Rore Hapipi
New Zealand writer
Rore Hapipi also known as Rowley Habib was a playwright, poet and TV writer and one of the pioneers of modern literary expression by Māori
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Quotes edit
- w:Pākehā television writers are afraid to write realistic parts for Māori characters. Māori are down in the dirt in real life and we have to show them like that on television
- All the Māori on Open House are so nice, nice, nice
- I found I couldn't write about imaginary things, they had no interest for me.
excerpts from poem The Raw Men (For the Maori Battalion.) edit
- Praised in the deserts of Tobruk,
- hailed in the heats of Mersa Matruh,
- gloried in Greece.
- We salute you, sons of New Zealand, Maori Battalion.
- ‘Kia ora koutou. Kia ora nga tamariki o Aotearoa’.
- Yes, this is where they came from, the Raw Men,
- the fearless marauders of the Middle East,
- the ‘hard-doers’ with hearts of lions.
- collecting medals like stones on Hill 209 Tebaga Gap, Tunisia.
- Yes, this is where they came from, the men in khaki,
- Tigers of Tunisia, cursing in the rains of Cairo,
- singing in the heats of Helwan . . . With a rifle
- in one hand and a guitar in the other. That's us!
- . . . And a song ever ready on the tongue. That's us!
- . . . Play hard and fight hard. That's us!
- . . . ‘Real 'hard-doers' those boys’, they say,
https://www.nzepc.auckland.ac.nz/features/florence/habib_texts.asp
About edit
- Habib later met Māori actor and film director Don Selwyn at teachers' college. When Selwyn got involved with the Māori Theatre Trust in the 60s, Habib began coming along to rehearsals. He encouraged Selwyn to direct, weary of watching Pākehā directors telling Māori actors how to play Māori
- New Zealand on Screen in Prominent Māori writer Rowley Habib passes away April 4, 2016
