Radio New Zealand - Te Reo Irirangi o Aotearoa

Tuwhare family setting up crib for writers in Catlins

Updated at 8:38 pm on 28 October 2009

The family of the late Hone Tuwhare is setting up a retreat for writers at the Catlins crib where the poet spent the last 15 years of his life.

Son Rob Tuwhare says a trust is being formed to buy and restore the Kaka Point property.

He told Waatea News that, a year after his father's death, interest continues to grow in the work of the Ngapuhi poet, who has just been included in an Australian anthology for secondary schools of writing from around the world.

Fund raising for the Kaka Point residency will start early in the new year.

Rob Tuwhare says the idea is drawing support from the people in the south who embraced his father when he left his job as a boilermaker to take up a Burns fellowship at Otago University.

He says the trust wants to translate Hone Tuwhare's work into Maori and make it more widely available to schools.

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