Getting to know you: Vaughan Rapatahana
Get to know the Headland team! Headland editor Vaughan Rapatahana is a poet, anthologist and committed advocate for writing in te reo Māori.
Where is home for you?
Kia ora. Home for us (my wife and I) is Mangakino in Aotearoa New Zealand; Tin Shui Wai in Hong Kong; and both Pampanga and Manila in Philippines. We try to spend part of each year in each.
What was the catalyst which began your writing journey?
I guess it was the need to express emotions, thoughts, ideas, and writing helped me clarify all these by the sheer act of writing them down. And then reading what I had written.
What is at the heart of who you are as a writer?
To be forthright in what I say, describe, depict - even if it makes some readers uncomfortable, including myself at times!
How long have you been involved with Headland and what is your role?
I am one of the judges/assessors of the Headland entry short lists, from which a panel of us select an even shorter list of stories - fictive and non-such - which will be published in that edition. I have been involved as such for several years now, thanks to a kind invitation from Massey/Headland.
What is your best tip/trick for writers (including yourself)?
To try to write something creatively every day, even if it is not very satisfactory. I notice that when I don’t write something with a creative aspect (as opposed to non-fiction, non-poetry) the wheels fall off the wagon and that side of my output deteriorates rather too rapidly.
What is something you wish you could read again for the first time?
Probably The Outsider by Colin Wilson (1956), although there are several other possibilities.
What’s a piece of literature that is widely loved or critically acclaimed but you didn’t enjoy?
Actually, there would be more than one, but I am not going to name names as I don’t think that is fair here. Suffice to say, that I did find more than one highly rated novel by a Kiwi author, disappointing, perhaps even pretentious. I will leave it at that.
Tēnā koe mō tēnei kōwhiringa.
Vaughan Rapatahana
Vaughan Rapatahana (Te Ātiawa) commutes between homes in Hong Kong, Philippines, and Aotearoa New Zealand. He is widely published across several genre in both his main languages, te reo Māori and English and his work has been translated into Bahasa Malaysia, Italian, French, Mandarin, Romanian, Spanish.
He earned a Ph. D from the University of Auckland with a thesis about Colin Wilson and writes extensively about Wilson. Rapatahana is a critic of the agencies of English language proliferation and the consequent decimation of indigenous tongues, inaugurating and co-editing English language as Hydra and Why English? Confronting the Hydra (Multilingual Matters, Bristol, UK, 2012 and 2016).
He is also a poet, with nine collections published in Hong Kong SAR; Macau; Philippines; USA; England; France, India, and Aotearoa New Zealand. Atonement (UST Press, Manila) was nominated for a National Book Award in Philippines (2016); he won the inaugural Proverse Poetry Prize the same year; and was included in Best New Zealand Poems (2017).
In July 2018, he participated in the Hauterives Literary Festival in France. In September 2019, he participated in the World Poetry Recital Night, in Kuala Lumpur. Malaysia. In October 2019, he participated in the Poetry International Festival at The Southbank Centre, London. He also appeared at the Medellin Poetry Festival in Colombia during August 2021. All going well regarding te huaketo (the virus) in 2022 he has been invited to appear at the Curtea de Arges Poetry Festival in Romania.
Rapatahana is one of the few World authors who consistently writes in and is published in te reo Māori (the Māori language). It is his mission to continue to do so and to push for a far wider recognition of the need to write and to be published in this tongue.
New Zealand Book Council Writers File is https://www.bookcouncil.org.nz/writer/rapatahana-vaughan
