Mount Maunganui artist Rob McGregor has launched a book of poetry written by his late wife Joanne Rye-McGregor, 12 months after her death. Photo / Kiri Gillespie
Mount Maunganui artist Rob McGregor has launched a book of poetry written by his late wife Joanne Rye-McGregor, 12 months after her death. Photo / Kiri Gillespie
Joanne Rye-McGregor and Rob McGregor had always been a team - and they remain so even 12 months after her death.
Yesterday,McGregor launched a book of his late wife's poetry in Mount Maunganui.
Books were placed next to photographs of Rye-McGregor on a table at the Mount Maunganui RSA, wherea crowd of about 50 family, friends and peers came to celebrate the book's publication and honour the poet's memory.
The 57-year-old died on July 23 last year after a nine-year battle with breast cancer.
Rye-McGregor was a school teacher well known in Tauranga for her work in creative circles, including founding Pacific Poets and film club Film Collective. She also featured in Western Bay Women - A Celebration of 125 Years of Women's Suffrage, a book put together by the Suffrage 125 Tauranga committee that profiled 40 Western Bay women.
Joanne Rye-McGregor, pictured in 2016 during her battle with breast cancer. Photo / File
McGregor, a Mount Maunganui artist, said he had already collated some of Rye-McGregor's poems when Jenny Argante from Tauranga Writers group got in touch to suggest the book idea.
"It was quite funny. I'd just finished doing all of that and Jenny called to say it would be nice to put Joanne's poems into a book," he said.
Together McGregor and Argante, with help from family, put together the book which features an image of Rye-McGregor overlooking sand dunes on the cover.
"We'd just got that together and published just before lockdown ... but of course, I thought 'now's not the time' for the launch, then it came up to a year later," McGregor said.
We were a team in everything we did. We did this. She did the first part, I just finished it off.
"In a way, this is like an anniversary memorial and memory of her but with something that people can take with them.
"I just hope that in a way it's giving people a memory of Joanne that lasts and lasts."
She and McGregor had been together for about 30 years. They met when she was a teacher and he was running art programmes in schools.
Rye-McGregor's influence was very much part of the launch. The display of books was placed on a deep red table runner of her favourite colour with a glass butterfly nearby "because she loved butterflies".
"We were a team in everything we did. We did this. She did the first part, I just finished it off" McGregor said.
"She would've loved to have a book published. This is just part of her legacy."
Argante said the book was "the most beautiful book I've ever worked on".
