Local Focus: Bird-woman selected for prestigious award

Whiti Hereaka's novel Kurangaituku has been shortlisted for a prestigious fiction prize at this year's Ockham Book Awards.

The novel was inspired by the tale of the fearsome bird-woman, and Hatupatu, a hero of Te Arawa.

Hereaka said in the traditional telling of Hatupatu and the bird-woman Kurangaituku, she is a kind of monster - half-bird and half-woman.

"She's been collecting birds and other things for many years and she comes across Hatupatu in the forest and she takes him home as well," Hereaka said.

"In the traditional story he fools her into leaving her place and he takes her treasures and then runs off, but then Kurangaituku comes after him and then hunts him down."

Legend has it that Hatupatu was hunted by the bird-woman from Lake Atiamuri in Taupō to Whakarewarewa in Rotorua, where she met her fate inside the hot pools.

"I grew up in Taupō and we would always come to Rotorua to visit whānau, so we'd come the Atiamuri way and stop off at the rock and the purākaū [Māori legend] would always come up," Hereaka said.

"We'd always be talking about the story, and I guess from a young age I've always been a hōhā [annoying].

"Being the annoying kid who always asks but why?.

"I was always interested in her story and that interest never left me."

Historically Kurangaituku's story ends when she is burned but in Hereaka's novel, she has taken the bird-woman into raohenga, or the underworld.

"In my book, I have a range of raohenga, almost like whakapapa.

"There's layers of learning.

"As the spirits go through raohenga they learn how to unexist.

"By the time they get to the end of their journey, they've come to peace with being part of the universe."

A reading was held at McCleod's Bookshop in Rotorua last week as part of the Aronui Arts Festival.