Sam I Am
When I first heard Sam, his entrance was a non event on account of he was already sitting. Sitting in a swivel chair, centre stage with his back to us, his audience. The shadows were his friends so the black out on stage was all but complete except for his grey calf length army coat. His rumpled hair was like rumpled sheets strewn all over the place in the wreckless manner of the young. When he opened his mouth and spoke, I thought God had a decent sense of humour.
Waipukurau Little Theatre
We were at Waipukurau Little Theatre. He sounded then and still sounds now like an English toff except there’s just a touch too much of the larrikin in his tone that it defies your putting him in any kind of box. Sam is Sam Hunt, poet and performer, he was born at Castor Bay in Auckland. There’s a rangyness in Sam’s stature that’s instantly recognisable, might even make you want to have a second sideways look. Perhaps it’s simply the legs. I’ve seen better legs on a pukeko but I imagine no self-respecting pukeko would have worn stove pipe pants (‘Foxton Straights’ he calls them) with quite the same flair that Sam does!
I thought he had balls making that kind of entrance, he was young then and his audience were seasoned veterans of all things theatre and culture. Later when he’d completely taken the country by storm his open-chested shirts, long hair waving madly at you as if you were some long lost friend was a sight for sore eyes. His face now is like a weather-board bach with its faded panels, out front of it is the familiar gravel stone voice that identifies him as one of New Zealand’s most recognisable literary figures.
A Wandering Bard
Back then, it was Sam of course who almost single-handedly created ‘ex nihlo’ (latin meaning ‘out of nothing’) a broad appeal audience for poetry. He recited his poetry in pubs, on factory floors anywhere you’d expect a bard to turn up. As far as I know he was never thrown out. They say that, “if it was up to the crowds who flock to hear him on stage and the school pupils he has galvanised into enjoying verse, he would be the country’s poet laureate.” New Zealand has only had an official poet laureate for a few years. Originally sponsored by Te Mata vineyards and known as the Te Mata Estate Poet Laureate, the award is now administered by the National Library of New Zealand and the holder is officially called New Zealand Poet Laureate.
The post is held for two years. The first holder of the title was Bill Manhire who held the post of Poet Laureate from 1998-99. Others included, Hone Tuwhare (2000-01), Elizabeth Smither (2002-03), Brian Turner (2004-05) and Jenny Bornholdt (2006-07). The current (2008-09) Poet Laureate is Michele Leggott. Alot of Sam’s enormous appeal is that he makes romanticism hot like a Lipstick Jungle or Gossip Girl babe! He’s got the formula and he knows how to use it! And why wouldn’t he, it is and has been his bread and butter for 40 odd years now.
Books I Own
I own nine Hunt books: From Bottle Creek: Selected Poems 1967–69 (1969), Bracken Country (1971), From Battle Creek (1972), South Into Winter: Poems and Roadsongs (1973), Time To Ride (1975), Drunkard’s Garden (1977), Collected Poems 1963–1980 (1980), Approaches To Paremata (1985) and Selected Poems (1987) every single one of them is well thumbed, have notes written beside lines I liked alot or recognised I’d lived out in my own life. Even as I write this, I feel a feeling resembling deja vu! In my teenage years, reading Sam’s poems made me restless. Years later I remember standing on the top deck of a boat sailing up the Yangtze River when his voice in my head reigned in my attention with a mental recitation of poems from ‘South Into Winter: Poems and Roadsongs’. It was the oddest thing!
When Sam left school, he made a brief stop at the grave of his mentor A.R.D. Fairburn then hitch-hiked 400 miles south, turning up uninvited at the home of poet Alistair Campbell whose family took him in under their wing. Between 1964–67 strode backward and forwards between Wellington and Auckland. He attended university in both cities; was taught by Kendrick Smithyman; got to know Denis Glover; became lifelong friends with his fellow poet, Gary McCormick but most significantly it was James K. Baxter who fiercely encouraged him to hold on to his individuality.
In my own life I’ve come to understand that holding on to your own individuality is no strident matter. My old Creative Writing lecturer Roly Vogt used to say, “the poem must not mean but be!” Perhaps it’s the same for people. Meaning is easier, I’ve found ‘being’ is a slippery little sucker! I think Sam found that too at one stage. How about you?
