Ana Apatu.
I receive a phone call to learn that my friend Rowley Habib has passed away.
Just that morning discharged from hospital, he returned home and while coffee was being made by their friend Shani, Birgitte went to his writers cottage behind their house to find him.
I learn just the week before he had shared with a friend that he was being sent home to die. My relationship with Rowley and Rowley's wife Birgitte grew from their friendship with my late husband Jono Randell. Jono and Rowley - both artists found solace from one another. They would share their intimate frustrations, a sense of lack of recognition, financial challenges, isolation.
Rowley was an intensely private person and I will miss him. I miss the discussions Jono and he would have about their latest work - I will miss Rowley sharing his latest poem, his letter to the editor - Taupo Times, I will miss the debates I would have with Rowley and Birgitte regarding their fierce loyalty to their cigarettes. They would staunchly sit outside whenever we would go to dinner or out for a drink, whether freezing or raining. Look at you, Ana, driving that motorcar which puffs fumes.
Rowley was staunchly loyal of creating his work on his manual typewriter. I will never forget his face when I typed Rowley Habib into Google and he saw the number of references he was not aware of regarding his work.
We gather on a stunning Taupo day at his family land in Oruanui to celebrate Rowley's life. We are seated behind his original relocated family home, native birds call. Rowley Habib also known as Rore Hapipi of Ngati Tuwharetoa and Lebanese descent was born 1933.
His father owned the only general store and post office in Oruanui. His father from Syria and his mother a Pitiroi from Nukuhau, Taupo. Rowley was the youngest son in a family of seven. A few years ago Rowley shared with me that he always felt different. He went to Te Aute College and a school colleague stands at his tangi to share Rowley was not shy of bullies. He would go "straight in".
We hear people describe their relationship with Rowley. Against a backdrop of bush, with the original Oruanui General Store sign - actors Jim Moriaty and Brian Potiki describe how Rowley paved the way for writers, particularly Maori writers.
We listen to descriptions of one of the pioneers of modern literary expression by Maori with books, plays, screenplays and poems. We shed tears and join Brian Potiki singing the song Jono chose for his tangi Fly Me to the Moon by Tony Bennet.
Rowley's daughter Tangimoana laughs when she shares his spelling mistakes the week before in hospital while doing crosswords together.
A teacher at Te Aute, Sam Dwyer, first recognised Rowley's ability to write. It was when he was 20, in his first year at Ardmore Teachers College, that he decided he wanted to be a writer. He shared that it hit him like a tornado and he could not think of anything else. After that Rowley spent three years wandering around the North and South islands, labouring in jobs for short spells. He sees this period as being an apprentice as a writer, restless years as a hand-to-mouth way of living and providing material for his writing.
He was particularly drawn to "working people", manual workers. He found more vitality and warmth than with white-collar workers and felt this seemed to rub off on his writing.
Rowley's first published work was a prize-winning story which appeared in the Ardmore Teachers College annual magazine.
Rowley was a Katherine Mansfield fellow in Menton where he met Birgitte. Rowley would write every day. One of Jono's greatest joys was to be involved with carving three stones, words from the poems Waikato River, A Preference for River and My Poems, from Rowley Habib's poetry collection The Raw Men - Selected Poems 1954-2004.
These pieces of legacy are located on the Taupo Domain banks of the Waikato River.
I have a preference for rivers
A curious fascination in the way the currents flow.
On permanency:
It is not with envy I ponder on your permanency
But rather take comfort from it.
Finally ...
Life sparks spat
From flint - clash
Poems fling outwards toward the sky.
- Ana Apatu is chief executive of the U-Turn Trust, based at Te Aranga Marae in Flaxmere.