Lucy O’Hagan
Early in his memoir Native Son: The writer’s memoir, Witi Ihimaera introduced me to the idea that stories have a whakapapa. I had an image of a story travelling through generations of tellers and listeners, told in different places: a dinner table, a classroom, a wharenui, a road trip or perhaps as a whisper in a bed. And I imagine each teller and listener moulds that story into something that makes sense to them in their time and place.
I was recently told a metaphorical sort of story by my friend, the thoughtful and passionate GP, Nigel Thompson. It was a story that had been told to him by Richard Bolstad, who had been given the story by psychotherapist George Sweet. I don’t know Richard Bolstad at all, but if he is someone who passed a story from George to Nigel, I feel I would like him a lot.
Corpus is now taking a lengthy break over summer. Posts on the site will resume on an intermittent basis from March 2019. Due to other commitments and a lack of funding, we will be unable to keep up the pace of publishing three articles a week.
It’s been a big first year for Corpus. We have published 91 articles since launching the site on 30 May. Thank you to all our contributors.