Patricia Marian Bell

Ngāti Maru, Ngāi Te Rangi, Ngāti Maniapoto, Arawa

1932 -

Patricia was born in Auckland of Māori, Swedish and French descent and was educated at primary schools in Tauranga, Cambridge, Ongarue, Wharepapa, Albany and Motumaoho. Her secondary education was at Hamilton Technical College. She has worked as a dentist’s nurse, travel clerk and housewife. From 1970-1972 she lived in Africa while her husband was contract teaching at the University of Zambia. She attended a writers’ school at the University of Zambia in April 1971 led by Professor David Cook of Makerere University, Uganda, and she participated in a writers’ school at the University of Cape Town in 1972 where South African novelist Nadine Gordimer was the principal speaker. In 1977 she began her writing career after living in Zambia and travelling in various southern African countries; these countries are the settings for many of her poems and stories. She has had over twenty poems published in magazines and anthologies since the late 1970s in New Zealand, Australia, India and the United States. Her work has appeared in Into the World of Light, Provisions, NZ Listener, Landfall, Poetry Australia, Ariel and NZ Monthly Review. A volume of poems African Images, and Other Places is in preparation, as is her novel The New Afrique. She has also written short stories and children’s writing.

Biographical sources

  • Correspondence from Patricia Bell on 4 Nov. 1992, 6 Aug. 1997, and 18 Mar. 2004.
  • Into the World of Light: An Anthology of Māori Writing. Ed. Witi Ihimaera and D. S. Long. Auckland, N.Z.: Heinemann, 1982. 95.
  • Landfall 33.1 (1979): 95.
  • Te Ao Mārama: Contemporary Māori Writing. Comp. and ed. Witi Ihimaera. Contributing ed. Haare Williams, Irihapeti Ramsden and D. S. Long. Vol. 5: Te Torino: The Spiral. Auckland, N.Z.: Reed, 1996. 34.

    Poetry

  • "Ruins." New Zealand Monthly Review 206.19 (1978-79): 12.
  • Bell observes how the crumbling ruins of the ancient tombs of Kundushi have now become "[a] place of Sunday lunches / With iced beer, transistors / And the plausible cliches / Of learned expatriates."
  • "Dar Es Salaam." New Zealand Monthly Review 206.19 (1978-79): 16.
  • A brief portrait of amputee Solomon Mwanza begging on the side of the pavement.
  • "Kuia." Landfall 33.1 (1979): 29. Rpt. in Into the World of Light: An Anthology of Māori Writing. Ed. Witi Ihimaera and D. S. Long. Auckland, N.Z.: Heinemann, 1982. 94-95.
  • A description of an elderly woman sitting by the range preparing cigarettes for her sickly husband who is old and irritable. The old man has become a spectator of life and waits for the inevitability of death.
  • "Tangi." Landfall 33.1 (1979): 29.
  • A picture of old women mourning and keening by an open coffin on the marae.
  • "The Road Leads Over the Hill." Landfall 33.1 (1979): 29.
  • A poem contrasting the access and mobility symbolised by the road with the entrapment of the madman "[t]rapped in a straitjacket / Of monstrous vision."
  • "Sentence." Landfall 33.1 (1979): 31.
  • The poet describes with precision the room and setting of what appears to be the last meal of Mary Segal. The poem ends with the arrival of "white-gloved Philamon" who "[o]n another day" will be the executioner.
  • "Petite Manoeuvre." Landfall 35.1 (1981): 56.
  • This poem focuses on the unspoken interaction between two people. The speaker is cognisant of every movement of the other person whose only response appears to be through body movements and the widening and darkening of eye pupils.
  • "Coup De Grace." Landfall 35.1 (1981): 56.
  • In this short poem the poet conveys a sense of the timelessness and quietude of an old people’s home as the residents, "old women / Hair as fine as thistledown / Wait the visiting hour." The visitor may be death itself.
  • "Maungapohatu." Into the World of Light: An Anthology of Māori Writing. Ed. Witi Ihimaera and D. S. Long. Auckland, N.Z.: Heinemann, 1982. 95.
  • The poet describes a scene of deserted huts covered with lichen and rust and inhabited by the "rising wind" and "solitary fantail".
  • "Selina." NZ Listener 1 Dec. 1984: 11.
  • The old woman contemplating the vicissitudes of her longevity and longing to die, musters new strength and vision to "plant the beans again."
  • "Tasman in New Zealand." NZ Listener 1 Feb. 1986: 40.
  • In this retelling of the skirmish between Dutch sailors from Heemskerck and Zeehaen, and Māori at Golden Bay in December 1642, Bell contrasts the carefree nonchalance on board the ships with the tension in the village.
  • "Bayly’s Journal." Ariel V (1986). Rpt. in Wairarapa Times-Age Sat. 24 May, 1986. Rpt. in Te Ao Mārama: Contemporary Māori Writing. Comp. and ed. Witi Ihimaera. Contributing ed. Haare Williams, Irihapeti Ramsden and D. S. Long. Vol. 5: Te Torino: The Spiral. Auckland, N.Z.: Reed, 1996. 34-35.
  • Beginning and ending in the form of a diary entry dated 21 December 1773, this poem presents a background to the events surrounding the killing of ten crew members of the Adventure which accompanied the Resolution on Captain Cook’s second voyage to the Pacific Ocean. Set in the Queen Charlotte Sound, the poem starts with a benign description of the native bush and birdlife of the Sound and describes the routine ship life of the Adventure crew which is suddenly interrupted with a portrayal of the aftermath of the killing of the crew members. This poem won a poetry competition run by the Triton College of America.
  • "Marion’s Road." Poetry Australia: North and South: New Poetry from New Zealand 110 (1987): 57-59.
  • Bell writes in a simple narrative style about the clash between French sailors weakened by scurvy and local Māori. The setting of this poem is when Marion du Fresne landed in the Bay of Islands with his two ships Le Mascarin and Marquis de Castries in June 1772.
  • "Spencer’s Tarawera Mission, 1844-70." Ariel VI (1987). Rpt. in Te Ao Mārama: Contemporary Māori Writing. Comp. and ed. Witi Ihimaera. Contributing ed. Haare Williams, Irihapeti Ramsden and D. S. Long. Vol. 5: Te Torino: The Spiral. Auckland, N.Z.: Reed, 1996. 36.
  • The poet writes of the last remaining vestiges of CMS missionary Seymour Spencer’s Christian mission at Tarawera from 1844-70 - the graves of his children "Alma and her brothers", the introduced flowers, orchard and the brick chimney slowly collapsing.
  • "Dress Circle, Act Three." NZ Listener 5 Mar. 1988: 13.
  • A poem chronicling the timeless cycle of the natural world and the onset of old age and its incumbent aches and pains.
  • "Another Time." Provisions (Orbit 3) (1989). [A selection from the 1988 NZ Poetry Society Competition] Rpt. in Te Ao Mārama: Contemporary Māori Writing. Comp. and ed. Witi Ihimaera. Contributing ed. Haare Williams, Irihapeti Ramsden and D. S. Long. Vol. 5: Te Torino: The Spiral. Auckland, N.Z.: Reed, 1996. 34.
  • The poet contrasts the domestic scene of a woman gardening in a freesia patch with the garden’s earlier history as the site of a Ngāti Toa battle and the avenging of an insult.