by Tessa Duder
Tributes to Margaret Mahy have flowed in from many New Zealand writers, and all over the world. In Australia, the doyenne of young adult literature, Agnes Nieuwenhuizen, noted for the YA magazine ViewPoint with some amazement how ‘New Zealanders cherish and celebrate their authors … New Zealand’s Prime Minister John Key paid an extensive tribute to Mahy equating her with Katherine Mansfield and Janet Frame and noting that Mahy had won the country’s highest honour, membership of the Order of New Zealand. He highlighted Mahy’s international reputation and that her works were translated into fifteen languages.
‘Margaret Mahy visited Australia many times. My first contact was in the early 1990s when she beguiled hundreds of children at a Book Week lunch at Myers. I was startled to see the famous green wig for the first time. She always loved dressing up and was totally unselfconscious. Winding audiences into her story web was paramount. My last contact with her was at the 2001 Reading Matters Conference. Here, though suffering from a chest infection, she brought the all-adult house down with a rollicking rendering, all from memory, of her dazzling, long, rhyming poem Bubble Trouble.’
Countries where Margaret was published in translation paid tribute through IBBY: Chile, Tunisia, India, Slovenia, Venezuela, Uruguay, among many others. Dr Jeffrey Garrett, Convenor of the International Jury which awarded her the Hans Christian Andersen prize, wrote: ‘This news makes me so sad, though at the same time it gives me an opportunity to remember all the joy that her books brought me over the years — starting with The Haunting… It blew me away. For what it’s worth, I just read my laudatio to her from 2006 in Macau, and I still believe every word … What an honor to have been able to give her that prize and to extol her works, with her in the audience. What a privilege to have met her in person.’
Edited extracts from that laudatio have the final word, for now.
In awarding the 2006 Hans Christian Andersen Medal for Writing to Margaret Mahy, the jury has recognized one of the world’s most original re-inventers of language. Mahy’s language is rich in poetic imagery, magic, and supernatural elements. Her oeuvre provides a vast, numinous, but intensely personal metaphorical arena for the expression and experience of childhood and adolescence. Equally important, however, are her rhymes and poems for children. Mahy’s works are known to children and young adults all over the world …
I’ve added the adjective ‘Mahyan’ to my personal dictionary, comparable to other adjectives such as Dickensian, Kafkaesque, and Rabelaisian. (You know, of course, that bestowing an adjectival ending on an author’s name is a higher honor than a Nobel Prize.)
What does ‘Mahyan’ mean? Let’s give it a try: mahyan: of or pertaining to language in which no figure of speech is merely ornamental, but potentially real, waiting to be activated, thereby making all things potentially animate and sentient, all children potentially magical. Mahyan prose then is therefore very often: sensical nonsense. Consider one of her earliest books, Leaf Magic, in which on an autumn day a leaf follows a boy home, acting more and more like the dog the boy longs to have — until, at last, it becomes one. Or this passage from Nonstop Nonsense: ‘The [word-]wizard tossed an idea into the air. It buzzed off like a mosquito, over the lawn, straight to Mr. Delmonico and stung him on the end of his nose.’
This is very poetic. In one of her books, Mahy has a character say ‘Perhaps all this poetry stuff is just the world’s way of talking about itself.’ There is no difference between word magic and thing magic in the Mahyan universe. Find the right words, and things will follow suit. Games become real. Word games bend reality to match them. And because we are magic, because the universe is one giant extension of our imaginations, we must deal with the good magic and also the evil magic that abounds around us.
The world is poetry, not science. Science, at least in the hands of many adults, makes us smaller, limits us and our ability to reach out, enthusiastically and creatively, to touch and to grasp the world around us. ‘That’s science,’ Winola says to Tris in The Underrunners. ‘Think down to the smallest bit of anything there is and it’s mostly nothing. Even us!’ Truth is intuited and felt, not read in thick books — which are useful, as the aspiring scientist Tycho Potter discovers in The Catalogue of the Universe, mainly to stand upon to kiss a girlfriend much taller than he is. [Distinguished English biographer and broadcaster] Humphrey Carpenter has written: ‘To children, the Earth appears … beautiful and numinous.’ Numinous is a wonderful but not a very common word, which protects it, I guess, from being overused and losing its power. But perhaps it needs to be explained. It comes from Latin numen, meaning divinity or divine will, and is related to even more ancient words in Latin, Greek, and Sanskrit meaning to nod or incline the head, since from the beginning of time to nod the head has been a gesture of respect, piety, deference, honor, and awe. Not surprising, then, that our word ‘numinous’ means ‘revealing or indicating the presence of a divinity, awe-inspiring’. So ‘mahyan’ also means: ‘showing respect for nature and for human nature, which is suffused with divinity’.
What she is describing is, of course, normal adulthood. What an encounter with her work does for us as adults is return us to the wonderment of childhood and of young adulthood: of encounter with the strange and numinous; with our first loves; with the gradual or sometimes also sudden discovery of our own powers.
What Margaret Mahy’s writing does for children is to confirm them in a sense of the sacredness of themselves; the higher sense of nonsense; the poetry of their lives.
Picture Section
Margaret in her forties, the confident writer. Hats were favoured early.
Childhood in Whakatane — the young Margaret, below left and above, circa 1939, with her father, Frank, outside the family home in Haig Street, Whakatane, and below right, the ‘solid, fair’ schoolchild, aged seven. MARGARET MAHY PERSONAL COLLECTION.
Graduation day — Margaret Mahy, BA, 1957. MARGARET MAHY PERSONAL COLLECTION
Margaret (middle) with her mother (right) and Aunt Dorothy outside the family home in Haig Street, Whakatane. MARGARET MAHY PERSONAL COLLECTION
Margaret with her sisters and brother. Left to right: Patricia, Margaret, Helen, Cecily and Frank. MARGARET MAHY PERSONAL COLLECTION
Governors Bay as seen from the Port Hills’ Summit Road, with the jetty close to Margaret’s house and the Manson’s Point peninsula (bisecting the picture) running out into Lyttelton Harbour. TESSA DUDER
The daily thinking time — walking Baxter along a solitary beach.
MARGARET MAHY PERSONAL COLLECTION
The public Margaret — during a session for formal publicity pictures, circa 1990.
PETER TOWERS, MARGARET MAHY PERSONAL COLLECTION
Margaret Mahy reinvented — the slimmer MM at 57, photographed in 1993 by North & South magazine.
BRUCE FOSTER
The sea-facing frontage of the house at Governors Bay. TESSA DUDER
Living area and sea views at Governors Bay. TESSA DUDER
Work station, with many treasures. ALAN KNOWLES
The librarian’s ladder and the astronomer’s telescope are features of the large book-filled area which serves as both office and sleeping quarters. ALAN KNOWLES
Margaret at Callaway Gardens, Georgia, USA, October 1995, with her American publisher Margaret McElderry.
MARGARET MAHY PERSONAL COLLECTION
The famous wig and scarf — the storyteller beloved by thousands of fascinated children. MARGARET MAHY PERSONAL COLLECTION
Ready for Antarctica, with mukluks and name-tag, 1998. MARGARET MAHY PERSONAL COLLECTION
With Prime Minister Helen Clark at the Harry Potter Read-in during annual Storylines Festival of New Zealand Children’s Writers and Illustrators, 2003. FRANCES PLUMPTON
Preparing for her turn in the Harry Potter Read-in. FRANCES PLUMPTON
Famous names in New Zealand children’s literature at the annual Storylines Margaret Mahy Day, 2002: from left, Joy Cowley, Dorothy Butler, Margaret Mahy, Maurice Gee, Lynley Do
dd, Ann Mallinson, Tessa Duder. FRANCES PLUMPTON
Margaret in performance mode at a Storylines Free Family Day. FRANCES PLUMPTON
With young fan Amy Luxton-Esler, 2002. FRANCES PLUMPTON
From left, Margaret and Joy Cowley, Dame Marie Clay and Dorothy Butler, 1990. FRANCES PLUMPTON
Margaret Mahy, Doctor of Letters, University of Canterbury, 1993. DON SCOTT, THE PRESS
Margaret Mahy and the ‘skull and rose’ tattoo, 2005.
ALAN KNOWLES
Margaret with her first editor at the School Journal, writer Jack Lasenby, and former Governor-General, Dame Catherine Tizard, 2003.
FRANCES PLUMPTON
At the Storylines banquet held in Auckland for Margaret on her 70th birthday, March 2006. PHOTOS BY ANTONIA MATTHEWS
Margaret admiring the book of memories presented to her, with ‘Small Porks’ story reader Sedef Duder-Özyurt looking on.
With author-illustrator Gavin Bishop and Storylines’ executive officer Robin Houlker.
Party-goers Betty Gilderdale, Dame Lynley Dodd and Dorothy Butler.
Margaret at her 70th birthday party.
With her family, from left, standing: Frank, Helen, Cecily, Margaret and Patricia. Seated is Patricia’s husband, Koro.
Margaret with grandson Harry, together reciting ‘Down the Back of the Chair’, and (right) Storylines trustee Rosemary Tisdall, with the splendid purple lion birthday cake.
At the IBBY World Congress in Macau, Margaret receiving the Hans Christian Andersen medal from (above left) international president Dr Peter Schneck, and (above right) Convenor of the International Jury, Dr Jeffrey Garrett. IBBY
With the Hans Christian Andersen Medal. TESSA DUDER
Two giants of children’s literature, Margaret in Macau with American author Katherine Paterson, Hans Christian Andersen winner in 1998; (right) Margaret (second from left) with her ‘support team’ in Macau: from left, chair of the Storylines Trust, Dr Libby Limbrick, author Vicky Jones, New Zealand Consul-General in Hong Kong, Julian Ludbrook, and Storylines trustee Tessa Duder. TESSA DUDER
Margaret with pupils at Chinese and international schools in Beijing. TESSA DUDER
Margaret at the New Zealand Embassy dinner in Beijing with Ambassador Tony Browne and (standing) Tessa Duder and Dr Libby Limbrick. TESSA DUDER
Margaret with New Zealand journalist Charlotte Glennie, and (right) with the embassy cook and Tony Browne. TESSA DUDER
Famous Mahy animal images, perfected over decades, on countless personally signed books, autograph books or even shyly offered scraps of paper.
MARGARET MAHY PERSONAL COLLECTION
Notes
Guide to Notes
Archival and research sources
CCL/MMA
Christchurch City Libraries, Margaret Mahy Archive
DH/TD
David Hill, correspondence
JL/TD
Jack Lasenby, interview
MM
Files Margaret Mahy personal files
MM/TD
Margaret Mahy, interview
NF
Nagelkerke file
YM/TD
Yvonne Mackay, interview
Introduction
Two minutes later, he says DH/TD, 2004.
She’s eminently quotable David Hill, NZ Listener, 8 April 2000.
somehow detached from literature MM/TD, 2004.
a powerful hierarchy of genres Sturm, Terry, ed. ‘Introduction’ to The Oxford History of New Zealand Literature in English, Auckland: Oxford University Press, 1991.
an international leader Gibbons, Joan. ‘Family Relationships in the Stories of Margaret Mahy’, Papers — Explorations in Children’s Literature, Vol. 5: No. 1, April, 1994.
the amount of useful and extensive critical commentary Hebley, Diane. The Power of Place: Landscape in New Zealand Children’s Fiction, 1970–1989, Dunedin: Otago University Press, 1998.
in every way, a serious writer O’Brien, Greg. Moments of Invention: Portraits of 21 New Zealand Writers, Auckland: Heinemann Reed, 1988.
Frame is a poet in all of her work Williams, Mark. ‘A variety of voices,’ in Under Review: A selection from New Zealand Books 1991–1996, edited by Lauris Edmond, Harry Ricketts, Bill Sewell, Christchurch: Lincoln University Press and Daphne Brassell Associates, 1997.
a great deal of this taped Edmond, Murray, ‘Interview with Margaret Mahy, Landfall 41(2), June 1987.
suggested that this rather slim O’Brien, Gregory. ‘Imagine the imagination: Margaret Mahy’s Dissolving Ghost’, book review ‘Branching Out’ reprinted from NZ Books, August 2000, in After Bathing at Baxter’s: essays and notebooks, Wellington: Victoria University Press, 2002.
I wouldn’t be backward Dunlop, Celia. ‘The stranger ghost’, NZ Listener 128 (2651), 14 January 1991.
but she’s an exquisite writer Sarti, Antonella. Spiritcarvers: interviews with eighteen writers from New Zealand. Cross/cultures Series, Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1998.
I imagined these two figures O’Brien, Gregory, op. cit.
Who wants all that old MM/TD
talked a lot MM/TD
Part One
a collapsed caldera type of crater MM, ‘A New Zealand Writer Speaks’, in Brave New World: International Understanding through Books, ed. by Wendy and John Birman, Western Library Studies, 11, Proceedings of the Combined Conference on Youth Literature, Perth, 1985, Perth: Curtin University of Technology, 1988.
I spent thirty-seven ibid.
a beautiful damaged country MM speech, c. 1995, unpublished. (MM Files)
looking energetically inwards MM, ‘Looking inward, exploring outward’, Foreign Correspondence in The Horn Book, March–April, 2004.
the warmest and most vivid evocation Fitzgibbon, Tom with Barbara Spiers. Beneath Southern Skies: New Zealand Children’s Book Authors and Illustrators, Auckland: Ashton Scholastic, 1993.
cry ‘Earthquake!’ Gilderdale, Betty. Introducing Margaret Mahy, Auckland: Viking Kestrel, 1987, Puffin 1988.
the ground twist MM, ‘A Place in the World: the impact of childhood reading’, c. 1992. (unpublished, MM Files)
sometimes you can swim in the river Sarti, Antonella, op. cit.
Her overwhelming memories of MM, ‘“I’ll say this bit”’ in Grand Stands: New Zealand writers on being grandparents, edited by Barbara Else, Auckland: Vintage, 2000.
terribly keen to have a MM, ‘Beginnings’, Landfall 193, Autumn, 1997.
perhaps with some justice MM, Else, Barbara, op. cit.
He wrote letters to Kedgley, Sue, ed. Our Own Country: Leading New Zealand writers talk about their writing and their lives, Auckland: Penguin, 1989.
His voice speaks MM, Else, Barbara, op. cit.
Dear Little Margaret Mahy Gilderdale, Betty, op. cit.
it now seems as receiving a written greeting MM, ‘Beginnings’, Landfall 193.
literary in an academic way MM, ‘A Place in the World’.
rather patronised by her children MM, Else, Barbara, op. cit.
automatically meant that she MM, Notes of a Bag Lady, Montana Estates Essay Series, editor Lloyd Jones, Wellington: Four Winds Press, 2003.
a homemaker in an interesting way MM/TD
a respectable one MM, ‘A Place in the World’
My father was actually a bridge builder MM, ‘A New Zealand Writer Speaks’, in Brave New World: International Understanding through Books, ed. by Wendy and John Birman, Western Library Studies, 11, Proceedings of the Combined Conference on Youth Literature, Perth, 1985, Perth: Curtin University of Technology, 1988.
I did watch bridges appear MM unpublished speech c. 1995. (MM Files)
We used to travel round Sarti, Antonella, op. cit.
a natural philosopher MM/TD
Wartime introduced the young MM/TD
a fairly plain childhood Kedgley, Sue, op. cit.
I was always the little red hen MM, ‘Beginnings’, Landfall 193.
You be Stan Kerr ibid.
At the
Regent Theatre in Whakatane MM, ‘Taking humour seriously’, in Reading Forum NZ 2, New Zealand Reading Association, 1996. Paper presented to 22nd NZ Reading Association Conference on Reading, New Plymouth, 1996.
I was a child strongly affected MM, Surprising Moments: The Inaugural Margaret Mahy Award Lecture, Auckland: New Zealand Children’s Book Foundation, 1991.
There she vividly remembers Introduction, in Fabulous and Familiar — Children’s reading in New Zealand, past and present, Wellington: National Library of New Zealand, 1991.
People didn’t believe MM/TD
I once got the strap NZ Book Council website, Author files.
I used to play by myself Kedgley, Sue, op. cit.