Birdspeak, Arihia Latham, Anahera Press, 2023

You can hear Arihia read form the collection here.

(ii) Hiwa hopes

This morning in memory, my boots crunched my
name into the blades of grass frozen with yesterday’s
anxieties. Today I started asking for things from a
star and wondered if that was a bit entitled, a little
whiny. Hiwa-i-te-Rangi, the most likely star to take on
celebrity status as all of our human hopes flutter to the
edge of the atmosphere like floating coins. Wishing, she
was probably wishing we were better descendants. But
the hopes I had prised from the mitochondria of
my cells and drawn out of the chromosomes I hummed
with. Not interstellar but cellular. The hopes I had
were silent.

from ‘Takapō’

Each poetry review I write this year becomes a way of folding and refolding what a poem is and what a poem can do, in new and surprising shapes, like an origami boat ready to set sail.

Ah … the end of year looms and I am not going to get through all the must-read Aotearoa poetry books in my stack because origami reading and reviewing moves like a lake.

Arihia Latham’s debut poetry collection Birdspeak features the perfect cover with art by Natalie Couch. It is an alluring mix of cloud and bird, texture, mixed media, colour, harmonies, balance, depth. I am gazing deep and it is transcendental viewing as mood and connections surface.

A little like origami looking.

Arihia dedicates her collection to whānau and the dedication is poignant: “you are the sky and my safe landing place”. Her acknowledgement page underlines how her poetry nestles and is nurtured within a community of loved ones, other writers, readers, mentors. It is an important template, so very important at the moment.

The presence of te reo Māori enriches the unfolding sense of self, yes the relationships, along with the musicality of the line, braided narratives, the recalled and the imagined, the magnetism of place.

Think of the land as rhythm, think of our relationships with others as rhythm, and the rhythm of poetry becomes crucial. In Arihia’s deft writing hands, rhythm is storytelling, bird song, beginnings, breathings.

Think of the joy when you fall upon multi-layered poetry that draws you into a single lucid image, place or moment, into the braid, the weave. Arihia builds mood, muscle, meditative effects that lift me off the surface of my day.

Whānau is also a thematic presence as mother, daughter, son, granddaughter. It might be aroha, it might be mourning, it might be love-rage and violence, but whānau produce the pulse of writing. Writing would struggle to exist without them.

Think of balance, how poetry can be both physical and uplift, weight and lightness. How it can be “rubbed red hands” and “mana”. “The muddy bones of mountains” and “human hopes”. “Clean stockings” and “wave language”.

I experienced disillusionment in the day-long whānau
hui on the marae when we talked about taking the old
names back and leaving the one given by the church. And
the dust rises and settles, and I need to know my place
and my privilege. I am not here to step forward and tell
anyone they are colonised. I am here to step back and
listen carefully, to walk slowly, and to pull out the fry
bread when it is just puffy enough and golden brown.

from ‘Dust rises’

Above of all think of breath, because this is breath poetry. It is connecting breath, it is breath between sky and earth, time and place, this person and that person, this love and that loss, this heart and that heart and this heart.

I want to sit under a shady tree with eyes shut, hearing the bush bird song, and listen as Arihia reads the whole collection, listening as it arrives in sweet spiky succulent waves. This is poetry to breathe in and hold.

Arihia Latham (Kāi Tahu, Kāti Māmoe, Waitaha) is a writer, rongoā practitioner and cultural advisor. Her work has been widely published and anthologised. She lives with her whānau in Te Whanganui a Tara.

Anahera Press page