Kia ora e te whānau,

Please join us at Toi MAHARA to celebrate the launch
of Dinah Hawken’s new poetry collection,
Faces and Flowers: Poems to Patricia France
to be launched by Gregory O’Brien,
and the opening of the exhibition featuring Patricia France’s work.

Friday 20 September
5:30pm
Toi MAHARA
20 Mahara Place
Waikanae

🌻  RSVPs essential. Please RSVP to info@toimahara.nz 🌻

Dinah’s new book will be available for sale,
and drinks and nibbles will be on offer.

More Faces and Flowers events at Toi MAHARA

Floor talk by Heritage Curator Vicki Robson
2pm, Sunday 27 October

Poetry reading by Dinah Hawken
Dinah will be reading poems from her new book.
2pm, Sunday 3 November

Please note that seating is limited. Please arrive early to request a seat.

In Faces and Flowers, acclaimed poet Dinah Hawken responds to the works of Dunedin artist Patricia France, who began painting in her fifties while living at Ashburn Hall, a psychiatric institution in Dunedin. Patricia’s psychiatrist encouraged her to ‘paint out the past’ through her art, and she began in watercolour and gouache before moving on to oils. Her early abstracts evolved into vibrant compositions that often feature women, children, landscapes and flowers. Towards the end of her career her eyesight began to deteriorate, but she continued to paint.

Patricia France’s works have now been shown in more than 30 exhibitions throughout New Zealand – including, from 20 September to 8 December 2024, at Toi MAHARA, Waikanae.

In her intimate, unrhymed sonnets, Dinah Hawken addresses a friend she never met, seeking to make a connection across time with the artist and her world.

Dinah Hawken is one of New Zealand’s most celebrated poets. She was born in Hāwera in 1943 and trained as a physiotherapist, psychotherapist and social worker in New Zealand and the United States and has worked as a student counsellor and writing teacher at Te Herenga Waka—Victoria University of Wellington. Of her ten collections of poetry, four have been finalists for the New Zealand Book Awards. Her first book, It Has No Sound and Is Blue (1987), won the Commonwealth Poetry Prize for Best First Time Published Poet. Her latest poetry collection is Faces and Flowers: Poems to Patricia France (2024), and other recent collections are Sea-light (2021), longlisted for the Ockham New Zealand Book Awards, There Is No Harbour (2019), and Ocean and Stone (2015). Dinah lives in Paekākāriki.