Poem of the Week: Wild Daisies – Kāpiti and Coast Independent

Selected by our Poetry Columnist, Gill Ward

Here is a well know Bub Bridger poem has been online and published widely. I love it.

Bub came to poetry when she was 60. Lived in Wellington and was much beloved by many. Her poetry is plain but deep, accessible and sympathetic.

By that I mean you (especially women but not only women) can identify with practically everything she write.

She has the gift of being able to be funny and poignant at the same time.

She loved Wellington and this is a very Wellington poem. It is from her 1989 volume Up Here on the Hill and ha! a very Wellington title!

Wild Daisies

Bring me flowers
Wild daisies
Clutched in your fist
Like a torch
No orchids or roses
Or carnations
No florist’s bow
Just daisies
Steal them
Risk your life for them
Up the sharp hills
In the teeth of the wind
If you love me
Bring me daisies
That I will cram
In a bright vase
And marvel at

Bub Bridger (Ngati Kahungunu)

(From “Up Here on the Hill“, Mallinson Rendel, Wellington, 1989, Edited by Annabel Hawkins)

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100 Years Ago — and the Maori Long March begins

Māori politics was dominated by the influential MPs (and sometime Cabinet ministers) Māui Pōmare ( Waitara statue photo above) and Apirana Ngata.

The 1920's also saw the rise of Tahupōtiki Wiremu Rātana’s religious movement, and the emergence of Te Puea Hērangi in Waikato.

Ngata worked hard to foster Māori scholarship and education and preserve traditional arts and culture.

He convinced the government to establish a Board of Maori Ethnological Research (1923), a Maori Purposes Fund Control Board (1924) and a School of Maori Arts and Crafts in Rotorua (1927).

The Reform government also took the first, tentative steps towards settling longstanding Māori grievances.

Agreements with Te Arawa in 1922 and Ngāti Tūwharetoa in 1926 recognised their respective rights over the Rotorua lakes and Lake Taupō, and led to the establishment of trust boards with some government funding.

Commissions of inquiry which examined Ngāi Tahu grievances (1920–21) and the Waikato and Taranaki confiscations (1926–27) recommended that modest compensation be paid.