Searching for meaning in remembrance. Never again has never been more dead in the water. ANZAC Day was once attached at its side. Has it slid away from never again, and what would that signify ?
- Karen Sole
- 5 days ago
- 5 min read
In Aotearoa-New Zealand a multitude of opinions and emotions adhere to ANZAC Day. In my 'boomer' childhood in a small town it stood with Christmas Day and the A & P Show as big cultural events.
Aotearoa-New Zealand used to be just New Zealand, and that country was the uncomfortable, colonised, obedient child of the UK, and more specifically the Queen, Elizabeth II. English (Pommy) friends of my parents referred to England as Home. More oddly, some people born in NZ who had never set foot in it, also referred to England as Home. Patriotism meant to England, not to New Zealand. The congealed blood of dead NZ men in Europe, Turkiye, Africa and the Pacific glued the myth to the collective psyche. The Maori Battalion was co-opted into the war, at huge cost of life, especially in some tribal areas.
The transition from little-England-plain-colonised-New Zealand to Aotearoa-New Zealand has been long, hard fought for, tragically repudiated by our current tripartite coalition. In a very serious miscalculation of probable opposition, Luxon’s toll for being Prime Minister was to make vicious concessions to the leaders of his coalition partner’s around Te Tiriti O Waitangi (The Treaty of Waitangi) and the human rights and rights of Maori as the indigenous people of Aotearoa. Attempts at dismantling the protections enshrined in the Treaty produced huge marches and assemblies across the country. The Governing Coalition’s push back against Maori language in its Departments, on road signs, in education and in general has backfired. The defiant joy people feel in using te reo Maori is an almost palpable mist surrounding people speaking it as we go about our daily lives. This may mean only the few most adopted words and phrases are incorporated into greetings and small exchanges, but what a standout!
Alongside this run changes in attitudes to ANZAC Day. A feeling that there were wars here, on this land, that have not been acknowledged. Because many people were killed to achieve this (former) outpost of Britain. A feeling that ANZAC Day must be a day to call for peace, not to bathe in warlike waters, while still respectfully remembering the people who died in the two World Wars. A feeling that we also need to remember Korea, Vietnam, and Iraq, and so on to today. How can we frame ANZAC Day 25 April, 2026 against the backdrop of never again and the genocidal, conquering, colonial barrage by Israel in Gaza, the West Bank, Lebanon, and a few days ago, even Syria’s borders being breached by IDF men? And the other wars currently being undertaken?
Immediate Post WWII ANZAC Day remembrances in small town Taranaki
My feeling was that the Day was special. My knowledge was that it was something to do with The War. My impulse was to put on my best dress - always the one made especially for A & P Show Day - join my sister and the hundreds of people who walked to town and to the Opera House. We headed for ‘upstairs’ so we could look down on everyone, including the old men who took the stage to talk for a long time in terms I did not understand at all, only the sense that if we did this, there would not be other catastrophic wars in future. Guaranteed.
That was a hot period for ANZAC Day. Then, later it cooled off, until a fairly strong revival under the various reframes mentioned above. In fact, I must only have got on board a few times, between when my sister and I were able to go alone until high school.
Later, I became aware that my paternal grandfather and two of his brothers fought in WWI. Miraculously, all three returned. Pop was wounded at the Somme, sent to Scotland to train other men to do war’s bidding. He never spoke of it, my mother said. When he was around 90, he was interviewed by a small provincial newspaper with another veteran in his the home town, Marton. What was reported was not pretty. Pop did not join the RSA, believing it to be war-mongering. In 1933 when he had six children, the house burned down. No loss of life, but everything else was gone. Pop rode his bike to the office of the RSA to appeal for immediate assistance for his family. Their response was that they only helped the truly destitute.
I have imagined my great grandmother seeing her three beloved sons off at the railway station, not knowing when or if she would see them again. I imagine the agony of the years in between, the not knowing, the lack of communication - I suppose. Maybe infrequent letters. As a Family Constellations practitioner, I wonder how that experience has entered the flow of the family river, and how it joins the collective experience of war and its concomitant lashing of populations around the world, and how it has not stopped. Ever.
For several years I have been painting one or sometimes two pieces on or near ANZAC Day. This year I have made four ANZAC Day paintings. They are necessarily symbolic. They are necessarily my expression of a range of emotions. They are a reflection on the horrors of war, of colonialism, of the collective trauma we all experience even when we are geographically far away from the frontline or the fall of drones. If you want to see the 2026 ANZAC Day paintings go to www.solekart.com
I would love to include some words of Francesca Albanese, urging us to consciously, intentionally continue to walk and be heard against the genocide in the Middle East, and recent pungent-sweet poems of Lucas Jones. You can find them everywhere online, and I recommend you do so. Instead, I am adding some words from WH Auden.
Decades ago, I had the great pleasure of sitting in the fourth row of a poetry reading, somewhere in Edinburgh. Yevgeny Yevtushenko and WH Auden read. Somebody else replaced Wole Soyinka, who was unable to travel, and there was a fourth person but I have forgotten who they were. Up close, Auden’s face was exquisitely, beautifully finely lined, and clearly unforgettable. Here is the first stanza of his poem September 1, 1939, which references the invasion of Poland and the start of WWII.
September 1, 1939 W. H. Auden 1907 –1973 I sit in one of the dives On Fifty-second Street Uncertain and afraid As the clever hopes expire Of a low dishonest decade: Waves of anger and fear Circulate over the bright And darkened lands of the earth, Obsessing our private lives; The unmentionable odour of death Offends the September night.
From Wikipedia "September 1, 1939" is a poem by W. H. Auden written shortly after the German invasion of Poland, which would mark the start of World War II. It was first published in The New Republic issue of 18 October 1939, and in book form in Auden's collection Another Time (1940).
I may come back and add to this piece!
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