May 12, 2022
Birdwoman Kurangaituku captures Ockham tohu
The supreme winner of this year’s Ockham New Zealand Book Awards says she tried to adapt the rhythms of Māori speech on to the page in English.
Whiti Hereaka won the $60,000 Jann Medlicott Acorn Prize for Fiction for Kurangaituku, a retelling of the Te Arawa story of Hatupatu and the Birdwoman.
She says growing up in Taupō her family often went back to visit whānau in Rotorua, and her parent would stop at Hatupatu’s Rock and the traditional story of the boy trapped by the monster.
For her first adult novel she decided to tell it from the birdwoman’s perspective.
“I use the tools I have which is English – my te reo Māori is not up to speed yet but one day – to retell the pūrakau, so I am trying to evoke the same rhythms, the same feelings as te reo Māori but in English,” Hereaka says.
Kurangaituku is published by Huia.
The non-fiction prize was won by historian Vincent O’Malley for his book Voices from the New Zealand Wars / He Reo nō ngā Pakanga o Aotearoa, beating out memoirs by Patricia Grace and Charlotte Grimshaw.