This poem was written in response to all of the support I’ve received recently, and these pieces in particular; essa + ECHIDNA: In Which a Friend Finally Gives Back & Aroha for essa. And to Lily Holloway thank you so much for everything. ______________________________________________ Naakahi short for Hinenaakahirua yeah they’re a they/them bitch nowa … More Naakahi responds to the love that has been shown them
I read Tayi’s work for the first time; it is the poem ‘Blood Pacts’ from the first issue of Starling, a short and heart-breaking look at a relationship between what feels like siblings or a woman talking to her past self. Dark text on a grey screen late in the night, more reading to see … More Finding Myself in Poūkahangatus; my time with Tayi at the IIML
Something that I was trying achieve with this poem, was that blur that feeling of looking back at a memory that you can’t quite realise. There are a whole host of stories present in this poem, ones that don’t necessarily fit together, from the origin of the kuumara to the arrival of Tainui waka in … More ransack annotations 5: One of the Great Ocean-Going Canoes
I thought about doing an end-of-year list of poems I loved from 2019 then got a bit overwhelmed by how much good stuff there is [however I did talk about some poems I really loved from this year on this poetry shelf post, here] so I’m sticking to one poem (this might be the start … More on Simone Kaho’s work in Takahē 95
fetal There is the sense of life being cut short. A sense of things being forced into different shapes. I think it works as a foreshadowing of the ‘Con-ception’ a piece further on in the book. Here is the risk of life. I like its form a lot I like the page to act as … More ransack annotations 4: fetal
the nonbinary individual So this started out as a lyric essay and it is the first of three parts that kind of divide the book in two, ‘the nonbinary individual’, ‘enby’ and ‘takatāpui’ kind of relate a moving closer to te Ao Māori and the body. Anyways I get ahead of myself; ‘the nonbinary individual’ … More ransack annotations 3: the nonbinary individual
Note on the title of the book: it comes from the opening epigraph and took me ages to figure out and keep – I had some other titles such as bullet to binary which is a reference to the American band mewithoutYou (who I do reference in the book somewhere – I’ll point it out) … More ransack annotations two
Blog posts that reflect on some or all of the poems in my debut poetry collection ransack. This is really not going to make much sense if you haven’t read the book – sorry. Also if I try and polish all of these posts then I won’t write any of them so expect confusing sentence … More ransack annotations one: a start
essa may ranapiri 