When The Sun Goes Down

Wild Daisies is a poem by New Zealand poet and short-story writer Bub Bridger (1924-2009). It appears in the anthology, Mauri Ola: Contemporary Polynesian Poems in English (2010, Auckland University Press). 

I have adapted the poem as a song for an assignment for the English 204: Pacific Literature in English course I am taking at UoA this semester (first semester, 2017). The assignment, 'Teu le Va / Nurture the Spaces: Poetry for the People', requires the selection of a poem from the anthology (for an initial close reading) and the subsequent creative re-presentation of the poem in a public space in a way conducive to prompting public response to the work, i.e. with the intention of reaching an audience for the poem in a way that (ideally) provokes an addressing of the work by the audience.

The poem immediately struck me as lyrical and ripe for musical adaption. The overt themes of love and romance, and the imperative by the poem's protagonist to bring her flowers (the titular ‘Wild Daisies”) as proof of love, appealed immediately, and I found the strange contrast between the entreaty for a simple demonstration of love and the sudden violence of the language and imagery, intriguing and compelling: 

If you love me
Bring me flowers
Wild daisies
Clutched in your fist
Like a torch
No orchids or roses
Or carnations
No florist's bow
Just daisies 
Steal them 
Risk your life for them 
Up the sharp hills 
In the teeth of the wind
If you love me
Bring me daisies
Wild daisies
That I will cram 
In a bright vase 
And marvel at

The Englishness of the poem's form and imagery drew to mind the romantic sonnets of Shakespeare and Browning (among others), and its pastoral shades inspired me to pursue a folk-style approach, musically - drawing on the folk-based 'claw-hammer' guitar picking method prevalent in the idiom, and adopting a repetitive, sombre, minor-key chord progression as the harmonic base for a simple, pretty melody which evolves into a cyclical, lower motif for the final three lines, in a coda of sorts. In addition (and along with a tremelo'd electric-piano part) I chose to augment the track with a rhythmic ukulele strum, evoking subtly its Pacific origins both in terms of the poet's Pacific heritage, and indeed the poem's. 

There's also the question of the poem's place in the anthology, specifically with regard to its Pacific-specificity. In my close reading I discuss the notable perspective of the poet, Bub Bridger, in terms of her Maori as well as Irish and English ancestry and the inspiration she drew from this.

I argue that the violence of the imagery, particularly in the context of the poem's place in the anthology, and of the poet's Maori ancestry, reveals itself as evocative of a broader notion of the violence inherent in imperialism's drive to colonise and control foreign landscapes and the indigenous people of those lands. Images of Maungekiekie (One Tree Hill), and its great, historic pa site, and the fortifications and kumara pits still visible on its sharp hills sprung to mind, as did Hone Heke's near mythic act of rebellion in his repeated chopping down of the flag pole at Kororareka (Russell) in 1844 and 1845, in disgust at breaches of a treaty that he was the first of 40 northern chiefs to sign only four years earlier. 

Hone Heke: ‘Now I say that I will prepare another pole… in order to put an end to our present quarrel… The pole that was cut down belonged to me, I made it for the native flag, and it was never paid for by the Europeans.’

I argue Bridger's poem (with its imagery of fists, torches, theft, teeth, sharp hills, life risking endeavour) evokes the spirit of resistance and rebellion which lives in the works of so many of the poets anthologised in Mauri Ola, as well as across the Pacific Literature oeuvre, and indeed remains with us as long as colonialism, and its ramifications as an ever-present concept, influence and force in 'postcolonial' Aotearoa/New Zealand, and across Oceania, also remains.

Wild Daisies

Wild Daisies (adapted from the poem By Bub Bridger)

A live recording from Roasted Addiqion Cafe in Kingsland Auckland 1996
 Lead guitar -  Dave Peachy,Bass - Billy Gibson , Drums - Hugh Dainow
Words and Music ,Vocals , Rhythm Guitar,Otis Mace

Wild Daisies (adapted from the poem By Bub Bridger)

Josh_Hetherington

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