I take the two pins and stick them in my eyes and yet I can still see you and I hid in the cave unable to eat until I became dust and only a voice and I can’t keep compromising myself like this and I want to be reborn from the foam of the Moana roughing the shore and from the blood of my beheaded mother and I wanted you to soften the ground from the heights that I fall from but instead my body became an island and in the middle is a mountain where you push a rock up until it falls down and then you push it up again and then it falls down and then you push it up again and then it falls down and then you push it up again and then it falls down and then you push it up again and then it falls down and then you push it up again and then it falls down and then you push it up again and then it falls down and then you push it up again and then it falls down and then you push it up again and then it falls down and then you push it up again and then it falls down and then you push it up again and then it falls down and then you push it up again and then it falls down and then you push it up again and then it falls down and then you push it up again and then it falls down and then it falls down and then you push it up again and then it falls down and then you push it up again and then it falls down and you repeat ia rā ia rā.

Hana Pera Aoake
from Act 3 in Some helpful models of grief
Compound Press, 2025

I want to share a poem from one of my favourite writers and encourage you to read their book. The poem itself is the second page of Act 3 in Some helpful models of grief by Hana Pera Aoake (Ngāti Mahuta, Ngāti Hinerangi, Tainui/Waikato) Artist, poet, writer, and curator; author of A bathful of kawakawa and hot water (Compound Press, 2020),  Blame it on the rain (No More Poetry, 2025) and Some helpful models of grief (2025). Hana lives in Kawerau in the shadow of Pūtauaki maunga, and is a PhD candidate at Auckland University of Technology.

I picked this book up in a week when I was finding the world quite a lot, as it is at the moment. I have loved Hana’s work for a while. Their first book was one I enjoyed and have returned to regularly so I had purchased this one and set it aside waiting for the moment I would need it. Many of the things I like about Hana’s work are some of the things I’m often trying to do in my own work, perhaps best described as getting a lot of really big ideas into small spaces. I think we’re all connected as writers and although Hana and I are different in many ways there are also many ways we’re connected and I like seeing that in our poems and books.

In the poem I’m sharing the central piece of it reset my brain on reading, the mesmerising rhythm of the flow of the poem. I have read it out loud to multiple people because it is such a fish hook in my thumb, in a soothing way, as some pains are. The rhythm continues all the way to a beautiful subversion of itself and the release of the ending. I think Hana’s books don’t feel like individual poems to me so it’s not entirely fair to drag this one poem out and separate it from its context. Their work is work I always read start to finish first because there is a shape to it in its context. Here, in isolation, you are missing many words and ideas that lead into this poem. So, I encourage you to head to your local bookseller and get a copy or go straight to Compound Press and order it.  This book comforted me. It reminded me I’m not alone in this messy work of being humans together. And perhaps even more so, being humans together in this messy work of art. A very big thank you to Hana for this poem, this book and their continued mahi and existence.

Emma Barnes

 Hana Pera Aoake (Ngāti Mahuta, Ngāti Hinerangi, Waikato/Tainui) is an artist, writer, educator and curator based in Aotearoa. Hana is a current PhD candidate at Auckland University of Technology where their research explores industrial poisoning, sovereignty, place making and the role of art and cultural production in Māori social and political movements. Hana has published three books: A bathful of kawakawa and hot water (Compound Press, 2020), Blame it on the rain (no more poetry, 2025) and Some helpful modes of grief (Compound Press, 2025). In 2027 A bathful of kawakawa and hot water will be republished with Broken sleep books in the UK. Compound Press page

Emma Barnes (Pākehā, they/them) studied at the University of Canterbury and lives in Aro Valley, Te Whanganui-a-Tara, Wellington. Their poetry has been published in journals including Landfall, Turbine | Kapohau, Cordite and Best New Zealand Poems (2008, 2010, 2021). They performed in Show Ponies in 2022 and 2023. They are the author of the poetry collection I Am in Bed with You (AUP, 2021) and co-editor with Chris Tse of Out Here: An Anthology of Takatāpui and LGBTQIA+ Writers from Aotearoa (AUP, 2021). They work in tech and spend a lot of time picking up heavy things and putting them back down again.