Māori Language Week 2024 is a vital way of celebrating why the reo is utterly important in Aotearoa. This week Poetry Shelf has gathered poems by contemporary Māori poets whose writing nourishes, inspires, challenges, connects us. Te reo Māori is present in a line, a word, an idea, story, experience. May we listen with both ear and heart.

So many Māori poets, whose poetry has moved me, are not part of this tiny celebration. I will gift a reader a copy of Te Awa o Kupu, a stunning anthology of work by contemporary Māori poets, edited by Vaughan Rapatahana and Kiri Piahana-Wong (Penguin, 2023). I will also gift a copy of Talia by Isla Huia to a reader. Isla is appearing at the forthcoming Ladies LiteraTea. Leave a message here or on my social media pages by Rāhina 23rd September with your book choice and I will choose someone to send a copy to.

I am sitting at my kitchen table listening to the rain, listening to this poetry gathering, and I feel the words of Hone Tuwhare, pit-pattering on the wooden deck, as I read a glorious armstretch of poems and poets.

May we celebrate and support this forever language, this taonga every day, kia kaha te reo Māori.

Ka rongo au i a koe
e hanga kōwhao iti ana
i te marino
e ua

Hone Tuwhare
from ‘Rain’, originally published in Come Rain Hail
Bibliography Room University of Otago, 1970
‘Ua’ transl. Patu Hohepa, Hone Tuwhare Small Holes in the Silence: Collected Works, Penguin 2011

The poems

harakeke

karakia to Papatūānuku, to Ranginui, to all tūpuna
give thanks for their gifts
‘ngā taonga whakarere iho’

never take the mother or father or child of the plant
trim the edges of the blade and cut away the keel
return the remains to the whenua
make a small slice in the flesh of the leaf
strip back the skin until the fibre is laid bare
take care of this plant body
as if it were your own body
miro the muka against your own skin

steep the remnants in river water
and they will give you the first light of the rising sun.

Arielle Walker
from AUP New Poets 10, Auckland University Press, 2023

Te Ihi

From where does it come, te ha
the life breath
and what strange winds blow
through this house
in the drift and flow
of whaikorero
the call
ka ea ka ea
it is clear, it is clear
whakapiri tonu whakapiri tonu
hold fast, hold fast to what
te ihi, te ihi, te ihi
te ihi, what is that
te ihi, what is this word
te ihi, te ihi, what is it
kai mau, kia mau ki te aha
he paua mura ahi nga kanohi o Tumatauenga
the flashing eyes of Tu
haka it is haka
lightning flashing in the sky
rapa rapa te uira
ka tangi te whatatiri
and thunder
the beat of the feet till the earth shakes
kia whakatahoki au i a au
from where does it come, te ha
the life breath, te ihi
the sobbing wailing and laughter

Apirana Taylor
from a canoe in midstream (Canterbury University Press, 2009)

On trying to learn te reo at the Mākara crossroads

Any dormant hill takes a real climb
but this one is inside you
is the underside of you.
In order to make it ki te taumata
you find yourself becoming goat –
your hooves repetitive clacking
distant sounds becoming quite fucking close.

You send all your voices out
that everything might charge the gate
scuffed and stoney with history
but it’s hard to slow that many
animals once they are ambular.

From the peak you see old people
winding, marvelling
tourists of the past awakening
to the immensity of your cloven hoof.
Crack open the rocks against this wound.
Echo round the coast as you count the waka.

Anahera Gildea
from Sedition, Taraheke | Bush Lawyer, 2022

Castle Hill, 2003

As you approach
Kura Tawhiti –
this landscape of stone
across the valley
from the mountain of the kakapo –

you unease grows,
& points of reference
begin to change

as this curious land
unfolds from the earth
into the space we occupy;

therefore
give this place a simple greeting:
tena koe, tena korua, tena koutou –
and respect –

place an open hand
on the first rock

& walk softly
through the great silence
of many years
where each stone
will surround you
with legend

as it did
those past travellers
who asked shelter
& lay in the dark
listening to to their ancestors’ talk
dissolving in the rain.

Rangi Faith
from conversation with a moahunter, Steele Roberts, 2005

In the beginning

Sometimes I go back to where it 
all ended for me, to where it 
all began. They named the 
cliff face after me — Te Āhua-o-
Hinerangi. The gulls still circle 
there, the rātā still blooms,
all the threads of my story
still cling to the grasses and 
tuapuke.

You might be wondering if 
you should feel sorry for me —
after all I lost my husband to
the sea and then my own life.
I want you to understand, I 
chose my destiny. When I sat
on the headland and did not 
move, there was power in it.
And certainty. Not just my 
grief, I knew.

What I didn’t realise is how
powerfully that knowledge 
would grow into the ground
there, would seep into the 
earth. I never intended 
that my decision sway 
others despairing of life.

Now I exist in kōrero 
and waiata and yes
pakiwaitara too. My 
very likeness is scored 
into the cliff, cascading 
down into the sea. But 
I have grown bigger 
than the life I had. I 
can be everywhere 
now. And nowhere. 
Sometimes, on the 
right day, with the 
wind in the west and 
the sea gleaming,
I even catch myself 
on the edge of song.

Kiri Piahana-Wong
from Tidelines, Anahera Press, 2024

Titihuia’s Moko

We sit in the
twilight of your lounge
the sofa now a bed

You search my face for your kuia
I’ve carried her name
for almost thirty years

It’s good I’ve come 
It’s good I’m learning
there isn’t much time you say

You insist, hold my hand
fingertips trace the valleys
between protruding veins of memory

Once were ringa raupā
feel the supple weight of it all
the fleeting pulse of all things 

You show me a photo of her
taken before she got the 
moko kauae I didn’t know she had

There isn’t much time
There are things now 
that I will never know

You use every laboured breath
to pass whakapapa from memory
to tongue to ear

Stop only to make jokes
about flirting with the nurse
It’s good you’ve come
Āe, I’m the last one

You still refuse
to use my first name
call me only Titihuia
a name you won’t see
me live up to

Nicole Titihuia Hawkins
from Whai, We Are Babies Press, 2021

Okoro: Honouring Words 
(((((((For Kateri)))))))

Here in
this part of
our Waipounamu
((with
my tūpuna
Maru))
I saw through
the night cloud
īnaka / īnanga / whitebait
but not the aurora
borealis I saw
in Ontario with you
in green curtains
dancing the horizon
ki tua o te ārai
(((beyond seeing)))
to the zenith
and firefly sparks
driving on 
to Cape Croker,
Georgian Bay
where our tūpuna
continue the hui

Robert Sullivan
from Hopurangi Songcatcher, Auckland University Press, 2024

Blood Brothers

I recite a karakia for my brothers
they would prefer I bring kebabs

I tell them about the Hokianga
they tell me about their bills

I explain tangata whenua
they turn up the TV

I dream of Tāne Mahuta
they roll cigarettes

I summon the names of our ancestors
they take their medication

I miss our marae
they put the bins out

Anne-Marie Te Whiu
from Ora Nui 4, Oranui Press, 2021 and Te Awa o Kupu, Penguin, 2023

Defying death

Remember my whare
The solidity of it
I’ll stand there on the pae
Breathing like a bird
Waiting for its mother
Waiting for the words to call you home
Its bones creak like Nan’s 
They are the curved pelvis
Surrounding me 
As I move backwards inside our
Whare tangata 
You all once lived here
Listen to the call
Tipping us off our path
Pulling us home
Watch out for the mokomoko
Trying to climb in and out
Defying death, is it me
Watch out for the mokopuna
Climbing out
Thinking that they don’t need to 
Come home, is it me
Until we hear wailing 
Calling us 
The final fingernails 
Of fire offered and we can choose
If they are thrown
Or cupped gently
In our hands
Turn us into birds
To escape
Or return us
As something new
Burning bright
Ki te ao mārama

Arihia Latham
from Birdspeak, Anahera Press, 2023

hā pīwakawaka

hā pīwakawaka
kei whea koe ināianei
taku hoa iti?

he manu me he waha rōreka
he whaikōrero pēnei i he waiata,
te wā katoa

he aha tō kōrero e hoa?
he aha te tikanga
o tēnei kōwetewete karawhiti?

kāore ahau e mōhio
nō te mea kua nunumi kē koe
ki tētahi atu wāhi

kāore ahau e kite i tō whatu kanapa 
kāore ahau e rongo i tō pūrākauroa,
kua ngaro koe ināianei
ā kei te ngere ahau i a koe,

hā pīwakawaka
kei whea koe ināianei?

[hey fantail
where are you now
my little friend?

a bird with a dulcet voice
an oratory like a song,
all the time

what is your story friend?
what is the meaning
of this one-sided conversation?

I do not know
because you have already disappeared
to another place

I cannot see your glistening eyes
I cannot hear your long tale,
you are lost now
& I am missing you

hey fantail
where are you now?]

Vaughan Rapatahana
from ināianei/now, Cyberwit, India, 2021

Oral Language Written Down

The stats say that neither you nor I read.
But Pāpā, our houses are lined with books.
Walls thick with paper, pulp and pine.
Breathing with the drought and damp of the seasons.

In winter we sit fireside,
watching your finger navigate the page.
Letters scattering like lizards
heading back to the underworld.

Stories are always the same.
It’s us that changes.
Like how we dive into black pools
at night, to find each other

in the kitchen, reading
with the lights off,
watching the world
with the volume down.

Pāpā, you are dog-eared and brittle,
finger-printed and water-damaged.
While how I know you blooms
as ribs off a central spine.

Ruby Solly
from Tōku Pāpā, Te Herenga Waka University Press, 2021

Mana

Mana is my grandfather in his retirement from the darkness and depths
and ingrained dust of the coal mine to mow the marae lawn that extends to
the front door of his twice-built house with two coal ovens eternally warm
beneath the simmering pots of the boil up behind unlocked doors where
footwear for a centipede aligns beneath his broad verandah.

Mana is his right to deafness when the noise of the meaninglessness assails his
ears and he sees fit to visit his church of ancestors and lost lovers, whispering
his kōrero to them amid the clamour of his grandchildren and aunties. Aunties
think they run his world yet he remains remote from their cacophony. Never
mind, they mean well eh.

Mana is the pinstriped suit immaculately pressed and never out of fashion,
hung for Sundays and marae committee meetings and visits out of the rohe to
see his daughter or his son or his countless mokopuna, dry-cleaned and crisp
to match the obsidian shine of his shoes and the jaunt of his dark fedora.

Mana is the man who dies without saying.

Ben Brown
from Between the Kindling and the Blaze, Steele Roberts, 2013

12. te awa

the marae is locked. i consider staging my own death, causing the
catalyst for a tangi. it turns out, my cousin said, if you respect the river
it’ll never kill you, even if you ask. i use aunty’s toilets in the campground
office. i take a photo of the locked gate, the ātea fishnetted by metal. on
the banks, i put my ankles in, and say he hōnore in that place behind my
eyes. i do not believe in one atua, but it’s the only one i know. we say it
every morning in class, before whaea is fired.

it’s a gravel road to the convent. i know about the poet, so i’m looking
for his house. i don’t yet know about the raping. in the kitchen, a brown
nun takes five dollars a head for the night. i don’t yet know how many
greens there are, but i can see them all at once. i can smell the dirt. i sleep
in the infirmary bed on the upper floor. a paradox, really, the waiting to
be murdered by what’s beyond the plastic drape, and the lack of concern
about it. i say to mā when i’m urbanised again, about the way the fog
rolls on the river in the morning, about the writing a fake prayer in the
chapel and leaving it on the altar. about mother mary in stone, in the
garden. i say to her about these villages i am possessed by, about tīpuna
and graves and birds. she says she regrets my scottish name.

in tūrangi, i consider death too. i know it like the back of my hand,
which is an emergency exit from where i came; which is the wet earth
and each star that led us here. i know i want to be a hot body, like really
geothermal, brown and smelling like sinew. i am child floating, not yet
city thrusting or yearning for another kind of sun, all artificial. i’m
sober, looking at the forest floor, saying, i know you from somewhere.

maybe from somewhere in my digestive tract, or in aunty’s house where
we chat up the whakapapa over elderflower cordial, about how it’s more
circle than line, about how hinewai is a synonym for every kui that ever
lived. by god, it is almost meningococcal to wash in my own body of
water. in tūrangi i consider just laying me down with the wētā. fuck i feel
māori when i ‘m not scared. when crater lakes steam the phlegm from my
shell and it comes up half vomit, half karanga mai, karanga mai, karanga
mai rā.

Isla Huia
from Talia, Dead Bird Books, 2023

RĀRANGI

Eat kiwi with the skin on.
Draw the blinds down all the way.
Listen to the judder of the washing machine.
Fry an egg in the pan, sunny side down.
Sing ‘One day a taniwha’ to my nephew.
Scrub chicken fat off the oven tray.
Hang the washing out on the line.
Leave an open book face down on the table.

SUPERNOVA

On a walk, Nova gives me yellow flowers, instructing me to
put them in my pocket. I tell her they will get squashed, and
she says it doesn’t matter. She is strong-willed like all the
women in our family. But when we get home she is upset
when I take the flowers from my pocket; they are broken
and crumpled. I take her to the playground and watch her
swing on the monkey bars, a fearlessness in her as she goes.
At the kitchen table I help with her reo homework—we are
making a family tree. We trace the pencil lines all the way
back to our tūpuna. I spell out the names of each one.

I tell her that whakapapa also means ‘layers’, and there
are many layers to each of us. She just colours the paper
in rainbow. Afterwards, she carries her newborn brother
around proudly, in her polka dot T-shirt and overalls. She’s
her mother’s daughter.

ANCHORS

In the morning I sleep late. Kristy is always in the living
room with the baby, watching Teen Mom. This is something
I’ve come to depend on. Every time I feel sad I pick up my
nephew and take him into the garden. It’s sunny outside,
and in the distance I can see the city skyline.

I count every maunga I see: Mt Albert, Mt Eden,
Mt Roskill, One Tree Hill. Growing up, we never learnt
their Māori names: Ōwairaka, Maungawhau, Puketāpapa,
Maungakiekie. There is erasure in the naming and not-
naming.

I catch my foot on the nail on the deck, again. Hop
downstairs to see my parents, and slump into their blue and
yellow couch. When I left New Zealand in my early twenties,
I couldn’t wait to disappear. I didn’t want to see my past in
everything. Each time I came home I wanted to escape again.

This time, I have anchors.

Stacey Teague
from ‘Hoki’ in Plastic, Te Herenga Waka University Press, 2024

The poets

Anahera Gildea (Ngāti Tukorehe) is a poet, short story writer, essayist, and ‘artivist’. Her work has appeared in numerous journals and anthologies including Cordite Poetry Review, Pantograph Punch, Landfall Online Review, Black Marks on the White Page, Huia Short Stories (5,6,7,& 9), the NZ Edition of Poetry (2018), The Spinoff, Newsroom, Sport, Takahe, and JAAM. Her first book Poroporoaki to the Lord My God: Weaving the Via Dolorosa was published by Seraph Press (2016) and her collection, Sedition was published by Taraheke (2022). She is the co-editor of Te Whē, a bilingual literary journal, is the co-chair of Te Hā o Ngā Pou Kaituhi Māori, and sits on the board of ReadNZ│Te Pou Muramura.

Anne-Marie Te Whiu (Te Rarawa) is an Australian-born Māori living on unceded Wangal lands in Sydney. She is a poet, editor, cultural producer and weaver. She was a 2021 Next Chapter Fellowship recipient, and a 2024 Next Chapter Alumni recipient.  In 2024 she was awarded a Varuna Residential Fellowship and a Bundanon Artist Residency. Anne-Marie’s forthcoming debut poetry collection titled Mettle will be published by UQP in 2025.  

Apirana Taylor from the Ngati Porou, Te Whanau a Apanui, and Ngati Ruanui tribes, and also Pakeha heritage, is a poet, playwright, novelist, short story writer, story teller, actor, painter, and musician. His poems and short stories are frequently studied in schools at NCEA and tertiary level and his poetry and prose has been translated into several languages. He has been Writer in Residence at Massey and Canterbury Universities, and various NZ schools. He has been invited several times to India and Europe and also Colombia to read his poetry and tell his stories, and to National and International festivals. He travels to schools, libraries, tertiary institutions and prisons throughout NZ to read his poetry, tell his stories, and take creative writing workshops.

Arielle Walker (Taranaki, Ngāruahine, Ngāpuhi, Pākehā) is a Tāmaki Makaurau-based artist, writer and maker. Her practice seeks pathways towards reciprocal belonging through tactile storytelling and ancestral narratives, weaving in the spaces between. Her work can be found in Stasis Journal, Turbine | Kapohau, Tupuranga Journal, Oscen: Myths and No Other Place to Stand: An Anthology of Climate Change Poetry from Aotearoa New Zealand (Auckland University Press, 2022).

Arihia Latham (Kāi Tahu, Kāti Māmoe, Waitaha) Is a writer, creative, and rongoā practitioner. Her poetry collection Birdspeak is published by Anahera Press and her short stories, essays and poetry have been published and anthologised widely. She lives with her whānau in Te Whanganui a Tara.

Ben Brown (Ngāti Mahuta, Ngāti Koroki, Ngāti Paoa) was born 1962 in Motueka, and now lives and works in Littelton. He has been writing all his life for his own enjoyment and published his first children’s book in 1991. He is an award winning author who writes for children and adults across all genres, including poetry, which he also enjoys performing. In May 2021 he was made the inaugural NZ Reading Ambassador for Children – Te Awhi Rito.

Isla Huia (Te Āti Haunui a-Pāpārangi, Uenuku) is a te reo Māori teacher and kaituhi from Ōtautahi. Her work has been published in journals such as Catalyst, Takahē, Pūhia and Awa Wāhine, and she has performed at numerous events, competitions and festivals around Aotearoa. Her debut collection of poetry, Talia, was released in May 2023 by Dead Bird Books, and was shortlisted for the Mary and Peter Biggs Award for Poetry at the Ockham New Zealand Book Awards 2024.

Poet and editor Kiri Piahana-Wong is of Maori (Ngāti Ranginui), Chinese, and Pākehā (English) ancestry. She is the author of the poetry collection Night Swimming (2013) and Tidelines (2024), and she is the publisher at Anahera Press. Her work has appeared in over fifty journals and anthologies, and Kiri has performed at numerous literary festivals across the motu. In 2023 Kiri co-edited Te Awa o Kupu alongside Vaughan Rapatahana.

Nicole Titihuia Hawkins (Ngāti Kahungunu ki Te Wairoa, Ngāti Pāhauwera) is a writer, kaiako and proud māmā. Her debut collection, Whai, published by Tender Press, won the Jessie Mackay Prize for best first book of Poetry at the 2022 Ockham New Zealand Book Awards.

Rangi Faith (Kai Tahu , Ngati Kahungunu, English, Scottish) was born in Timaru  and brought up in  South Canterbury. He is retired from teaching and is currently living in Rangiora. His work explores both European and Maori history and welcomes the resurgence of te reo and kotahitanga in Aotearoa. Published books include Spoonbill 101 (Puriri Press, 2014), Conversation with a Moahunter (Steele Roberts, 2005) and Rivers Without Eels  (Huia Publishers, 2001). His poetry is included in ‘koe’ An Aotearoa ecopoetry anthology (Otago University Press, 2024), Te Awa O Kupu (Penguin, 2023), No Other Place to Stand (Auckland University Press, 2022), The Penguin Book of New Zealand War Writing (Penguin, 2015), When Anzac Day Comes Around  (Forty South Publishing Pty Ltd, 2015), and other collections and anthologies.

Robert Sullivan (he/him/ia, Kāi Tahu, Ngāpuhi, Irish) has won many awards for his poetry, editing, and writing for children. Tunui Comet (Auckland University Press, 2022) and Hopurangi / Songcatcher: Poems from the Maramataka (Auckland University Press, 2024) are his most recent collections. He also coedited with Janet Newman Koe: An Aotearoa Ecopoetry Anthology (Otago University Press, 2024).  He is an Associate Professor in Creative Writing at Massey University and coordinates its Master of Creative Writing programme. He is a great fan of all kinds of decolonisation.

Dr. Ruby Solly (Kāi Tahu, Kāti Māmoe, Waitaha) is a writer, musician, and taonga pūoro practitioner living in Te Whanganui-a-Tara. She has two books of poetry with Te Herenga Waka University Press, Tōku Pāpā (2020) and The Artist (2023). 

Stacey Teague (Ngāti Maniapoto/Ngāpuhi) is a poet and teacher living in Te Whanganui-a-Tara. She is a publisher and editor at Tender Press. Her second poetry collection Plastic was published by Te Herenga Waka University Press in March 2024.

Vaughan Rapatahana (Te Ātiawa) commutes between homes in Hong Kong, Philippines and Aotearoa New Zealand. Author and editor/co-editor of over 45 books, in several genres, in both his main languages, te reo Māori and English and his wrk has been translated into Bahasa Malaysia, Italian, French, Mandarin, Romanian, Spanish. Atonement (UST Press, Manila) was nominated for a National Book Award in Philippines (2016); he won the inaugural Proverse Poetry Prize the same year; and was included in Best New Zealand Poems (2017). He has appeared at numerous overseas festivals. he is series editor of two key books published by Penguin Random House in 2023, Te Awa o Kupu and Ngā Kupu Wero, which are compilations of firstly, poetry and short fiction, and secondly of non-fiction pieces, written by ngā kaituhi Māori over recent years.