Exemplar Excellence

Exemplar – Excellence

I would recommend each of these texts to a friend as they are to do with our history. They are all set in New Zealand around the time the European settlers came.

The first poem I would recommend is ‘Patches hide no scars’ by Haare Williams. This poem is to do with the Maori people. They bear patches on their jackets hiding scars and wounds. When I hear patches and jackets I think of gang members. These people have more than one kind of wound. They have spiritual wounds and physical wounds “How do we heal those slashed in the flesh when they have been slashed in spirit?” This suggests that they have lost something. These gang members have lost their culture thanks to the migration of the Maori into the cities in the 1950s-60s. “Gone” “Gone” “Gone”. The repetition of this word slows down the poem and gives the sense of loss to these people. “How do we prosecute those already punished?” “How do we fine those lost in the streets of no direction?” Because these people have lost their culture they don’t know where they are going in life. This is important as more than one culture is being lost. Some people have lost their culture and cannot get it back. I feel that everyone needs to hear those people’s loss so I would recommend it to more than just one of my friends.

My second poem is ‘The Womb’ by Apirana Taylor. This poem is the most important to me as it made me realise that we use the land resources so poorly. “Your fires burnt my forests leaving only the charred bones of totara, rimu and kahikatea.” We now have less native trees than what we could have because the people before us just burned them. Apirana Taylor takes on the persona of the land the womb. He tells us that he is angry and hurt “Your ploughs like the fingernails of a woman scratched my face.” We were not using the land to the best. “It seems I have become a domestic giant.” Domestic meaning friendly, unharmful but really he is not. “But in death your farmers and settlers come back to me and I suck on your bodies as if they were lollipops.” This shows us that death for that land is good, it is a treat. This is part of the revenge the land has on the people. The last paragraph is a threat to the people “I am the land, the womb of life and death.” “Ruamoko (Maori god of earthquakes) the un-born god rumbles within me and the fires of Ruapehu still live.” The land is angry at the people for using the land so badly that he is saying that if you keep doing things to hurt me I can make bad things happen to you.

I would recommend this poem to my friends as it shows us how we have to use the land properly. If we look after it, it will look after us. We all need to do our bit and look after the land well. So that in generations to come the land will still be good.

To conclude I would recommend each of these poems to my friends as all of these poems are to do with our history and everyone should know what has happened in the past.