Horse & Buggy Days

In Horse and Buggy, Allen borrows from 19th century colonial history texts, such as The Long White Cloud by W. Pember Reeves (1857-1932) and the Statistical, Historical, and Political Description of the Colony of the New South Wales by W.C. Wentworth (1790-1872). Their cold removed tone frames the British colonist as a philanthropic developer, revealing the prejudice embedded in national historiography. These two texts are in stark contrast with the poem that sits between them, In Mangere. Seen mostly from Onehunga. 1988, Robert Sullivan (b. 1967, Irish, Ngāpuhi) confronts the audience with the physical and temporal immediacy of colonial legacies.

Allen borrows the final quote from 1868 Les Chants des Maldoror by Comte de Lautréamont. This work was favoured by early 20th century Surrealists for its transgressive, violent and absurd themes. In this passage, Maldoror fervidly begs a child he had tortured for forgiveness. Allen omits Lautréamont’s authorship and places Maldoror’s ‘crocodile tears’ in the colonial context of Aotearoa, thus likening the domination of indigenous people and environments by settlers to the violent torture and affected apology represented by Maldoror’s text.

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