An Introduction
To Hine
"Do these old myths really need one more
telling?" asked a friend of mine recently when I was bemoaning the
unfinished poems in my head. To be fair to Davyd, as well as to the poems,
he has yet to be given a chance to read them. He's asked a good question
however, and the answer is that I don't know, though I have some
clues.
The true beginning of this series of
poems was a few years ago when I was working with men and women who were
living in abusive relationships. I found myself telling them the story
of Hine's last journey. The story seemed to speak across culture, heart
to heart. It was grabbing Europeans by the throat and gut. More, it was
grabbing me by the throat and gut. Some things, understood from inside
are so human that they reach way past the history and the years between
their making and their hearing. I've heard of Polish Refugees in London
during the last war being electrified by the story of Ezekiel. Sometimes
story
telling is more than a way of understanding,
it is healing magic.
I had thought this a Maori story, I knew
it spoke to the European way of being - but it seems to have wider Polynesian
currency than that. So at this point let me hasten to point out that I
am not of Maori
heritage, I would no more want to say
that these are the 'real' myths, or their 'real meanings' than I would
want
to tell anyone else what to think about them. They are stories which came
to matter to me. Bits of the story would drift into my head and out
again. Eddie Kyle and
I had a long conversation and
I went so far as to begin part of the last journey in poetry. That died
with the conversation, however, and I went on with other things.
Then Ted Chapman began to post in Scribble.
I liked his style. The way he wrote seemed to inspire me. In an area devoted
to messing about, on Nexus the Dial up, I began to write in direct' conversation'
with him. He was writing 'The Grey's Song', among other fine poems. I practised
for 'the Hine story' by thinking about the beginnings.
Soon Ted and I were exchanging mutual
threats - "If you don't post this to the echo I will". (Though I suspect
neither of us would do such a thing at all). The poem progressed almost
as a series of conversations with other people - sometimes with myself
- certainly it wove itself into real life events and real life meetings.
When I stopped writing in May 1997, I
had reached 'mid-point' mentally. But I still had not come to the story
of the last journey. The ending which began the Hine series has yet to
reach paper or keyboard.
You are reading a work in progress. A
story which has come to live inside me. It seems to me to be about the
way things are, the way it is to be a woman, to be at least half holy,
at least half mad - what it is to be part of a broken world, among broken
people. What it is to be human?
Maybe. What does go on inside our own
stories? They're all very simple from outside, aren't they? Meanwhile,
whether these old stories need retelling or not, it seems I cannot help
myself.
What it is to belong.
But really, why this particular 'old
myth' has to be retold is because it won't leave me alone. It nags in me
when I see her in the streets, or in my own small story.
Are we all like like her somewhere someway?
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