Wendy Clarke - Working With Words
She’s now passing on a lifelong passion for poetry and reading to future generations with works published and the first of her plays performed locally this week, but Wendy Clarke’s talents haven’t always been recognised.
Growing up in Invercargill, the eldest of four kids, Wendy’s dad managed the Southland Phosphate Works where the family lived. “The sulphuric acid plant used to explode periodically and Mum would lock us inside with towels sealing the windows.”
Her mother fostered her love of poetry and books, taking the kids to Invercargill Library every Saturday morning, where renowned librarian Elizabeth Millar reigned supreme. “She had such a positive effect on so many Southland children,” says Wendy.
However, her mother didn’t succeed at passing on her champion swimming genes. “I was useless, and we had a very high-powered coach with a large stick. He’d push your head under if you weren’t trying hard enough.” Wendy, in her white bathing cap with green lilies, spent much of the lessons shivering poolside for chattering, with her teeth now doing all the work.
A prefect and head librarian at Southland Girls’ High, a rather intimidating male careers advisor told her she couldn’t possibly be a journalist as her 75 percent School Certificate English pass wasn’t an ‘A’. “He said, ‘Anyway, it’s a very hard career for a woman. You should be a teacher or a nurse’, so teacher it was.”
Wendy loved Otago University life, taking her first teaching job at Portobello School where the staff kept trying to marry her off to local fishermen or farmers.
During a stint teaching in Invercargill she began dating now husband of 30 years David Clarke. “He had two gold earrings and nice long, curly hair. We met at (former NZ DOC director) Lou Sanson’s country and western flat party in Gala Street. The house was full of hay bales.”
During three years of travel Wendy nervously drove rental Mercedes cars to rich Saudi Arabian visitors, manoeuvring her way along four-lane motorways, one grateful customer tipping her 50 pounds. She waitressed in a Swiss ski village where teenage Saudi Arabian students attending Swiss Finishing Schools turned up in their Porsches and Lamborghinis, and French guests fed their pooches at the restaurant table. Taught how to disarm students carrying knives and ready to push the alarm button at the lower socioeconomic London school where she worked, Wendy felt for the Pakistani girls whom she was told to ‘teach embroidery’. “We took them on the tube to see the Thames and have lunch at a pub instead.”
Back in NZ in the 1980s building boom they settled in Queenstown buying 2ha at Speargrass Flat for $50,000 and were mocked by their friends. “They called it The Camel Farm and it’s now The Golden Triangle,” says Wendy. David built their first home there and Izzy and Hamish were born in the 1990s. They eventually subdivided, only selling their final home there, with its beautiful gardens, last year to move into Arrowtown.
After being given a start at St Joseph’s School, Wendy taught at Arrowtown – a connection that has lasted 29 years. Given a free reign on the creative writing programme by principal Helen Turner 20 years ago, Wendy completed a dissertation on poetry and rhyme extramurally. On a mission to prove that teaching children poetry didn’t have to include rhyme, Wendy wrote resource books - ‘Poetry in The Classroom’, still selling nationally and internationally.
Inspired by Arrowtown School’s ginger cat, Mango, Wendy wrote a children’s book in 2017 which the school PTA published as a fundraiser. Junior children did the illustrations. Mango has sold nearly a thousand copies and raised thousands of dollars for the school.
One of those instrumental in saving the Arrowtown Flower Show, which celebrates its 100th anniversary in September, Wendy is a former chair and has served on that committee for 25 years. She’s also been involved with Arrowtown Preschool, Arrowtown Autumn Festival and Arrowtown RSA.
With writing her first love, Wendy has had poetry published in school journals and national poetry publications, also winning several short story competitions, including the Winter Festival Competition in the 1990s. “(Broadcaster) Maggie Barry judged that and I bought the most amazing black boots from Goddess with the $500 prizemoney.” She’s also won the Bannockburn Across the Bridge Poetry Competition and placed third in The Mirror Short Story Competition.
However, it’s having her upcoming play performed in Remarkables Theatre’s Pint-Sized Plays this week that she’s been most excited about. “I’m the least competitive person in the world, but I’m just pathetically excited about seeing a play that I wrote acted out on stage by the likes of Mike Legge.”
While Wendy is only relief teaching in Arrowtown now, she has three part-time jobs and a very busy life. “Sometimes it’s difficult to find some head space so I love to get away to our wee stone cottage in Ophir and just be in the mountains where it’s very quiet.”
