Robin Hyde was a writer who found inspiration in Whanganui. Photo / File
Robin Hyde was a writer who found inspiration in Whanganui. Photo / File
There's still time to enter the Whanganui Literary Festival brochure image competition. The winning entry will receive a prize of $500. Entries close on November 30. Only digital copies of artwork or photography will be accepted, and these should be emailed to whanganuiliteraryfestival@gmail.com. Terms and conditions apply; see the Facebook page:www.facebook.com/whanganuiLF.
Many writers and artists have found inspiration in Whanganui and one of them was Robin Hyde, whose text is the background to the Festival's competition poster. Robin came to Whanganui in 1929 to work at the then-Wanganui Chronicle, and she later commented:
"I remember Whanganui with great kindness because: a) there I first encountered wild duck properly roasted and served up in a sensible little restaurant which knew its business; b) for a much more important reason, because in remembering Whanganui, I can remember a smooth, burnished-steel sheen of river and lake waters.
"Stately and slow the black swans sail on little Virginia Lake, and the trees all around are yellow-leaved, because, in the country of memory, it is always autumn hereabouts.
"The little river steamer toots long and soulfully in the early morning, and the creamy plumes of toi-toi quiver in the swirl of her wake. Māori women, bright-frocked but with black shawls drawn over their heads, squat on deck and chat with one another in voices plaintive as a tui's call. A live and wriggling something in the stern of the ship turns out to be a couple of frisky young pigs, kept in order by the simple expedient of having a net thrown over them.
"We have many things to show you on this river. A first halt where the kōwhai trees, usually golden-flowered, shower down bright red blossoms, red as new-minted sovereigns, and a tui laughs for sheer joie de vivre in the ring of the trees; little dreamy Jerusalem, where the Māori still believe in the kehu, the ghost that brings death and which perches uncannily on the doomed one's gate-post. Māori canoes, old and unpainted, but as graceful in their slender, pea-pod lines as fairy boats; the great stone where green boughs should be laid as an offering to Taniwha, god of the river, enormous rowan trees, laden with brilliant coral berries, guarding the fine Pipiriki Hotel, and after that a river overhung by ferns and native bushes which seem entranced by the delicate beauty of their own reflections in the still water.
"Earth has splendid rivers enough, but can any of them outrival the Whanganui for this pensive charm of green and dusky blue reflections?"
Many other writers including Airini Beautrais, James K Baxter, Janet Frame, Katherine Mansfield and Mark Twain have been inspired by the awa and its communities.
