Auckland Museum providing a place to remember Christchurch – Wednesday 22 Feb 2012
Aucklanders are being invited to commemorate the one year anniversary of the Christchurch earthquake at Auckland War Memorial Museum tomorrow.

On February 22 the museum will run the following commemorative activity and collect donations for Christchurch:

We Will Remember – Christchurch Earthquake Commemorations
Wednesday 22 February, Grand Foyer, Auckland War Memorial Museum

Midday Performance by Quartet featuring Christchurch musicians
12.30pm Reading by Christchurch author Fiona Farrell
12.40pm Comments from Director Roy Clare and Sir Don McKinnon
1251pm 2 minute silence
Bell tolls
1pm When A City Falls documentary screening (entry by donation)

Collections for Christchurch will be taken throughout the day

“We are aware that many Aucklanders will be looking for a place to remember the lives that were lost and the destruction of so much of the city and its communities. Auckland is also home to a significant number of people who have moved from Christchurch over the last 12 months and we want to offer a place for them to come,” says Director Roy Clare.

“The museum is a place of memorial and a place for reflection and we owe a debt of recognition to the people of Christchurch and to this great city that has been brought to its knees. At last year’s memorial service former Director Sir Don McKinnon pledged that the people of Christchurch would not be forgotten by Auckland War Memorial Museum and we recognise that even once the rebuild of the city is complete, the people will be decades in the healing.”

Christchurch author Fiona Farrell will read from her unreleased book The Quake Year and The Broken Book.

“The Suitcase (from The Broken Book) really means a lot to me now as friends begin to move away. More even than when I originally wrote it.”

The Suitcase
When we leave, we take the city
with us. Her bandaged buildings
and her gappy streets lurching
like some old gal who has been
knocked about. Her broken teeth,
black eye. Her shops with their
empty shelves. Her sewers and
their secret, soggy shambles.

We run away from her. Cross
over to the safe side where the
centre holds. Pretty cities
where marigolds will live
for ever. We breathe the scent
of white sheets in a quiet hotel.
But when the suitcase opens,
it’s all there: bricks, the lost
dog, the old gal wheezing her
crazed song down a broken
alley. Something about dust
and ashes and how things
fall. We catch the whiff of
her among our folded socks.

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