Teremoana Sparks Pehimana

Teremoana Sparks was born at Te Puke and was educated at Tokomaru Bay Māori School, Te Teko Māori School, Eastern Hutt Primary School, Hutt Intermediate and Hutt Valley High. Teremoana has worked in the Wellington Telephone Exchange, studied for two years at Victoria University and attended Wellington Teachers’ College from 1962-1964 where she began publishing poetry and literary articles in Ako Pai, the Wellington Teachers’ College Magazine. Teremoana has graduated with a B.A. in English from Victoria University and an M.A. in English from Waikato, and was working on another Masters degree in Sociology at Auckland University for a period of time. Teremoana has taught in a number of Māori schools including Te Teko Primary School, special schools and secondary schools. From 1968-72 she took part in an expedition to the Cook Islands and at the end of 1972 travelled to Hawaii and England. In 1973 she moved to Canberra and worked as a research assistant for Professor Wang Ling at ANU in Canberra. In 1978, she taught in an Aboriginal Reserve in Queensland. In the early 1980s she worked as a radio journalist for Timor Pacific News and Asia Pacific News in Canberra and in 1984 returned to New Zealand where she continued to write. She has spent a number of years working for the Dictionary of New Zealand Biography. Teremoana has attended creative writing workshops led by Fiona Kidman, Michael Morrissey, and Patricia Grace. In 1985 she participated in a summer writing school led by Charles Krute at the University of Otago. She has attended Nga Puna Waihanga hui and is a member of Te Ha, the Māori Writers’ Society. She led a writing workshop at the Hutt and has read her poetry in the Women’s Art Registry in Canberra, the opening of the Women’s Gallery in Wellington in 1979, the Poets’ Pub in the Hutt, the Island Bay Arts Festival in 1987, the Women’s Book Festivals in 1989, the Wellington City Art Gallery, Tapu Te Ranga Marae, and at the 1987 SPANS conference at Massey University with other writers from Australia and the Pacific. After the Māori writers’ hui at Tapu Te Ranga Marae in April 1987, she produced a radio programme of Māori writers reading their stories with Fergus Dick of Radio New Zealand. She writes poetry and has written biographical essays in the Dictionary of New Zealand Biography. There are two poles in her writing: things she doesn’t like (Kiwiland); and things she loves (Aotearoa). She writes under the name Teremoana Sparks and Teremoana Pehimana. She has had poems published in Looking Backward.

Biographical sources

• Interview and phone conversation with Teremoana Pehimana 8 Aug. 1992, and 24 July 1998.