I have been thinking a lot about the place of poetry in global catastrophe and the incomprehensible leadership in Aotearoa. How do we write? Read? Do we need comfort or challenge or both? In an ongoing series, poets respond to five questions. Today Tessa Keenan.

A World of Perpetual Longing

It looks like they touch when the cloud comes in and coats the mountains,
I know. This is what Tāwh wants you to believe. It’s actually just a curtain.
Think: holding a friend’s towel up in front of them while they get dressed
after swimming.

Think further: a steeple doesn’t leave behind anything that would need
tweezing out. Some days the ground freezes over and it is the sun that
eventually warms it. New species get names, conservationists increase the
population of kākāpō, buildings are assembled then moved on the back of
trucks. There has to be space, something to stand on, and something to
reach for. As a consequence, this is a world of perpetual longing. Nothing
can be said without breathing in thousands of years of desire. When you
tell me how you are happy to be home, and how when you were a kid you
escaped to the beach, running over grass to dodge the prickles then running
over sand to shorten the burn, your words are born from the thoughts of
those who longed for that before you.

Think further again: the sky was bland at the bus station. I stood outside
and waited for you to find a seat, yelled ‘Bye!’ when you did.
On my way home, I thought about the night before: climbing over you as
you sweated, reaching along the walls with eyes unblinking, trying to find
the light switch, your hands drawing dreams of lakes, wheels, and winds
on my skin as you slept, the last thing you whispered before falling asleep.
By the time you got to Whanganui it was blue as summer and the trees
stretched as if it was morning. They were so close to touching. I sat there
breathing and breathing.

Tessa Keegan, from ‘Pukapuka mapi / Atlas’ chapbook
in AUP New Poets 10, Auckland University Press, 2024

Has the local and global situation affected what or how or when you write poetry?

Tessa: Yes. I have found it difficult to be inspired to write anything in the last year. But I don’t view this as a bad thing. If anything right now I think we can focus on being readers and listeners if that’s all we can do. Or speaking out, even in the least poetic way.

I see a huge necessity right now to listen to and uplift voices (whether that be non-fiction or poetry or whatever form) that are seriously under threat. Throughout the genocide in Gaza (and all of the colonial history of the world for that matter), we have seen attempts to silence voices – poets are being martyred. If we cannot find the energy to write, we can read and share the words of Refaat Alareer, Heba Abu Nada, Inas al-Saqa, and so many others whose words of resistance have outlived them. And back here at home, we can focus on spreading and uplifting the voices of those who are speak about the effects of certain (most) decisions being made right now.

Resting, eating, reading, talking, thinking, and spending time in my communities: these are the lifelines for me at the moment.

Does place matter to you at the moment? An object, an attachment, a loss, an experience? A sense of home?

Tessa: Home matters to me at all times and is at the heart of my writing. I am in a constant state of full-body longing for my ahi kā in Taranaki. I am very fortunate to have grown up next to my whenua and in a whānau with a strong sense of identity. It’s not that far away, and I’ve got lots of whānau in Te Whanganui-a-Tara, but being away from home makes me need to write about it to be there.  I feel like I write about home when I’m not there and then write about anything else when I’m there.

Are there books or poems that have struck a chord in the past year? That you turn to for comfort or uplift, challenge or distraction.

Tessa: Ngāhuia te Awekōtuku’s memoir Hine Toa came out a couple of weeks ago. I think I embraced my copy for about 5 minutes before I even opened it. How do I even write about what her work means to me? Beyond just a poetry and literary level, Ngāhuia’s life and work is like a guidebook for the kind of ancestor I want to be. Takatāpui excellence. Her memoir is already my book of 2024.

I’ve been enjoying a lot of new local poetry in the recent months. Notably the books Killer Rack by Sylvan Spring and Plastic by Stacey Teague. Both are very different in tone but strike different chords with me personally. I love the strong focuses on music and queerness in Sylvan’s book, and the honest and spiritual elements of Stacey’s.

For one of my classes at uni last year, I read DMZ Colony by Don Mee Choi. It has to be the best collection of poetry (if you can even call it that) I’ve read. It’s a puzzle, history thesis, and artistic masterpiece.

What particularly matters to you in your poetry and in the poetry of others, whether using ear, eye, heart, mind – and/or anything ranging from the abstract and the absent to the physical and the present?

Tessa: I love poetry that, on its face, talks to you straight up. Poetry that has the rhythm and fluctuation of an ordinary conversation, and the words to match. But then when you look closer the words that are coming out of the person’s mouth are jumbled a bit, or are too repetitive, or do not sound real. Still, the words get at something so real and otherwise untouchable. I feel like I’m doing a bad job of explaining this. Maybe it’s like a poem that anxiously laughs the whole way through. Until that one last line that stabs you in the heart.

Some of my favourite poems are ‘Gender Buttons’ by Hannah Mettner, ‘This Room’ by John Ashbery, and ‘Monologue’ by Hone Tuwhare.

Is there a word or idea, like a talisman, that you hold close at the moment? For me, it is the word connection.

Tessa: I have been thinking a lot about ‘utopia’. With full awareness of the inherent negativity of that word. I think you can still turn it into a talisman. The idea of a utopia helps me believe that there are worlds we can achieve where everyone is safe and peoples rights are respected as a bare minimum.

I’ve found myself look for mini utopias in real life. Like being on a marae and and blobbing out on a mattress while you listen to someone talk about its history. Or spaces where queerness is so common, accepted, and represented (yes I am thinking about women’s football). I don’t mean this as a distraction from the dystopias we see and experience on a day to day basis. But that idea gives me inspiration and hope at the moment. We need to protect our mini utopias!

Tessa Keenan (Te Ātiawa) is from Taranaki and is now based in Pōneke. You can find her writing in various Aoteroa publications including AUP New Poets 10, Starling, and Pūhia.