Sam Hunt at 70: Lines for another year

Elisabeth Easther takes the back roads – and a birthday meatloaf – to our best-loved poet’s treehouse on the Kaipara. 

Arguably New Zealand’s greatest living poet (for now at least, mortality being what it is), Hunt is the stuff of clichés; it’s impossible not to reach for expressions like “national treasure” or “cultural icon” when trying to describe him, because that’s just what he is.

Hunt was born in Castor Bay, on Auckland’s North Shore in 1946 – 13 years ahead of the harbour bridge – and it was clear from an early age that he would be a poet; he wrote his first precocious poem at the age of seven. Since then, he has written hundreds of poems, possibly thousands, but who’s counting? Certainly not Hunt.

He’s opened for Leonard Cohen and toured with Hone Tuwhare, Denis Glover and Alistair Te Ariki Campbell. He was famously befriended by James K. Baxter, who wrote a verse entitled “Letter to Sam Hunt”, rhyming the surname with an Anglo-Saxon word that still has the power to offend.

Hunt has collaborated with some of the country’s finest musicians, releasing several albums, including the runaway success of The 9th with David Kilgour and The Heavy 8s. He has also produced two sons – “my best works” – and 21 books, with another on the way. He has held fellowships and shunned scholarship, been awarded a QSM, a CNZM and the Prime Minister’s Award for Literary Achievement (and was spotted sparking up a joint in the grounds of Premier House to mark that triumph).

In person, he cuts a striking figure and his trademark look will never go out of fashion: stovepipe trousers – Hunt calls them Foxton Straits – boots with a bit of a shine (he abhors jandals in all situations), mostly open-necked shirts, perhaps a waistcoat, a loose tie or, if the occasion warrants it, a jaunty scarf.

Having spent a considerable portion of his well-dressed life on the road, variously in Valiants, Jaguars and a 64 Chevy Impala, there are few pubs, town halls, opera houses and schools where Hunt hasn’t played.

When he’s not on tour, drawing on that extraordinary archive of poetry stored in his head and his heart, Hunt cloisters himself away where he can listen out for the poems. Drawn to what he calls “the lonely places”, he has lived in a cluster of Cook Strait boat sheds and, for the past 15 years, on the Kaipara Harbour in Northland.

Sheltered by giant totara with views to the water, Hunt’s home is his “treehouse”, where he spends his days communing with the elements, taking it all in, far from the madding crowd. On the walls of his rustic retreat you’ll find prints, paintings and children’s art. One entire section is dedicated to his sons’ school photos, right back to first-born Tom’s primer one class from 1982, finishing up with second son Alf’s final year of high school just last year, all lovingly pinned up by a doting dad.

There’s a telescope for keeping an eye on the heavens, while down on earth his friends, the hares, emerge at dusk to listen for lines of Yeats quoted from the balcony. Completing the picture, there are groaning shelves of books, stacks of CDs and cassette tapes, towers of magazines and a computer that Motat may one day come calling for.

It’s little wonder Hunt has chosen solitude over city life because, wherever he goes, heads turn. It’s as if he’s public property; people are inexorably drawn to him. Devoted fans frequently want to tell him a story, recalling the time he visited their school and turned their sixth-form English class upside down, memorably shocking the teachers. Or they need to tell him how they saw him live at some funny little town, barely big enough for a pub, and the memories from that show are as strong as if it were yesterday.

To illustrate the extent of Hunt’s fame: in 1975, on the night New Zealand gained a second television channel, Max Cryer’s inaugural guests were Hunt, Rob Muldoon and Canon Bob Lowe. Hunt’s beloved dog, Minstrel, was there too, although he couldn’t get a word in edgeways. And in 1988, when Minstrel died, his loss was the lead item on the evening news.

For all his popularity, Hunt is insistent he doesn’t want a Facebook page. He understands it could be handy for promoting gigs, but he worries about the inevitable avalanche of strangers and ghosts and fears they might crush him – back to that recurring theme of his impending demise.

Yet to see Hunt live on stage, to witness that idiosyncratic style – the tapping foot, the hand that reaches out, feeling for the rhythm, so many poems at his fingertips, his own and other people’s – it’s extraordinary to comprehend how much data is stored inside him. He must surely have a very special brain. And a very special heart. A heart that looks set to keep on marking time for years to come – despite his insistence that the end is quite probably nigh.

Here, Hunt tells his own story:

SAM I AM
For the first six months of my life, my parents called me Robert. On the day of my christening, on the way to the Devonport Catholic Church, somewhere about the Bayswater turn-off, Mum said, “His name is Samuel.” Until that moment, I was, like my father, Robert Percival Hunt. And then, that day, I became Sam. Samuel Percival Maitland Hunt.

IN THE BEGINNING.
When I wrote my first poem, I remember my mother and father being blown away by it. I would’ve been seven years old.

CHRISTMAS 1953

Climb up the cliff path to
the pines where through
their needles salt winds blow

and far below
the fish and ocean go

and down the cliff path home
bring a lone
Christmas tree

and by the beach
let it in warm winds grow.

Mum seemed deeply moved when she heard it and I think the old dad may have had a tear in his eye. I look at it now, that last line with six syllables – even now, when I want to nail something, there are certain rhythms that I know and in a way that line, that rhythm, that’s the magic and mystery that came from childhood. If you’ve got the rhythm, you’ve got the poem.

THE OLD GREEN SHED
I grew up and was born at Milford Beach. It was a wonderful childhood, a landscape of a seascape, such beauty. That green shed in Milford, that’s where it happened, it has always been the beating heart to me. Looking out to Tiritiri Matangi, I’d go down there and pretend to be a poet – now it’s all apartments.

Back then, when I was at school, rather than taking the bus, I’d row the dinghy across to Castor Bay and walk up to the bus stop, then take the bus. When I got to the Auckland side, I’d ride another bus to school, to St Peter’s. Or I’d do what I called the “royal circuit”, spending the day, sometimes weeks, playing the wag. One of my regular haunts was Back Beach at Castor Bay. I used to go there, usually on my own. I was only 14, quite young, but it made sense to me. I used to write poems down there. Some of my exercise books still have the sand between the pages. I remember walking home, as if [I was] walking home from school, careful to brush off the sand – and I thought, I’ve written seven poems today. And they were so important, finding that voice, sometimes it’s the only voice you’ve got… the mystery of the poems, the mystery of the silence.

PARENTAL GUIDANCE
When I was born, my father was 60 and my mother was 30. My mother called my father Mr Hunt for the first few years of married life.

STABAT MATER

My mother called my father ‘Mr Hunt’
For the first few years of married life.
I learned this from a book she had inscribed:
‘To dear Mr Hunt, from his loving wife’.

She was embarrassed when I asked her why
But then explained how hard it had been
To call Him any other name at first, when he –
Her father’s elder – made her seem so small.

Now in a different way, still like a girl
She calls my father every other sort of name;
And guiding him as he roams old age
Sometimes turns to me, as if it were a game...

That once I stand up straight, I too must learn
To walk away, and know there’s no return.

At some stage, when I was about 10, my mother got a job. As my father got older, she realised she’d have to get some coin coming into the house. Dad was famous for taking on clients who never paid him, the people other lawyers wouldn’t touch.

MAN’S BLESSED FRIEND
I was living at Bottle Creek, living in that little boatshed stuck over the tide, and one afternoon I was drinking with a few mates – and a few ladies. We were on the booze, I guess you’d say, and in walked this dog. A beautiful one, must’ve been about six months old. This was a very small space we’re talking about, the boatshed, and the next day, by which time the friends had buggered off, the dog was still there, just a pup.

My friend Ken Gray and his wife, Joy, they lived across the water. Ken wasn’t just a great All Black and a very, very good man, he also knew his dogs. And he reckoned this stray dog must’ve fallen off a sheep truck. We advertised in the Dominion the next Saturday morning: “One strong-eyed, short-haired border collie sheep dog” – and we got no replies.

In the meantime, an old friend of mine, Keith Fox, he was dying. He had cancer and I told him about the dog and I remember Keith holding my hands in his weak hands and he said, “Call him Minstrel, for that’s what you are.”
Minstrel had all the skills of a top sheep dog and he rounded me up in the nicest possible way. He was the best of companions.
He was a great dog, a beautiful dog – hey, Minstrel, I know you’re there.

HIS ROYAL HIGHNESS

I was 25 years old when I first smoked pot. It was 1971 and some good stuff called Sumatra Super Shit had come in. I remember the first poem I wrote after getting stoned, it was called “Beware the Man”. It’s only nine lines long:

BEWARE THE MAN

Beware the man who tries to fit you out
In his idea of a hat
Dictating the colour and the shape of it.

He takes your head and carefully measures it
Says ‘Of course, black’s out’.
He sees himself in the big black hat.

So you may be a member of the act
He makes for you your special coloured hat.
Beware! He’s fitting you for more than that.

That was my first stoned poem.

A MOTHER'S PRIDE
A lot of things brought us together – Betty and me – and poetry was one of them. We both loved our poets: Yeats, Baxter, Robin Hyde, Milton, the Litany of Saints goes on.

In 1980, when my collected poems came out, she was so proud and, after the launching in Wellington, Mum flew back north, and while she was fiddling around she went into the Auckland Airport bookshop. Proud mother, she was looking for her son’s book, only it wasn’t there. So she looked a bit further and there, under the counter, were boxes, unopened, of Sam Hunt’s Collected Poems, from Penguin.

She told me how she got a box cutter, spooky thing, with the tooth that comes out. She was careful, didn’t want blood on the scene, and she opened the box and spread the books out… and when she was asked about it, she said, “My son’s book’s just come out and I noticed it wasn’t on display. So I’m putting it on display.” I’m not sure what age she was but the manager offered her a job, although she already had a job. [She] was the librarian at Baradene [College] at that time.

THIRSTY WORK
I stopped [drinking] between 1990 and 1997, very much thanks to the wisdom and patience of a girlfriend at the time and, after seven years…

I like the booze, I’m an addict. I’ve no shame in saying I’m an alcoholic. It’s a tricky old bugger, but with alcoholism I find that I manage. Yes, there have been times when I’ve fallen off stages and forgotten my lines. Only a few times. Some people would say more, but stuff them.

And there were some good things during the sober period. I wrote some good poems, wrote Down the Backbone. There was a chill to those poems that I’m pleased to have got… but I was certainly aware of an increasing sense of righteousness.

I think from the righteousness came boredom. People saying how strong I was, how much they admired me for giving up the booze, which I’d always enjoyed so I couldn’t see why they were pleased I’d given it up. One day, it came to a head. I was probably looking for an excuse, and the excuse came at an AA meeting on Waiheke Island. People get up and speak at these meetings – I’ve always been cynical of clubs and associations – and this guy got up and said what a great privilege it is to have Sam Hunt in our midst. He obviously didn’t understand what anonymous meant. Although, if he’s alive and reading this article, I bear him no malice. But it was a very uncool thing to do. I was right on the edge.

I remember I had a convertible Valiant Charger at that stage. It was a beautiful night and I left that meeting, and I remember driving, up and over, vaguely in the direction of a pub, and the stars were shining. I remember thinking, “They’re so clear now, but they’ll be blurry tomorrow,” and I needed that blurriness. In a way, it felt right. I didn’t get plastered, just had a few drinks, and I’ve continued to drink ever since. But no, there was no remorse. I do not understand why people want to live forever.

LIVING ON THE TIGHTROPE
Living the life one does, you walk a tightrope. Here are the poems, the verses that you’ve made up, and then you take them out on the high wire. You’re naked out there. In a way I feel, at times, frightened by the thought of falling off and, at the same time, I should add that I couldn’t give a fuck.

An old drug-dealer friend of mine, he always used to talk about the fifth wall of the room, when you get the bastards in there and they’re all keen on being cool and you roll a joint and start passing it round and they start hitting the fifth wall of the room and you know you’ve got them. It’s a little like doing a show; it’s not that you’re passing a joint around, instead you’re passing a few poems.

But when they start and you get a response, it’s very warming. It’s a wonderful world when you can do a show, telling it true, charm it crazy, come home richer.

ON LONELINESS
Although I’m a drinker, I don’t like pubs. I mostly drink alone. I drink alone and I’ve always loved lonely places. Oh yeah, I get lonely, but I prefer loneliness to boredom with people. What did Baxter say?

“Alone we are born
And die alone…”

This [the Kaipara] is a lonely place, but it suits me. I had a strong reason to come back to these parts and circumstances, family circumstances, made it easier to be up here. As I said in a poem once to Alf [Sam’s younger son]:

Alive, Alf, to live
clear of any city
live as we do, five
gunshots from humanity
The final word

If one could re-enact life, I wouldn’t re-enact it any differently. It made sense to be going out to Rangitoto and Castor Bay, writing my poems, living among the poems – that’s what I do and what I’ve done ever since. Listening to the silence and imagining a life which, funnily enough, has been as good as I imagined.

In fact, better

This was published in the July 2016 issue of North & South.

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