September 10, 2015
Wide range in Maori book awards
The first anthology of Maori poetry in English has taken the Creative Writing award in this year’s Massey University Nga Kupu Ora Aotearoa Maori Book Awards.
He Puna Wai Korero was compiled by leading Maori poets and scholars Robert Sullivan and Reina Whaitiri and includes almost eighty poets.
The history category went to the massive Tangata Whenua: An Illustrated History by Atholl Anderson, Judith Binney and Aroha Harris.
The book previously won the prestigious Royal Society of New Zealand Science Book Prize.
Anglican Bishop Muru Walters, his son Robin and daughter-in-law Sam won the non-fiction prize for their photographic celebration of the country’s meeting houses, Marae: Te Tatau Pounamu.
A meeting house also featured in the arts section, won by Des Tatana Kahotea for Te Tu Hanga Whare o Whetu, about the painstaking process of rebuilding a Tauranga meeting house destroyed by fire
Hilary and John Mitchell took the biography prize for the fourth and final book in a series on the history of Maori in the Nelson and Marlborough area.
The te reo prize went to a collection of essays on the value of te reo Maori.
Assistant Vice Chancellor Maori and Pasifika, Dr Selwyn Katene, says the high calibre of Maori books being published continues to impress.
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