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[Ruth Park]Ruth Park: A Celebration

Michael King a fellow New Zealander pays tribute to Ruth Park's influence in the country of her birth

In 1945, the year I was born, Ruth Park had already lived in Australia for three years. And yet I have had a feeling all my conscious life of walking in her footsteps. First there were her poems in the back issues of the Catholic School Journal, almost the only reading resource we had in the country convent school I attended in the 1950s. I found more of her verse and stories in the secular magazines we accumulated at home in those days before television. As an adolescent I read The Witch's Thorn (1951) and Pink Flannel (1955).

Much more recently there were the autobiographies, especially A Fence around the Cuckoo, in which she revealed a sense of accord with the New Zealand landscape of her childhood, particularly the bush; and a profound empathy with and respect for the country's indigenous culture. Again the feeling: where I had been, Ruth Park had been before me and had seen and understood more.

For me, and others like me, she is a kuia, an elder and shaman of the tribe - New Zealand, Irish, Catholic, literary - to which we belong. Her writing has illuminated my life in deep and unexpected ways. One of my few unfulfilled ambitions is to meet her. Alas, I foresee no advantages accruing to her from such an encounter. For me it would be an opportunity to express homage and gratitude on behalf of a following she may not even know she has in the land of her birth.

No reira, Ruth, tena koe. Ka nui te koa te mihi, ko te ngakau. E kui, e tuakana, tena koe, tena koe, tena ano hoki koe.


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