Albert Wendt


Albert Tuaopepe Wendt is a Samoan poet and writer who lives in New Zealand. Among his works is Leaves of the Banyan Tree, published in 1979.

Biography

Albert Wendt was born in Apia, Samoa. He is of German heritage through his great-grandfather from his patrilineal ancestry. In 1988, Albert Wendt took up a professorship of English at the University of Auckland, the first person of Pacific ancestry to hold a professorial chair in New Zealand. In a 2002 interview, Wendt would describe his family heritage as "totally Samoan" even though he had a German surname, but did not explicitly deny his German heritage, which he has referenced in a number of his poetic works.
In 1952, Wendt was honoured with a scholarship to attend the New Plymouth Boys' School in New Zealand, from which he graduated. After this, he studied at Ardmore Teacher's College and at the Victoria University of Wellington, graduating with an M.A. in History. His Master's thesis was about the Mau, Samoa's independence movement from colonialism during the first decade of the 1900s. His thesis was entitled Guardians and Wards: A study of the origins, causes and the first two years of the Mau in Western Samoa.
Wendt returned in 1965 to Samoa, becoming headmaster of Samoa College. In 1974 he moved to Fiji, where he taught at the University of the South Pacific. There, he worked closely with the literary journal Mana, and edited in 1975 collections of poems from Fiji, Samoa, the New Hebrides, and the Solomon Islands. In 1977 Wendt returned home to set up the University of the South Pacific Center in Samoa.
Wendt's epic Leaves of the Banyan Tree won the 1980 New Zealand Book Awards. He was appointed to the first chair in Pacific literature at the University of the South Pacific in Suva. In 1988, he took up a professorship of Pacific studies at the University of Auckland. In 1999, Wendt was visiting Professor of Asian and Pacific Studies at the University of Hawaii. In the 2001 New Year Honours, he was appointed a Companion of the New Zealand Order of Merit, for services to literature. In the 2013 Queen's Birthday Honours, he was appointed a member of the Order of New Zealand.

Documentary

Wendt is the subject of a documentary, The New Oceania, made in New Zealand by Point of View Productions. Directed by Shirley Horrocks, the film screened at the New Zealand International Film Festival and Hawaii International Film Festival in 2005, TVNZ 2006 and ABC Australia in 2007.

Awards and honours