Wellington Writers' Walk
Wellington Writers Walk
The Wellington Writers Walk is set in one of the world’s loveliest urban land-and-seascapes. It combines a stroll along Wellington’s waterfront with the discovery of sculptural quotations from New Zealand writers – like a series of intriguing pronouncements - often in surprising and unexpected places. The concrete plaques have been designed by the internationally renowned typographer Catherine Griffiths and the benchmarks, three of them seats, by well known architect Fiona Christeller. The walk celebrates and commemorates the place of Wellington in these writers’ lives, and their place in the life of Wellington.
The walk currently commemorates nineteen authors, both past and present, including poets, novelists, playwrights and writers of prose. Besides providing recognition to some of New Zealand’s top literary authors, the walk promotes New Zealand literature to a wider public, including tourists and visitors to the capital. International comedian and raconteur Billy Connolly featured it in his televised tour of New Zealand and it is listed in the Automobile Association’s One Hundred and One Things to Do in New Zealand.
The Plaques
Commissioned in 2002
Katherine Mansfield (novelist, short fiction writer)
James K Baxter (poet)
Robin Hyde (novelist, journalist)
Bill Manhire (poet, essayist)
Bruce Mason (playwright)
Patricia Grace (novelist, short fiction writer)
Maurice Gee (novelist)
Pat Lawlor (novelist, journalist)
Vincent O'Sullivan (poet, playwright, novelist)
Lauris Edmond (poet, biographer)
Denis Glover (poet)
Commissioned in 2004
Barbara Anderson (novelist, short fiction writer)
Alistair Te Ariki Campbell (poet)
Fiona Kidman (novelist, short fiction writer)
Eileen Duggan (poet)
The Benchmarks
Commissioned in 2006
Michael King (historian, essayist)
Marilyn Duckworth (novelist)
Sam Hunt (poet, raconteur)
Louis Johnson (poet, editor)
Their heads bent, their
legs just touching, they
stride like one eager
person through the town,
down the asphalt zigzag
where the fennel grows
wild…the wind is so
strong that they have
to fight their way
through it, rocking like
two old drunkards.
Katherine Mansfield. From The Wind Blows
I saw the Maori Jesus
walking on Wellington harbour.
He wore blue dungarees.
His beard and hair were long.
His breath smelt of mussels and paraoa.
When he smiled it looked like the dawn.
James K Baxter. From The Maori Jesus.
Yet I think, having used my words as the kings used gold,
ere we came by the rustling jest of the paper kings,
I who am overbold will be steadily bold,
in the counted tale of things.
Robin Hyde (Iris Guiver Wilkinson). From Words.
I live at the edge
of the universe
like everybody else.
Bill Manhire. From Milky Way Bar
I ask not only that my city,
but all, give themselves
to the essence of our cult –
the ritual assembly of an
interested coterie in a space
where magic can be made
and miracles occur.
Bruce Mason. From Theatre in 1951: Omens and Portents
I love this city, the hills, the harbour, the
wind that blasts through it. I love
the life and pulse and activity, and the
warm decrepitude…there’s always an edge
here that one must walk which is sharp
and precarious, requiring vigilance.
Patricia Grace. From .Cousins.
Then out of the tunnel and
Wellington burst like a bomb.
It opened like a flower, was
lit up like a room, explained
itself exactly, became the
capital.
Maurice Gee. From Going West.
And now, as I grow in years,
I feel at times like an old
violin played on by a master
hand. You dear city, are
the maestro drawing the bow
over the sensibilities of my
mind, echoing the music
of my days.
Pat Lawlor. From Old Wellington Days.
Then it's Wellington we’re coming to!
It’s time, she says, it’s time surely
for us to change lanes, change tongues.
They speak so differently down here.
Vincent O’Sullivan. From Driving South with Lucy to the Big Blue Hills.
It’s true you can’t live here by chance,
you have to do and be, not simply watch
or even describe. This is the city of action,
the world headquarters of the verb –
Lauris Edmond. From The Active Voice.
The harbour is an ironing board:
flat-iron tugs dash smoothing toward
any shirt of a ship, any pillowslip
of a freighter they decree
must be ironed flat as washing from the sea.
Denis Glover. From Wellington Harbour is a Laundry.
Everything about it was good. The tugging wind trapped and cornered by buildings, steep short cuts bordered by Garden Escapes, precipitous gullies where throttling green creepers blanketed the trees beneath.
Barbara Anderson. From: “The Girls” in I think We Should go Into the Jungle
This town of ours kind of flattened
across the creases
of an imaginary map
a touch of parchment surrealism here
no wonder the lights
are waving
all over the place
tonight
not a straight town at all
Fiona Kidman. From Speaking with my Grandmothers
Blue rain from a clear sky.
Our world a cube of sunlight
but to the south
the violet admonition of thunder.
Alistair Te Ariki Campbell. From: Blue Rain
My quiet morning hill
stands like an altar drawn
whereon hushed hands shall lay
the shining pyx of dawn.
With penitence and stir,
and drowsy flurry by,
the wind, a shamefaced serving-boy
comes running up the sky.
Eileen Duggan. From The Acolyte
Quotations from the Benchmarks
Tall buildings no bigger than blocks on the floor,
Wellington afloat on the harbour haze:
you think of how most men spend their days
in offices as cramped as elevators…
Sam Hunt. From Letter to Jerusalem 2
Then with the coming of darkness the bay opened up beneath us, like a shell splashed with beads of light.
Marilyn Duckworth. From A Barbarous Tongue
I baited my line, watched it sink, and waited with exquisite anticipation for the pecking of mullet, the sucking of trevally, or – best of all – the sudden pull of kahawai or kingfish.
Michael King. From Being Pakeha Now
From Brooklyn Hill, ours is a doll-size city;
a formal structure of handpicked squares and bricks
apprehensible as a child’s construction
signifying community
Louis Johnson. From Fires and Patterns
