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GREGORY O’BRIEN was born in Matamata in 1961. After training as a journalist in Auckland, he worked as a newspaper reporter in Northland before returning to study Art History and English at Auckland University. A prolific poet, he also written a novel, Diesel Mystic (1989) and many articles about art. He works at the City Gallery in Wellington and also convenes Victoria’s Poetry Workshop, but is currently in France with his wife Jenny Bornholdt and their two sons. His most recent book, After Bathing at Baxters, is a collection of his best essays.
O’Brien comments: “My mother’s family comes from the Taranaki township of Opunake, not far from Parihaka Pa, which was an important site in 19th Century New Zealand history. The Parihaka leaders, Te Whiti-o-Rongomai and Tohu Kakahi, led a campaign of passive resistance against the colonial government from the1860s until the 1890s. Events at Parihaka climaxed in 1881 when the Crown invaded the pa (or village), dispersed the communities gathered there and systematically destroyed the buildings and cultivations.
“Taranaki is a province well-known for its electrical storms; the township of Parihaka (under Te Whiti) was famous for its advanced electricity supply. The poem is a kind of choreography, bringing together various elements, making connections as well as reconciling opposites (personal history and official history are brought into close proximity, as are Maori and Pakeha cultures, the past and present . . .) The form of the poem owes something to Neruda’s Elemental Odes and the late sonnets of James K. Baxter.”
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