Heritage et AL

Blame it on the rain by Hana Pera Aoake Carin Smeaton : Kia ora Hana, You’ve been a busy mama! I’ve just finished reading your gorgeous little pocket-sized pukapuka 'Blame It On the Rain' and now I’m reading your third (and latest) 'Some Helpful Models of Grief.' I love the philosophies that you weave through your writings with the humour and socio historical threads that we writers from this part of the world tend to shy away from. I love that you don’t sanitise things and I love reading books that embrace that edge. Could you please let us Aucklanders know where you’re from and your connections to Tāmaki Makaurau?  Some helpful models of grief by Hana Pera Aoake Hana Pera Aoake : He uri tenei nō Ngāti Mahuta, Ngāti Hinerangi, Waikato/Tainui, Te Arawa, me Poutini Ngāi Tahu. Kei te noho au ki Kawerau. I tipu ake au Ōtepoti me Te whenua Moemoea. Ko Aoake tōku whanau. Ko Miriama Jean taku Tamāhine. Ko Hana Pera Aoake toku ingoa.  Kia ora, my name is Hana. I'm from a...

SILK Talia Marshall When you were born I was a spider There was a giant red ear on the ceiling Follow me follow Little fly I was sorry I had you in my web For three days I looked and looked at you and thought what is this? rapture has never been on my wish list but there you were, your firsts made the same lion talk of your father raised beside your head It was the dark O of your mouth that drew my eyes into you like vapour no, you were not the one I would eat later but the tender beads of water glistening on the web I knew I was holding onto you by a thread But the thread was strong and made of silk I hold you to me by a thread Talia Marshall released her long-awaited memoir-adjacent book, an essayistic compounding of word, memory, place, and persons. Each section of prose more emotionally whiplashing than the next, the devoutness of people who followed her work earlier on only became more steadfast.  As such, the building of a librarian-founded, trippingly hallucinogenre, constel...

Image: Mephistopheles appears to Faust in his study, Faust / by Goethe ; translated by Abraham Hayward ; with illustrations by Willy Pogany, London : Hutchinson, 1908, Auckland Libraries Heritage Collections IL:1908 POGA.    The idea of making a deal with the devil has a long history in popular imagination. Robert Johnson made a deal with a devil at the crossroads for his otherworldly guitar playing abilities while Faust was after unlimited knowledge and worldly pleasure. The Faust legend was first dramatized by famous Elizabethan playwright and spy Christopher Marlowe in the late sixteenth century in his play Doctor Faustus . Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s (1749-1832) interpretation of the Faust legend was his life’s work – began in 1772 when he was in his twenties and returned to again and again until he completed Part Two a year before he died. The long play, mostly written in rhyming verse, is divided into Faust, Part One and Faust, Part Two - the first dealing with Fau...

Ref: John Daley, Lorne Street, 1974, Sir George Grey Special Collections, Auckland Libraries, 7-A13628. THIS TOTARA TREE WAS PLANTED BY THE AUCKLAND CITY COUNCIL TO HONOUR THE MEMORY OF RONALD ALLISON KELLS MASON POET AND NATIVE SON OF THIS CITY 1905 - 1971 I knew that the tōtara planted hard against the library edge was planted for R. A. K. Mason but the plaque has weathered in this exposed comer of Rutland and Lorne Streets. When I saw the photograph by John Daley of the new building the decision to plant a memorial here made sense. This is a resonant corner with a new modern library and a wow factor. I researched the back story in the library's own New Zealand Card Index, now digitised for convenient access. The two articles indexed from the New Zealand Herald give a sense of the difficult road to achieving Mason's memorial which the simple plaque text gives no indication of. They are also an insight into the value of this remarkable index.

Shakespeare’s prolific contemporary Michael Drayton (1563-1631) was a poet who habitually thought on a grand scale, his taste running to epics and long, linked sequences rather than individual lyrics. He often drew his inspiration from British history and geography. He wrote at length about the battle of Agincourt, the Wars of the Roses and Edward II’s favourite Piers Gaveston. His most ambitious project, however, was Poly-Olbion , which in the mellifluous phrasing of the subtitle offers a ‘description of tracts, rivers, mountains, forests and other parts of this renowned Isle of Great Britain, with intermixture of the most remarkable stories, antiquities, wonders, rarities, pleasures and commodities of the same’. Written in rhymed couplets and stretching to more than 15,000 lines of iambic hexameter, it took many years to compose. The first part was published in 1613 and the second did not appear until 1622. Drayton intended a third instalment, dedicated to the wonders of Scotlan...

Landscapes are important. You are born into a landscape, you walk through the landscape every day of your life, as a child and as an adult. It belongs to you, and you belong to it. Ref: Ephemera - Arts -  Māngere stories Part 1 and Māngere frequencies, 2015, South Auckland Research Centre, Auckland Libraries.

This week Auckland Libraries are celebrating Uike 'o e Lea Faka-Tonga, Tongan Language Week with a range of events across our libraries. This year also marks the 50th year commemoration of Queen Sālote's death and Tonga's Coronation of King Tupou VI. As the theme for Tongan Language Week this year is "Fakakoloa Aotearoa 'aki 'a e faiva 'a e Tonga - Enriching Aotearoa New Zealand with Tongan arts" an appropriate way to pay tribute to the 50th anniversary of Queen Sālote’s passing is to highlight some of the music and poetry that she wrote. Image: Queen Sālote of Tonga, 1960s. Photographer: Clifton Firth. Auckland Libraries Heritage Collections 34-0375 Historian and biographer of Queen Sālote, Elizabeth Wood-Ellem writes that: “The Queen was… acclaimed as an extremely gifted poet. Queen Sālote spent many hours perfecting the words of her poems, and she invited groups of musicians to come to the Palace in the evenings to work with her. They o...

One of the recipients of  Auckland Library Heritage Trust 's  Researcher in Residence  award for 2014/2015 was Dr Zain Ali. Dr Ali focused his research on a  golden Quran  that  Henry Shaw  donated to the library and also some  manus cripts of poems in  Arabic . The aim of the Researcher in Residence scholarship is to assist with scholarly research and promotion of materials held in  Sir George Grey Special Collections . These aims were certainly achieved this year with some Arabic manuscripts being translated into English for the first time. The fruits of this research were presented in a talk at the library on the evening of 28 May this year. The video of the talk is now up online and you can watch the talk that Dr Ali and translator Hoda Khaled Fahmy gave below: Do have a look at Auckland Libraries YouTube Channel ; there is some great content there. Recently added videos include some of our family history talks through ...

A new exhibition from the Sir George Grey Special Collections entitled 'The Romantics: Jane Austen meets Frankenstein' has recently opened at the Central Library (Level 2) and runs until 22 June. The exhibition of rare books and manuscripts from late 18th to early 19th century covers a time when there was a revolutionary mood in art and literature, and a new emphasis on the imagination and the emotions. Jane Austen and Mary Shelley are some of the well known authors included. Find out more . Ref: an illustration from Mary Shelley's Frankenstein by Lynd Ward Another author from this time, although he is not included in the exhibition is Robert Southey (1774-1843). He was an English poet of the Romantic school, one of the so-called "Lake Poets", and Poet Laureate for 30 years from 1813 to his death in 1843. "The Story of the Three Bears" (sometimes known as "The Three Bears", "Goldilocks and the Three Bears" or, simply, "G...

Love is in the air ... and Valentine's Day is upon us. To get you in the mood, here is a selection of love themed images from the heritage collections at Auckland Libraries. Poetry: Ref: 7-C1916, William Morris, 'Love is enough', 1898, Sir George Grey Special Collections Love letters: Ref: AWNS-19080430-4-5, the love letter, 1908, Sir George Grey Special Collections

The 13 September was Roald Dahl Day. Each year, the focus of this day is on celebrating the life and work of Roald Dahl , one of the world's most popular and beloved writers for children. Ref: AWNS-19140122-52-4, picking friend at an orchard in Henderson, Auckland, 1914, Sir George Grey Special Collections Dahl's picture books, novels, short stories, poetry and memoirs are all classics and popular not only with children but adults too. His timeless works such as 'James and the Giant Peach' (1961), 'Charlie and the Chocolate Factory' (1964), 'Revolting Rhymes' (1982), 'Tales of the unexpected' (1980) and 'The Witches' (1983) are of enduring interest and relevance to all readers. Ref: 7-C1813, advertising poster for 'Somerdale Cube Block Milk Chocolate', made by Fry, c.1920-1949, Sir George Grey Special Collections Roald Dahl Day is a great opportunity to discover re-read a favourite or discover something you haven't...