(19.07.29 – 11.12.23)
Renée (Ngāti Kahungunu/Scots) at the Manawatū Writers Festival, 2020
The day after Renée’s funeral is another drenched in yellow light. I spend the morning gathering photos of times we shared over a span of eighteen years and finding her favourite colour in the garden. I can’t find any photos from that first, important year in 2005 when she was my tutor at Whitireia Polytech on the Graduate Diploma of Creative Writing course, but I have a clear image of our first meeting. Pip Byrne and Renée sit opposite me smiling, close without a table to block the flow between us, telling me they like my poems. I’d applied for the Advanced Diploma, and here was this warm but firm woman saying, “We think you should go up a class. Well, why not?”
Renée’s presence and influence in my writing life has been huge: teacher, fellow student, book launcher, co-panelist, friend. At her funeral, I realised just how many people were gratefully impacted by her aroha, wit, wisdom, grit and generosity over a long life. Many thousands of individuals and communities including whānau, kaituhi, readers, actors, audience members, publishers, students and friends in both te ao Māori and te ao Pākehā. I feel so lucky to be among them.
Looking through my hardback notebook from 2005 is a bittersweet thing: studying full time, having my new love move in, writing 120 poems (thanks to Renée’s expectations and encouragement) makes it one of those years you wish you could repeat. Renée often said, “Darlings, the work is all”, reminding our class that “waiting for the Muse to strike” was the very definition of procrastination. I can hear her voice when I want to write but other things compete for my attention. She was all about the graft of showing up with pen and blank page, and just effing doing it. Renée brought such a variety and depth of ideas, experience and material to her teaching of creative writing. She often started a lesson with a quote she loved: Adrienne Rich, Isaiah Berlin, Søren Kierkegaard, Anton Chekhov, Vivienne Plumb, Federico García Lorca, W. B. Yeats.
“The words are purposes, the words are maps.”
– Adrienne Rich
As well as creative writing tutor, Renée was my writing peer and carpool driver for Hinemoana Baker’s thoroughly fantastic five-week poetry summer school, Whiti te Rā, again at Whitireia in 2012. As a widely celebrated playwright, Renée wanted to stretch into her poet-self, and later, reached further still: she became a memoirist (These Two Hands), an award-winning “cosy noir” crime novelist (The Wild Card followed by Blood Matters) and for ten years, a blogger (Wednesday Busk). This determination to continue learning and creating new things into her “golden years” might have been intimidating but for Renée’s belief that anyone can do it if they show up for work every day.
“Talk to me – sing my songs – count me in.”
– Renée’s criteria for a good poem
In 2011, I had the audacity to ask Renée to launch my first poetry collection, leaving my arms free to fly around you (published by wonderful Roger Steele and team at Steele Roberts Aotearoa) – and she had the graciousness to say Yes!
Seven years later, the fabulous Mary McCallum and The Cuba Press team published my second collection, Working the tang, and again, Renée said Yes! Then she would email me her speeches – such vital things to treasure.
In winter 2020, between lockdowns, Mary invited me to be on an activism and writing panel with Renée, Tim Jones and Elspeth Tilley at the Manawatū Writers Festival. Our mission was to “robustly discuss how writing fiction or poetry can bring about social or political change and why a number of activists are now turning to these mediums” (programme blurb). To be honest, I just wanted to listen to Renée’s wise and unapologetic life stories as a “lesbian feminist with socialist working-class ideals” (oft-quoted self-description). She had the crowd in her thrall, as usual. And the return car trip plus lunch in the Feilding town square with Mary and Renée was as good as any panel discussion (in which I find I can never take myself very seriously…).
My parents took teenage me and my brother to see Renée’s revolutionary play Wednesday to Come when it first came out in 1984. It brings to the fore the trauma and strength of a family, especially of the women, during the Great Depression. Then our GradDip class went to the 21st anniversary with Renée in 2005 and of course, we all felt really proud of her. And then last year at Circa, another stunning production, this time directed by Erina Daniels centering a Māori perspective within a bicultural family. Renée always had a queue of people coming up to her at every event and despite the setback of macular degeneration in recent years, she soon knew who was standing in front of her. I was glad my friend Miriama took this “going-in-for-a-hug” series!
The last time I saw Renée was at the Karukatea Festival (Featherston Booktown) in May this year, where she featured at something like four events! She was in fine form for the panel, chaired by Roger Steele, on the life and work of Jacquie Sturm – her memory sharp as a fountain pen. Afterwards, we hugged and held hands. Again, I was in awe of her ability to invigorate any audience but after, I had a strong sense she was quite exhausted. It crossed my mind this might be the last time I’d see her, but then, no, not really! Renée would surely live forever.
“Don’t tell me the moon is shining; show me the glint on broken glass.”
– attributed to Chekhov but possibly someone else inspired by his work (who cares, Renée loved it).
For those who couldn’t make Renée’s funeral (“The Importance of Being Renée”) on 18 December, here’s a link to the recording of the livestream. It’s full of love, sadness and beauty. I especially loved the whānau tributes from Chris and Naomi – the stories of a mother and kuia from her son and moko that shone more light on Renee’s life. Ngā mihi arohanui ki te whānau – much love for your dear loss.
Lots of people wore yellow. At the end of the “performance”, we were welcome to come up and speak, so I shared a poem I wrote the day after that intense, short afternoon storm – the day after she died. I was generally nervous and knew I’d mispronounced “māreikura” as soon as it came out of my mouth, argh. Renée would probably say, no problem, you know for next time! (but without the exclamation mark – she was not a fan of those). There is “rue” in the poem as it was her favourite flowering herb word and “stardust” from a poem exercise she’d set us in 2005. Stardust, she said, was the substance we are all made up of and that we’ll all ultimately return to.
That storm was no Muse - you’re just procrastinating
I like to think the hailstones the size of rugby balls
pelting city streets and suburban decks this afternoon
is you, storm-clouding off, on your way, making sure
we don’t forget to vote the bastards out next time.
Though you wouldn’t fancy big rugby ball hail—
you’d say typewriter hail, library doors opening hail,
hail of rue seeds and their yellow heads come summer.
Your computer keyboard would take over my screen,
backspace rugby balls for scone dough—
that great mass on the tray before you score
it into pieces and bake it for the mourners.
This afternoon, you chased a plane north out of the slaty
typeset sky and wheeled gulls inland, over my garden.
You spared the golden gooseberries in their paper capes,
the early sunflowers. Anyway, you’d say, hang on a minute,
I would never pound gardens with hailstones that size
—that’s a Facebook photo of mushed up balls of ice
staged for knee-jerk reactions. Don’t be fooled! My word.
Now get on with what you were meant to be writing.
And you’d laugh like a thunder cloud melting.
All hail, Renée. All meteorite showers, auroras and stardust,
e te māreikura.
Dear Renée, thank you over and over for your inexhaustible guidance and support from 2005 onwards – a mix of absolute professionalism, warm, steadfast encouragement and a load of bloody good laughs.
“It is time to take off the amber,
time to change the words,
time to put out the lamp
above the door.”
- – Marina Tsvetaeva
Mary’s obituary for Renée in The Post
Nadine Ann Hura’s beautiful funeral reflections
Interview with Kim Hill (2017) – A life story told in patches
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