Upcoming Event (London): My father prayed in Croatian

On the 18th of April David will be speaking at the New Zealand High Commission in London. Tickets (free) are available here. Press release reproduced below.

Istros Books and the British Croatian Society present an evening with poet David Howard:

The inspiration behind David's cycle of poems, Mate, is the history of Dalmatian immigrants to NZ in the early 20th century, who were mostly employed digging kauri gum for the roads in the North Island. Many of them ended up marrying Māori women and the name given to them, and their descendants, is 'Tarara".

The NZ poet David Howard wrote the poetic cycle 'Mate' based on this subject following on from a residency at the Writers’ House in Pazin, Croatia (where he now lives). Following receipt of a Creative New Zealand Resilience Grant, he was supported by the Dalmatian Cultural Society. The work's main critical influences are the masters and doctoral theses of Senka Bozic-Vrbancic, the latter expanded into Tarara: Croats and Māori in New Zealand: memory, belonging, identity (Otago University Press, 2008).