Albert Wendt

Albert Wendt Poems

More rat than bird,
more superstition than fox,
you hang from that banyan
...

Prologue
Inside us the dead,
like sweet-honeyed tamarind pods
...

Albert Wendt Biography

Albert Wendt ONZ CNZM (born 1939) is a Samoan poet and writer who also lives in New Zealand. Among his works is Leaves of the Banyan Tree (1979). Albert Wendt was born in Apia, Samoa. Wendt is of German heritage through his great-grandfather from his patrilineal ancestry, which he reflected it in some of his poetry works. He studied at Ardmore Teacher's College and at the Victoria University of Wellington, graduating with an M.A. in History. His Master's thesis was about the Mau, Sāmoa's independence movement from colonialism during the early 1900s (decade). His thesis was entitled Guardians and Wards: A study of the origins, causes and the first two years of the Mau in Western Sāmoa. He returned in 1965 to Western Samoa, becoming headmaster of Samoa College. In 1974 he moved to Fiji, where he taught at the University of the South Pacific. In 1977 Wendt returned home to set up the University of the South Pacific Center in Sāmoa. He worked closely with the literary journal Mana, and edited in 1975 collections of poems from Fiji, Western Samoa, the New Hebrides (now Vanuatu), and the Solomon Islands. Wendt's epic Leaves of the Banyan Tree (1979) won the 1980 New Zealand Book Awards. He was appointed to the first chair in Pacific literature at the University of the South Pacific in Suva. In 1988 he took up a professorship of Pacific studies at the University of Auckland. In 1999 Wendt was visiting Professor of Asian and Pacific Studies at the University of Hawaii. In 2001 he was made Companion of the New Zealand Order of Merit for his services to literature. In the 2013 Queen's Birthday Honours he was appointed a member of the Order of New Zealand.)

The Best Poem Of Albert Wendt

Flying-Fox

More rat than bird,
more superstition than fox,
you hang from that banyan
branch like a deflated black
umbrella and, when you flap
through the sky across a waxen
moon and the dead rise up
to haunt me, you're more
real than Batman.

With your razor-sharp teeth
you eat the ripe mangoes
and pawpaw in my plantation;
but wait until I catch you:
I'm going to skin you, gut you,
roast you, and eat you.
I'll enjoy the eating because
I'll be chewing Batman,
Count Dracula, and all superstitions
about vampires.

Albert Wendt Comments

yolenda 23 September 2020

could not find one of your poem ever so maybe

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