Inside the art of biography

Wellington author David Grant, who has just released a biography titled The Mighty Totara; The Life and Times of Norman Kirk, will talk about the art of biography writing as part of Yarns in Barns.

WHETHER you loved him or loathed him there is no disputing the late Norman Kirk was a larger than life figure whose contribution to New Zealand society not only as a prime minister but as an MP and earlier as a town mayor was immense.

Wellington author David Grant has just released an account of Kirk's life, appropriately titled The Mighty Totara; The Life and Times of Norman Kirk and Wairarapa people are soon to have the opportunity of hearing from Grant - and others - just how authors go about the business of biography.

This will be in Martinborough on Thursday, May 29, at one of the many Yarns in Barns events happening that week and will be held at Cafe Medici from 6.30pm.

Also on hand will be Denis Welch, who authored Helen Clark: A Political Life, and publisher Ian Grant.

The Mighty Totara takes its name from the words of a mourning kaumatua who wailed "the Mighty Totara has fallen" as Kirk's body lay in state near the steps of Parliament Buildings in August, 1974.

By then his one-term government was almost two-thirds over and although Kirk's prime ministership had at times been controversial and his government had creaked and groaned, his leadership remained firmly intact right until his untimely and largely unexpected death at age 51.

Grief at his death was said to be second only to the outpouring of emotion shown for Labour's first and most beloved prime minister Micky Savage more than 30 years earlier.

On reading The Mighty Totara it soon becomes evident that Kirk's early life undoubtedly shaped his humanitarian principles.

For example, this account of a typical nine-and-a-half-hour shift while working on Saturday nights for railways at Frankton gives an insight into how hard Kirk could, and had to, work.

"When locomotives arrived they dropped their loads of red-hot ash into pits beside the railway line and Kirk would spend the night shovelling 10 to 14 barrow-loads from each pit into trucks to be taken to the town tip.

"Up to three barrow loads would be very fine ash, which blew everywhere unless Kirk had water to dampen it with.

"If he worked really hard he would have one load shovelled out before the next engine arrived. If he did not make it then the ash pit just over flowed."

Kirk, more than any other politician before or since, devoted a great deal of time to helping Chatham Islanders and generally improving their living and working conditions.

David Grant has written a very readable and informative account of the life of one of our most colourful MPs.