"No Ordinary Sun" Reviewed

No Ordinary Sun. Hone Tuwhare. Blackwood & Janet Paul. 1964. 38pp. 10s. 6d.

We believe that this book is already out of print. Unfortunately it was received too late for review in 1964. It collects together the poetry of Hone Tuwhare a Maori tradesman at present working on a North Island hydro-electric project. It is not difficult to see why it is out of print. In these few pages are drawn together twenty-nine poems, none of them long, the work of a poet who has found modern English poetry a means of expressing his own personal heritage.

The poem of the title-piece draws on the Maori's traditional respect for a tree to tellingly express the poet's horror at the destruction of the atomic bomb. It is not a volume to be overlooked, and merits a careful search through the bookshops.

This one Sun may not make a summer, but it is to be sought for nonetheless.