New Zealand poet Sam Hunt Photo: Supplied
In a 2021 conversation, New Zealand poet Sam Hunt spoke to Trevor Reekie about music, mortality and creativity while sharing some of his favourite songs.
After a 52-year run on stages, Sam Hunt doesn't "go on the road" anymore.
These days, his charismatic readings are performed mostly to the animals who share his Kāpiti Coast property.
"I go downstairs.... and my only audience are the cattle and the birds, the pūkekos. They seem to be quite used to it. There's a sheep that I'm sure knows all my poems."
Apart from being "very fond of a few old mates", Hunt says he can't actually stand poetry or poets much.
Although he's been penning poetry since the age of seven, he says the phrase 'writing a poem' doesn't describe his creative process.
"I hear a poem and so I won't forget it I scribble it down … It's very like recalling a dream - it's from some part of the brain that's pretty connected, I think."
As a young man, Hunt toured as a performing poet for five years and then gave up "the road" indefinitely after his first child Tom was born.
"I worked in the sawmill ... took about two years off. I wasn't sure whether I was going to go back on the road. I wasn't worried about it.
"Then my old friend Gary McCormick came along, I've got Gary to thank, and it was time to get out of the slippers and get my boots on."
Now, several years into retirement, Hunt is not in the best health.
He says death - the subject of the recent poem 'This Way', which he reads in this interview - is something he's curious about and even looks forward to.
"It's one thing that everyone's going to do … As David Kilgour said to me 'Look, nothing wrong with being dead. A lot of people I admire most are dead'."
In the meantime, though, Hunt says he still loves being alive and is very happy spending time at his home in Pukerua Bay.
"At times things fall apart. But so far ... they sort of come right, too.
"I have times, like most people have, when you're not so happy, But when I wake up, if I don't have too big of a hangover or something, I'm ready to go for the day... I don't go far."
Sam Hunt played:
Bob Dylan - Most of the Time
Candi Staton.- I'll Sing a Love Song to You
David Kilgour - Fine
Barry Saunders - Holy Morning
