Albert Wendt

Albert Tuaopepe Wendt ONZ CNZM (born 27 October 1939) is a Samoan poet and writer who lives in New Zealand. He is one of the most influential writers in Oceania. His notable works include Sons for the Return Home, published in 1973 (adapted into a feature film in 1979), and Leaves of the Banyan Tree, published in 1979. As an academic he has taught at universities in Samoa, Fiji, Hawaii and New Zealand, and from 1988 to 2008 was the professor of New Zealand literature at the University of Auckland.

Albert Wendt ONZ CNZM
Wendt in 2013
Born	(1939-10-27) 27 October 1939 (age 83) Apia, Samoa
Nationality	Samoan
Occupations	Author academic
Partner	Reina Whaitiri
Awards	Prime Minister's Award for Literary Achievement (2012) Icon Award (2018)
Academic background
Education	New Plymouth Boys' High School
Alma mater	Victoria University
Academic work
Discipline	Pacific literature New Zealand literature
Institutions	The University of Auckland, University of the South Pacific
Notable works	Sons for the Return Home (1973) Leaves of the Banyan Tree (1979)

Wendt is the recipient of many prestigious awards, including twice receiving the Commonwealth Writers Prize, multiple top awards at the New Zealand Book Awards, the 2012 Prime Minister's Award for Literary Achievement in Fiction and an Icon Award from the Arts Foundation of New Zealand in 2018. In 2013 he was appointed a member of the Order of New Zealand, New Zealand's highest civilian honour, recognising his pivotal role in the formation of Pacific literature in English.

Early life

Wendt was born in Apia, Western Samoa (now known as Samoa) in 1939, and lived in Samoa as a child.^[1][2] He was one of nine children, and his father was a plumber.^[3] He is of German heritage through his great-grandfather on his father's side, but in 2002 said he considered his family heritage to be "totally Samoan".^[4] In 1952, Wendt received a scholarship to attend New Plymouth Boys' High School in New Zealand. He graduated in 1957.^[5] During his time at the school he had a couple of poems and a short story published in the school's annual magazine, The Taranakian.^[6]

He completed a diploma of teaching at Ardmore Teachers' College in 1959, and subsequently attended Victoria University of Wellington, graduating with an Master of Arts in History in 1964.^[5] His Master's thesis was about the Mau, Samoa's independence movement from colonialism during the first decade of the 1900s.^[7] He began to publish work in literary magazines, including the New Zealand School Journal, the New Zealand Listener, and Landfall while attending Victoria University.^[4][6] In 1963, he received an award from Landfall for the best prose by a writer under the age of 25, for his short story "The Name of the Game".^[8] He has said that at the time he started writing, he was inspired by the examples of Alistair Te Ariki Campbell, Jacquie Sturm and Hone Tuwhare, who were then the only well-known Polynesian writers in New Zealand.^[4]

Literary career

Time in the Pacific Islands: 1965–1987

In 1965 Wendt returned to Samoa and became the headmaster of Samoa College.^[5] He continued to send poems and short stories back to New Zealand for publication in magazines, and in 1972 he wrote two plays: Comes the Revolution, performed at the South Pacific Arts Festival, and The Contract, performed at the School's Drama Festival in Apia.^[6] He began working on the epic novel Leaves of the Banyan Tree around this time, but due to its length, put it aside and finished the novel Sons for the Return Home first, which was published in 1973.^[4] It described the experiences of a young Samoan man in New Zealand,^[9] and in 1979 was adapted into a feature film directed by Paul Maunder, which was the first film focusing on the experiences of Pacific people in New Zealand.^[10]

In 1974 Wendt was appointed a senior lecturer at the University of the South Pacific, and worked both in Suva and at its Samoan centre.^[5][1][2] There, he published a number of articles in the literary journal Mana (including works examining the impact of colonialism on Pacific arts and culture) and edited collections of poems from Fiji, Samoa, the New Hebrides (now Vanuatu), and the Solomon Islands.^[1][2][11] In 1974 he published a collection of short stories, in the style of modern-day fables, titled Flying Fox in a Freedom Tree.^[12] Two stories from the collection were adapted into a feature film of the same name directed by Martyn Sanderson in 1989.^[13] His first poetry collection, Inside Us the Dead: Poems 1961 to 1974, was published in 1976, and a novella, Pouliuli (translated as "darkness"), was published in 1977.^[1][2]

Wendt's epic family saga Leaves of the Banyan Tree (1979) won first place at the 1980 Goodman Fielder Wattie Book Awards.^{[1][2][12][14]} In 1980 he was the editor of Lali, an anthology of Pacific writing. From 1982 to 1987 he was the professor of Pacific literature at the University of the South Pacific,^[5] and was also appointed to the position of pro-vice-chancellor.^[1][2]

Later career in New Zealand: 1988–present

In 1988 he was appointed as the first professor of New Zealand literature at the University of Auckland.^[1][2][12] He was the first Pacific Islander to be appointed as an English professor at the university.^[15] In his later career he edited important anthologies of Pacific writing including Nuanua (1995),^[1][2] Whetu Moana: Contemporary Polynesian Poems in English (2003) (with Reina Whaitiri and Robert Sullivan) and Mauri Ola: Contemporary Polynesian Poems in English – Whetu Moana II (2010) (with Whaitiri and Sullivan). Whetu Moana was awarded the Montana Award for Reference and Anthology at the 2004 Montana New Zealand Book Awards, and was the first anthology of modern Polynesian poetry in English to have Polynesian editors.^[2] Its successor Mauri Ora was a finalist in the Poetry category at the 2011 New Zealand Post Book Awards.^[2]

Wendt's later works include poetry collections Shaman of Visions (1984) and Photographs (1995), and short story collection In The Birth and Death of the Miracle Man (1986), both of which feature works set in Samoa. The novel Ola (1991) features a female protagonist travelling around the world and themes of religious faith and identity,^[1][2][12] and won the 1992 Commonwealth Writers Prize for the Asia-Pacific Region.^[16] Black Rainbow (1992) is described by Wendt as an "allegorical thriller", and featured a dystopian future New Zealand.^[1][2][12] In 1994 he was appointed to the Order of Merit of Samoa for his services to education and literature.^[16]

In 1999, he was the visiting Professor of Asian and Pacific Studies at the University of Hawaiʻi.^[17] In 2000 he delivered the New Zealand Book Council lecture, titled Le Vaipe: the Dead Water.^[1][2] In the 2001 New Year Honours, he was appointed a Companion of the New Zealand Order of Merit, for services to literature.^[18] He received the Senior Pacific Islands Artist's Award at the 2003 Arts Pasifika Awards,^[19] and his first play The Songmaker's Chair premiered that year.^[20] In 2004 he was awarded the Nikkei Asia Prize for Culture.^[2] In 2005, Victoria University made him an honorary Doctor of Literature.^[2] From 2004 to 2008 he held the position of Citizen's Chair at the University of Hawaiʻi.^[15]

He retired from his university professorship in 2008.^[15] In 2009, his verse novel The Adventures of Vela was published, which he had begun writing in the 1970s; extracts had earlier been included in the collection Photographs (1995).^[2] He won his second Commonwealth Writers Prize in the Asia-Pacific Region for this work.^[2][16] In the same year he was awarded an Honorary Doctorate of Humane Letters from the University of Hawaiʻi.^[2][15] In 2012, he was presented with the Prime Minister's Award for Literary Achievement for Fiction, worth NZ$60,000,^[2] and that same year his ʻaiga, ʻAiga Sa-Maualaivao, granted him their highest title of Maualaivao in a Samoan ceremony.^[21][22] In the 2013 Queen's Birthday Honours, he was appointed a member of the Order of New Zealand, New Zealand's highest civilian honour.^[23]

He became a patron of the New Zealand Book Council in 2015.^[2] Later that year, he published a memoir, Out of the Vaipe, the Deadwater, about his early life in Apia, and a novel, Breaking Connections, about a group of friends and their life in Auckland.^[2] In 2018 he was recognised as one of New Zealand's greatest twenty living artists and presented with an Icon Award by the Arts Foundation of New Zealand.^[24] Poetry by Wendt was included in UPU, a curation of Pacific Island writers' work which was first presented at the Silo Theatre as part of the Auckland Arts Festival in March 2020.^[25] UPU was remounted as part of the Kia Mau Festival in Wellington in June 2021.^[26]

Legacy and influence

Throughout his career Wendt has been a leader in postcolonial literature.^[1][2][15] His works have been published widely internationally and translated into French, Chinese, German, Dutch and Japanese.^[21] The first notable study of his work was published in 2003, by Paul Sherrad, titled Albert Wendt and Pacific Literature: Circling the Void.^[2] New Zealand scholar Lydia Wevers said that Wendt's works "have been instrumental in shaping a Pacific literature in English, especially in its evolution from oral to written form".^[9] In addition to his own works, of which the most well-known is Sons for the Return Home (1973), Wendt has played a wider role in shaping the cultural life of Oceania; writers Teresia Teaiwa and Selina Tusitala Marsh noted, in an introduction to a special 2010 issue of The Contemporary Pacific focussing on Wendt's legacy:^[15]

Without a doubt, there are a number of Wendt’s contemporaries who, like him, have created invaluable legacies to inspire challenge thinking in, of, and about the Pacific— or Oceania. But in crucial ways, Wendt is an unparalleled figure in our region.

He is the subject of a documentary, The New Oceania, made in New Zealand by Point of View Productions. Directed by Shirley Horrocks, the film screened at the New Zealand International Film Festival and Hawaii International Film Festival in 2005, on TVNZ in 2006 and on ABC Australia in 2007.^[27][28]

Personal life

As a young teacher, Wendt married Jenny Whyte, and they had two daughters and a son.^[29][30] One of his daughters, Mele Wendt, was made a Member of the New Zealand Order of Merit for services to governance in the 2019 New Year Honours.^[31]

Wendt has been in a relationship with his partner, Reina Whaitiri, since his marriage ended in the early 1990s.^[29][32][33] He is a cousin of actor Nathaniel Lees, who directed and starred in Wendt's play The Songmaker's Chair at the 2003 Auckland Arts Festival.^[3] His niece Lani Wendt Young is also a writer.^[34]

Awards and honours

• 1980 – Wattie Book of the Year for Leaves of the Banyan Tree^[16]
• 1992 – Commonwealth Writers Prize in the Asia-Pacific Region for Ola^[16]
• 1994 – Order of Merit of Samoa for services to education and literature^[16]
• 2001 – Companion of the New Zealand Order of Merit for services to literature^[16]
• 2003 – Senior Pacific Arts Award, Arts Pasifika Awards^[16]
• 2004 – Nikkei Asia Prize for Culture^[16]
• 2004 – Montana Book Award for Whetu Moana^[16]
• 2010 – Commonwealth Writers Prize in the Asia-Pacific Region for The Adventures of Vela^[35]
• 2012 – Prime Minister's Awards for Literary Achievement in Fiction^[36]
• 2013 – Order of New Zealand^[16]
• 2018 – Icon Award from the New Zealand Arts Foundation^[37]

Selected works

Novels, short story collections and memoirs

• Sons for the Return Home (1973)
• Flying Fox in a Freedom Tree: And Other Stories, short story collection (1974)
• Pouliuli (1977)
• Leaves of the Banyan Tree (1979)
• The Birth and Death of the Miracle Man, short story collection (1986)
• Ola (1991)
• Black Rainbow (1992)
• The Best of Albert Wendt's Short Stories (1999)
• The Mango's Kiss: a Novel (2003)
• The Adventures of Vela (2009)
• Ancestry, short story collection (2012)
• Breaking Connections (2015)
• Out of the Vaipe, The Deadwater: A Writer's Early Life, memoir (2015)

Poetry collections

• Inside Us the Dead. Poems 1961 to 1974 (1976)
• Photographs (1995)
• Shaman of Visions (1984)
• The Book of the Black Star (2002)
• From Mānoa to a Ponsonby Garden (2012)

Plays

• Comes the Revolution (1972)
• The Contract (1972)
• The Songmaker's Chair (2004)

Anthologies and other edited works

• Lali: A Pacific Anthology (1980)
• 100 Lovers of Taamaki Makaurau, edited by Wendt and Witi Ihimaera (1994)
• Nuanua: Pacific Writing in English since 1980 (1995)
• Wendt, Albert; Whaitiri, Reina; Sullivan, Robert, eds. (December 2002). Whetu Moana: Contemporary Polynesian Poetry in English. Auckland Univ Press. ISBN 9781869402730.
• Wendt, Albert; Whaitiri, Reina; Sullivan, Robert, eds. (September 2010). Mauri Ola: Contemporary Polynesian Poems in English. Auckland: Auckland UP. ISBN 9781869404482.

References

1. Wood, Briar (2006). "Wendt, Albert". In Robinson, Roger; Wattie, Nelson (eds.). The Oxford Companion to New Zealand Literature. Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/acref/9780195583489.001.0001. ISBN 978-0-1917-3519-6. OCLC 865265749. Retrieved 27 September 2021.
2. "Wendt, Albert". Read NZ Te Pou Muramura. Retrieved 26 September 2021.
3. Hewitson, Michele (9 September 2003). "The Songmaker's Chair: at Maidment Theatre". The New Zealand Herald. Retrieved 18 November 2021.
4. McDougall, Brandy Nālani (12 August 2002). "Interview with Albert Wendt: 1". Trout. 15. Retrieved 27 September 2021.
5. Christe, Michel (2004). "Interview with Albert Wendt". Kunapipi. 26 (2). Retrieved 7 August 2021.
6. Sharrad, Paul (2003). "Albert Wendt, Bibliography" (PDF). Retrieved 10 October 2021.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: url-status (link)
7. Wendt, Albert (1965). "Guardians and Wards: A study of the origins, causes and the first two years of the Mau in Western Samoa". New Zealand Electronic Text Centre. Retrieved 16 November 2009.
8. "Notes". Landfall. 17 (4): 327. 1963. Retrieved 18 November 2021.
9. Wevers, Lydia. "Māori and Pacific writers and writing about Māori – Story: Fiction". Te Ara – the Encyclopedia of New Zealand. from the original on 2 June 2021. Retrieved 27 September 2021.
10. Martin, Helen. "Sons for the return home, 1979". Te Ara: the Encyclopedia of New Zealand. Retrieved 21 October 2021.
11. "Albert Wendt". Academy of New Zealand Literature. Retrieved 7 October 2021.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: url-status (link)
12. Stringer, Jenny, ed. (2005). "Wendt, Albert". The Oxford Companion to Twentieth-Century Literature in English. Oxford University Press. ISBN 9780191727573. Retrieved 16 November 2021.
13. "Flying Fox in a Freedom Tree". NZ On Screen. Retrieved 16 November 2021.
14. "Past Winners by Author: W | New Zealand Book Awards Trust". New Zealand Book Awards. Retrieved 7 October 2021.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: url-status (link)
15. Teaiwa, Teresia; Marsh, Selina Tusitala (2010). "Albert Wendt's Critical and Creative Legacy in Oceania: An Introduction". The Contemporary Pacific. 22 (2): 233–248. doi:10.1353/cp.2010.0025. JSTOR 23724813. Retrieved 14 October 2021.
16. "WENDT, Emeritus Professor Albert, ONZ, CNZM (2001)". Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet. 3 June 2013. Retrieved 21 November 2021.
17. "WRITER ALBERT WENDT". Pacific Islands Report. Pacific Islands Development Program. 1 October 1999. Retrieved 25 October 2021.
18. "New Year honours list 2001". Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet. 30 December 2000. Retrieved 29 July 2018.
19. Gregory, Angela (17 November 2003). "Celebration of Pacific creativity". The New Zealand Herald. Retrieved 22 October 2021.
20. Anae, Misatauveve Melani. "The songmaker's chair". Te Ara: The Encyclopedia of New Zealand. Retrieved 22 October 2021.
21. "Maualaivao Albert Wendt's Biography". Arts Foundation of New Zealand. Retrieved 17 November 2021.
22. Arathimos, Michalia (1 May 2017). "We Are What We Remember". Landfall Review Online. Retrieved 17 November 2021.
23. "Queen's Birthday honours list 2013". Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet. 3 June 2013. Retrieved 18 June 2018.
24. Wenman, Eleanor (9 May 2018). "Five top Kiwi artists earn the title of Icon from the New Zealand Arts Foundation". Stuff.co.nz. Retrieved 17 November 2021.
25. "UPU". Silo Theatre. March 2020. Retrieved 7 June 2021.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: url-status (link)
26. "UPU". Kai Mau Festival. June 2021. Retrieved 7 June 2021.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: url-status (link)
27. "The New Oceania". NZ On Screen. Retrieved 17 November 2021.
28. "The New Oceania: Albert Wendt, writer". Point of View Productions. Retrieved 17 November 2021.
29. Sharrad, Paul (2003). Albert Wendt and Pacific Literature: Circling the Void. Manchester University Press. p. 10. ISBN 9780719059421.
30. International Who's Who of Authors and Writers 2004. Europa Publications. 2003. p. 573. ISBN 9781857431797.
31. "Working to level the playing field for Pacific". Ministry for Pacific Peoples. 11 January 2019. Retrieved 18 November 2021.
32. "Albert Wendt, Reina Whaitiri and Robert Sullivan, 2011". Te Ara: the Encyclopedia of New Zealand. Retrieved 18 November 2021.
33. Wendt, Albert (2015). Out of the Vaipe, the Deadwater: A writer's early life. Bridget Williams Books. p. 13. ISBN 9780908321261.
34. Husband, Dale (1 September 2019). "Lani Wendt Young: A hunger worldwide for our stories told by us". E-tangata. Retrieved 18 November 2021.
35. "Albert Wendt". Encyclopædia Britannica. Retrieved 21 July 2017.
36. "Previous winners". Creative New Zealand. Retrieved 24 October 2013.
37. "Maualaivao Albert Wendt wins Icon Award 2018". Samoa Observer. 11 May 2018. Retrieved 3 November 2020.

External links

• Wendt's profile from Read NZ Te Pou Muramura
• Wendt's profile from the Academy of New Zealand Literature
• The New Oceania film, available on YouTube
• Wendt reading his poem "Inside Us The Dead", available on YouTube
• "Stepping Stones", published in Poetry, February 2018