Pounamu Pounamu

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Witi Ihimaera’s 1972 collection of stories, Pounamu Pounamu, changed the face of literature in Aotearoa New Zealand, paving the way for what would later be known as the Maori Renaissance, an unprecedented flowering and recognition of Maori arts and literature in the 1970s. Over the years, Witi has described these early stories as a response to Bill Pearson’s essay, ‘The Maori and Literature 1938–1965’ (in Erik Schwimmer (ed.), The Maori People in the Nineteen-Sixties: A Symposium, 1968). In his essay, Pearson had commented on the absence of published fiction by Maori writers, and noted that our literature lacked the perspective of Maori experience. With the publication of Pounamu Pounamu, all of this changed. A rural Maori community and the day-to-day lives of its inhabitants form the cornerstone of the stories, and readers were enchanted. The book long ago achieved the status of a platinum bestseller (determined when a book has sold more than 50,000 copies in New Zealand), as have other subsequent books of Witi’s. Millions of words must have been written about the author and the publication of Pounamu Pounamu. My account is more personal than critical, a record of that time when Witi published his ground-breaking collection, and we had the mutual good fortune to develop a lasting friendship.

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