A Kind of Shelter Whakaruru-taha: an anthology of new writing for a changed world
edited by Witi Ihimaera and Michelle Elvy, Massey University Press, 2023

The blurb of A Kind of Shelter Whakaruru-taha (edited by Witi Ihimaera and Michelle Elvy), suggests the book is a ‘luminous hui between 68 writers and eight artists’, and it is exactly that. It’s an anthology of precious connections, copious and fertile returns, sweet and thoughtful rewards. It is a book to savour and to reside within, to share and to step out from. It is a book I will review for you in the winter months but, in the meantime, nine poets have kindly read their poems in the book for you.

Massey University Press page

The Readings

Chris Tse

Chris Tse reads ‘How am I going to make it right?’

Vana Manasiádis | Βάνα Μανασιά

Vana Manasiadis reads ‘If we give up flying it doesn’t mean we can’t speak to each other as if countries or scan our genomic sequences for travel to the flats’

Reihana Robinson

Reihana Robinson reads ‘Inside / Outside’

Hinemoana Baker

Hinemoana Baker reads ‘House at Staytrue Bay’

Michelle Elvy

Michelle Elvy reads ‘Arrival in Fatu Hiva’

Diane Brown

Diane Brown reads ‘Not Feeding the World Today’

Ian Wedde

Photo credit: Mischa Malane

Ian Wedde reads ‘Back in Action’

Sudho Rao

Sudho Rao reads ‘Coracle at a confluence’

Kiri Piahana Wong

Kiri Piahana-Wong reads ‘Ka mua, ka muri’

Chris Tse is New Zealand’s Poet Laureate for 2022-24. He is the author of three collections of poetry published by Auckland University Press: How to be Dead in a Year of Snakes (winner of the 2016 Jessie Mackay Award for Best First Book of Poetry), HE’S SO MASC, and Super Model Minority. He and Emma Barnes edited Out Here: An Anthology of Takatāpui and LGBTQIA+ Writers from Aotearoa (AUP, 2021).

Vana Manasiádis | Βάνα Μανασιάδη was raised in Te Whanganui-a-Tara and Ātene Greece. She is the author of two narrative works of hybrid forms: Ithaca Island Bay Leaves: A Mythistorima (2009) and The Grief Almanac: A Sequel (2019). She was Ursula Bethell Writer in Residence in 2021, held the early summer residency at the Michael King Writer’s Centre in 2022, and now teaches Creative Writing at Te Whare Wānanga o Waitaha Canterbury University. 

Following a career in teaching and art education in Wellington, Reihana Robinson threw it all away for a life of homesteading, writing, art and environmental research, and living off grid in the Coromandel. She was the inaugural recipient of the Te Atairangikaahu Poetry Award and was selected for AUP’s New Poets 3 in 2008. Reihana has held artist residencies at the East West Center in Hawaii and at the Anderson Center, Minnesota. Reihana’s published poetry books are Aue Rona (Steele Roberts, 2012), a reimagining of the Māori myth of Rona and the moon; and Her Limitless Her (Mākaro Press, 2018). She is also author of The Killing Nation, New Zealand’s State-Sponsored Addiction to Poison 1080 (Off  the Common Books, 2017).

Hinemoana Baker (Ngāti Tukorehe, Ngāi Tahu, Kiritea) is a poet, songwriter, sound, artist and performer from Aotearoa currently living in Berlin, Germany. Her 2021 collection ‘Funkhaus’ (Te Herenga Waka Press) was shortlisted for the Ockham New Zealand Book Awards. It will be launched as a bilingual German/English edition in the September 2023 (Voland & Quist). Hinemoana is currently completing a PhD at the University of Potsdam.

Michelle Elvy is a writer and editor in Ōtepoti Dunedin. She edited, with Witi Ihimaera, A Kind of Shelter: Whakaruru-taha (Massey University Press, 2023). She has also co-edited, most recently, A Cluster of Lights: 52 Writers Then and Now (2023), Breach of All Size: Small stories on Ulysses, love and Venice (2022) and Ko Aotearoa Tātou | We Are New Zealand (2020). Her books include the everrumble (2019) and the other side of better (2021). Website

Diane Brown is a novelist, memoirist, and poet who runs her own creative writing school, Creative Writing Dunedin. Her publications include two collections of poetry – Before The Divorce We Go To Disneyland, and Learning to Lie Together; a novel, If The Tongue Fits, and verse novel, Eight Stages of Grace, a travel memoir, Liars and Lovers, a prose/poetic memoir, Here Comes Another Vital Moment and a poetic family memoir, Taking My Mother To The Opera. Her latest book is a long poetic narrative, Every Now and Then I Have Another Child, Otago University Press, 2020.  She is currently working on a collection of poetry.

Ian Wedde is a poet, novelist and essayist. He’s published sixteen collections of poetry, nine novels, a collection of stories, two collections of essays, a memoir, several art catalogues and monographs, and two Penguin anthologies of poetry. He was New Zealand Poet Laureate from 2011 to 2013. A new book of essays is in preparation with Te Herenga Waka/Victoria University Press.

Sudha Rao lives in Wellington and her first collection of poems On elephant’s shoulders was published in July 2022.

Kiri Piahana-Wong (Ngāti Ranginui, Chinese, English) is a poet, editor and the publisher at Anahera Press. Her first full-length collection, Night Swimming, was released in 2013 and a second, Give Me An Ordinary Day, is forthcoming. Kiri’s most recent project is two companion anthologies of contemporary Māori writing, Te Awa o Kupu and Ngā Kupu Wero, co-edited with Vaughan Rapatahana and Witi Ihimaera, due out from Penguin Random House in September.

The editors