Shakespeare, up to modern day poets and did what he calls his ‘apprenticeship’.

“I never did learn my craft, I started with a handful of verse, some rhymed, some not and showed them to the then editor of Landfall. I was told that free verse was my thing. I must have written three hundred free verse but I hadn’t been happy, something nagged and I didn't know where it came from. I found in France that it was because I hadn’t learnt my craft first.

“It was like playing tennis with the net down, I needed to put the net up to see if I could serve the ball and get it in. I think now I have refined my craft and my verse should be the better for it.”

Rowley also learned to look at poetry differently.

“Before, poetry was something not meaty enough for a short story, when it is another craft altogether.”

Now that he has as he called it, ‘pressure cooker knowledge’ he is looking at what form it will take coming out of him.

He’s looking forward to going back to writing for television and the stage, a coat he feels, fits him best.

“With drama I can set my mind to any topic and bring it to any conclusion I want to.”

The dominance of the english language in Europe was also seen by Rowley as astounding. He saw it as a good thing that unified people of differing cultures, and enabled communication of thoughts and ideas. He said where english wasn't known, he always had the impression that some of the essential thoughts were getting lost in the sign language or the translation.

So for him it was a shock to return to a country professing to be Aotearoa, where moves were being made to put maori language on an equal par with english. His thoughts are that the Maori should look and re-examine if this is the way to go. Could it be another thing that divides us? He said overseas it was brought home to him how complicated it is for two cultures not to be able to communicate with each other.

Rowley Habib said there is confusion amongst some Maori regarding culture. He said some young Maori writers have come to him asking for advice on how they can write in the maori language. He said they can’t speak maori so he sees that as the end of the discussion. Rowley, himself of Maori and Arabic parents, said following this line he should be perhaps writing in Arabic to properly express himself.

He said whilst overseas he found it enlightening coming from the idea that english was something foisted upon him, to the knowledge that english was a desirable language for many people of the world. He said once it was discovered that he could speak english, many Europeans wanted to practise their english on him.

It may be ironic that a play, The Gathering, written in 1979 by Rowley, is now being used in the struggle to revive the maori language. Rowley said the play looks at a family brought up in the city with a Maori mother. When she dies, her Maori people want to take her home for the tangihanga. Her children however don't relate to this as they had envisaged a small parlour funeral. The playwright however saw the potential conflict in such a situation from his own life, and knew it would make a good drama. His ideas now are that a language has to be pertinent and vital, and that if it remains static, it dies.

You get the sense from talking to Rowley that he too wants his writing craft to be pertinent and vital. He said he sees things from a wider perspective now although he feels he had been in a vacuum whilst overseas. That was why he needed to walk the land upon his return.

When asked how he felt his earthing himself in this way helped him to readjust to Aotearoa, he said he was conscious of the boat we are in, rocking violently.

“It’s a rough time to be a buffer generation and we must learn to handle it.”