Make it new, said Pound, and the Modernists listened. Yet there was an inherent paradox within his words, for he also instructed us to immerse ourselves in ‘the river of tradition’.And how else can you do this except by reading your predecessors as well as your contemporaries?

This may be a duty for some. It is also a pleasure for many, for in New Zealand there is an immense interest in local history and family history as popular forms of writing and publishing. And uniquely so – the smallest town library usually boasts an archivecollection or ‘New Zealand Room’ and genealogy has become a national sport. Somemajor organizations and trusts have even allocated funds for this kind of historical research, including women’s studies. This is a tacit acknowledgement of the importanceof our history – whether individual or communal, Maori or Pakeha – to our culture and to our creativity. History has given us a sense of who we are and what we can achieve.

There should be exactly the same kind of interest in our literary history, and, for some academics, there is. The interest can be most beneficially extended to creative writing,especially if we disregard European definitions and allow the New Zealand ‘river oftradition’ to be something like Jane Mander’s river, which led inexorably to such powerful outcomes as Alan Duff’s ground-breaking Once Were Warriors, and KeriHulme’s subtle and mysterious exploration of The Bone People. I could argue, too, thatLiving Here by Cilla McQueen is quintessentially New Zealand, that no one other than a Kiwi – with that kind of past, that kind of perspective – could have written such a witty and endearing poem.

So as well as reading contemporary New Zealand literature, which is the flowering, I would like to advise that we return more often to the home earth that has nourished – and codified – our roots, both real and metaphorical.

Please, let us read and re-read more diligently those writers who went before us – and not only those we have chosen to be icons of excellence. Writers such as Katherine Mansfield and Robin Hyde, Maurice Gee, and James Baxter, have contributed much, but are mainstream. Minor streams and uncharted waters also add to literary flow.

As we explore writers of the past, in libraries and archives, old newspapers and magazines, public and private collections of all kinds, we will find many forgotten stories, poems and essays hidden among the works of those whom fame has focused upon. From those others, too often dismissed as ‘minor’ or ‘ephemeral’, we can alsolearn.

One lesson might be that being first in any field is a risky business. Another, that it is also a matter of pride. Being first means having the courage to fail. To take one example from the world of technology, we marvel now at the comic simplicity of the first radio. Yet from that basic machine – and from the theory behind it – a world of communication was born. Whoever or whatever is first is there for others to build on. Like the foundation stone that is ceremonially laid down, such innovators and inventions produce the structure on which others can construct something good, something strong. And, hopefully, much better and longer-lasting.

In this kind of literary continuum, a flawed work of genius such as Mander’s Story of a New Zealand River is a wonderful thing. Her book continues to exist and gather accolades in spite of all error because it has the urgency and primacy of passion. Mander took her courage in both hands and wrote as a New Zealander.

Today we take such a stance for granted, but for her it was a bold step. In those days,‘colonial literature’ in order to be rated as good had to conform to the imposed rules andexternal limitations of our Pakeha origins, mainly the English and European tradition.

Later, to be acceptable, and to sell, it had to please the North American markets. Nowadays we please ourselves, and, in doing this with confidence, we please others. New Zealand books export well and are highly regarded.

I want to convince you that to read back into the past is to discover, uncover and recover many others like Mander. Such explorations will confirm for you that these old forgotten writers did exist and have something still to say to us. We can learn much from those who were successful in their own time and are now largely forgotten, except to the scholars, like John Mulgan or John A. Lee. We can also learn from those who found their fame abroad, but are still our own, like Ruth Park or Ngaio Marsh.

For though it is probably true that 90 per cent of creativity is of its own time and place – or one step ahead of the crowd, to be exact – no writer worth his or her salt willget too stuck on merely ‘being new’. When we write, whatever we write, we must alsostay firmly with the premise of being who we are, of being a New Zealander, whether homegrown and homebred like Hone Tuwhare, or bold new immigrant such as Kapka Kassabova. In one sense we are all newcomers here, even Maori.

In literature as in life, though we will continue to need originators, innovators and extremists, we will always need history and tradition, too. In fact, the pedant could arguethat ‘newness’ is a thing impossible to achieve. If we are reading what has gone before to assure ourselves that what we write is new, then that reading, and the mark it puts uponour minds, will inevitably taint or corrupt our certainty of being new. At once there’s akind of binary opposition to the validity of newness – is new, is not new – in that every thing we write about is either a response of reaction to what ha gone before.

How then can it be separate and new?

It is almost impossible for any artist – visual or literary – to create any new work without some reference to those fellow makers and doers who have gone before. The more you know of such predecessors, the more difficult it is not to echo or repeat. ‘Write a poem in a new form of your own devising.’ How to accomplish that task would puzzleany logician.

This might seem to argue a case for the refutation of what has gone before. It’s done with, it’s over, forget it … Because the more you know of what’s gone before, the harderit is to break free. Sorry, but such a stance would almost certainly be impossible to maintain.

Writers and artists have curiosity and we all respond to existing works: they are both spur and stimulus. With our consent or not, they feed and foster our own talents. We ignore them at our peril.

Another point. If being new is purely a matter of breaking the rules (as so many writers and artists seem to believe) then that is more easily done when you have someunderstanding of what constitutes ‘the rules’. Again, knowing them, internalising them,

makes it inevitable that they will influence your writing. How, then, can your writing ever be new, except developmentally? And will that be enough?

One further consideration is that this duty of ‘making it new’ that Pound insisted upon would seem immediately to imperil audience. If you are ‘too new’ (i.e. too controversial,too complex, too convoluted, too contradictory) you won’t/can’t/don’t achieve consensus.Without this consensus of editors, publishers and readers, fame and fortune will continue to elude you. And supposing that you did get these people on your side – in spite of your extravagant novelty – wouldn’t that make you question whether your writing is asdifferent, as disparate, as you intended? That you haven’t really made it new – whatever‘it’ is – story, play or poem – and whatever ‘new’ means.

Is there a possibility that you’ll be listened to not for what you say, but simply forhow you say it? Content has been subsumed to format. You’re being read simply as anovelty. Oh dear. Fads and fashions. How long do they last? Once they were new, butthey didn’t age gracefully and now they are defunct. When this happens, is it because theprimary intention of ‘making it new’ overtook the writer’s commitment to the subject?Novelty has become the vehicle and it no longer matters what is carried within. You could say we are concentrating too much on the car rather than the driver or passengers.

That being so, we’d better stand back and rethink some of our definitions to avoid taking this concept of newness to uncomfortable extremes. Overall, isn’t it better tointegrate where you are now (as directly and daringly as you wish) with where you have come from (that river of tradition) to make new writing the progressive furtherance ofcreative and cultural expression rather than change for change’s sake?

‘The past is another country’ that we can revisit at any time, returning safely to the land of here and now. In rediscovering our literary past, we are touching base with NewZealand’s rich soil of history, continuity and diversity. Symbolically, our own nationaltree of literature can be seen as the bright pohutekawa, resplendent with blossoms, growths and offshoots.

The flowers that decorate this tree spring blithely from acute and intelligent minds. From educated minds – educated in reading, in words, in thought and in logic. Minds busy creating a body of work to proudly present to the world as ‘New Zealand literature’.

Literature that is an awesome combination of reading the past and writing the future.