Ngāti Rānana London Māori Club aims to provide New Zealanders residing in the United Kingdom and others interested in Māori culture an environment to teach, learn and participate in Māori culture.
The three guiding principles of Ngāti Rānana are whanaungatanga (togetherness), manaakitanga (looking after one another/hospitality) and kōtahitanga (unity).
Source: the Ngāti Rānana website.
These guys were in Mesen/Messines this weekend and they touched the hearts of everyone who saw them perform.
Last night was one of those extraordinary nights spent with good people while doing marvelous things.
I had wandered over to Brussels in time to meet Lynette after work. We met up with New Zealand artist, Wendy Leach and together we walked to Irma's house, where New Zealand photographer, Jacque Gilbert, was arriving fresh from her Amsterdam world.
I cannot begin to describe how lovely it was to find myself sitting there with these women, glasses of wine in hand, food on the table ... just talking. It was one of those magical moments you experience sometimes, one of those ones where you think about pinching yourself to see if it's real.
But that was only the beginning. We had come together because we were attending a literary event at the bookshop called Passa Porta. I had never heard of it before last night but their event was impossible to resist. Lynette had written, telling us all that she had booked tickets to an event with Eleanor Catton. The writer who convincingly won the Man Booker Prize in 2013 with her book The Luminaries. Annelies Verbeke, a Flemish writer, was to interview Eleanor.
We arrived at the shop and the room was already quite full. I'm sure there were more than 100 people there. And then it began and honestly, sometimes I was close to the point of tears. Before photography, writing was my great big passion. I still write but somehow it slipped into the background as photography strode to the forefront in my life.
Last night, there I was, listening to Eleanor and Annelies talk while delighting in the way she was willing to kind of crack open her novel ... revealing her motivations, ideas, goals, and more.
I loved her 832 page novel, The Luminaries, for so many reasons. It was set in New Zealand but more than that, on the west coast of the South Island in a town I've loved since I was a teenager. My cousins came from Hokitika. It was a small town with a wild savage beauty back then. The Tasman Sea still comes roaring across from Australia crashing in on the shore there. And a few miles inland you can see the powerful outline of the Southern Alps rising up, appearing to trap you between the wild coast and the mountains.
I returned to Hokitika in 2012 and it had changed, so much. So little, and so much. The road through the alps to the east coast is a highway these days ... a rugged New Zealand highway but still, simpler to cross than it was back in 1866. The year Eleanor Catton's novel opens ... goldrush days in that wild place.
She read the opening scene to us before Annelies began with her questions. The audience became completely silent. The room was still as she read. Annelies asked some superb questions and Eleanor answered them, fully, completely. To the point where I will reread the book because I understand how she intended we use the astrological information. And while she was clear on the fact that it's not important to understanding the story, it does add another layer or ten to the complexity of the story.
There was a question time and an invitation to stay for the book signing. New Zealand wine was handed out, courtesy of the New Zealand Embassy.
I'm not really a creature who wants my books signed by authors. BUT I did want to talk with Eleanor, to tell her how much I had enjoyed both the book and the evening.
I started my university degree in 1998 because I needed to earn two papers before I could apply for Bill Manhire's creative writing course ... way back then. I lost my way, stayed on at university and never did apply for the course.
Listening to Eleanor brought everything back. Those days on Stewart Island, a writing workshop with Patricia Grace. The Otago University's summer writing schools. Those days of writing. And so I bought a second copy of the book and waited my turn in the queue. Somehow, despite the intensity of the interview she had just come through, Eleanor made time to really talk with every person who approached her.
It turned out that we were wearing the same greenstone necklace. The same hook. I explained I had needed some of 'home' to bring back to Europe, to wear close to me, and that it came from a place just along the road from Hokitika.
Today I wrote, over on Facebook, that I found Eleanor Catton to be intelligent, gracious, patient, humble ... and you know, everything good. I didn't exaggerate. If you get the chance to hear her speak, I recommend you do it.
Lynette (on the left in the photograph below), the woman who made it all possible because I would have missed this without her, gave me her camera and I took a series of photographs.
But you see ...?
I am running a photography workshop in April however do let me know if you have a small group of friends or want to work with me one-on-one, and we can work out another date that suits you.
Sunday 6 April, 2014.
We will begin at 10am and work through until 5pm.
(Lunch, with non-alcoholic drinks, included in workshop fee.)
Cost: includes lunch, drinks, an A3 notebook, and a copy of my 38-page e-book, titled Photography Made Beautifully Simple. Usually 65 euro.
I'll send you instructions on how to reach the venue beforehand.
Note: there are just 4 places, allowing for different cameras and giving me the time to work with each person.
The details: I'm launching a series of one-day photography workshops for women who want to take better photographs for their business blogs and/or personal blogs.
Women who don't have the flash camera or time to learn all there is to learn about photography. Women who do have the flash camera and want to know how to use it.
Together, small groups of us, will spend a few hours out in the city and park here in Antwerp, then head back to work on editing our images.
These will be an ongoing series of workshops. If you don't get everything you wanted to know in that first workshop, then come back ... and we'll hang out together and have a good time while we work on the rest.
I will help you with basic things like light, camera shake, and how to photograph people. We can work on how to tell the story of you, your family, or your business.
And how to create photographs you're happy to put out there in public.
I will also introduce you to a very basic but effective editing programme.
Contact me if you are interested, want to book a place, have questions, or requests about topics you're struggling with.
You will receive a free copy of my photography e-book, Photography Made Beautifully Simple, when you sign-up to work with me. It's a book that introduces you to your camera and its functions in small, easy-to-manage pieces and it would be superb if you are familiar with it before our workshop.
I'll be holding the workshops in Antwerp, in Belgium. If you need info about trains, parking and etc, don't hesitate to ask for more information.
All the information about these workshops can be found above, on this post.
No matter how early I get up, the world
is already whirling; no matter
how silent the kitchen, the stove is warm,
like a great heart, the coffee beans
are sending out their dark signal,
the cat is half-awake, his second eyelids
partly glued to the two suns
of his eyes. The oranges contain themselves
like glorious planets on the cheese tray,
the milk waits, luminous in its carton,
the round table abides, the day
grows wide. Slowly I step into
its bright stream.
Matter, by Carolyn Miller.
I found this poem while I was lazily reading my way through the Squam blog, over here. I've been busy of late. Madly, truly, beautifully, crazily busy. It has reminded me of crazy times spent running down scree-slopes back when I was young and foolish. And while I didn't lose control of the beautiful madness and it stayed fun, I did need to keep that forward-momentum going just to stay on my feet.
My next blog post, outlined on a piece of pink note-paper just now, will be all about things I enjoyed during those days. And really, there was so much. But today I rested. I lolled about. I read. I noted down quotes as I read. I listened to music. Baked bread. Had 4 loads of laundry dry outside on the line. I nibbled, searching for something to magically re-energise me - trying all but those scary vials of vitamins I bought a month or two ago. Gert has taken to sighing when he asks if I've had any yet. I have an osmosis theory about medicines and vitamins. If they sit close by and I look at them sometimes, they work ... magically. By osmosis. Julie might snort laughter through her nose if she reads this ...
Today I didn't drink any red wine. I sighed over all that still needed done but thought 'Tomorrow'. Tomorrow is Monday and I will begin again then!' as if I really meant it. And I do.
The house is clean and it smells of fresh laundry ... as the towels had to come in and finish drying on the clothes-horse I use instead of an electric dryer. And the house smells of freshly-baked bread because the loaf finished cooking not so long ago. And in just over 7 hours the smell of coffee will be filling the house, as my coffee beans are ground and become a rather lovely espresso. Thank you to Wesley for selling me her exquisite coffee machine back in October.
And that is how it is here tonight. The time is becoming midnight in another 32 minutes, I should be sleeping but somehow writing this became that more interesting thing that woke me a little.
The photograph ... taken while out wandering with Lynette, at an ungodly early morning winter hour, last Friday. The posh fries shop made me smile. It did.
De 7 Schaken logo reflected on the wall ...
Who could resist.
