The moon will be here before
I say cheese and crackers and I am wishing
in vain for feather down sleep

It’s almost dawn
There’s a pheasant on the lawn
My mouth is dry
The first light feels magenta

Today I will read Claire Keegan
write a long shopping list
visit the hospital
read Anna Jackson’s poetry

This is not a poem
it is a tree

from The Venetian Blind Poems

I was going to let my seventieth birthday slip by with little more than a bowl of comfort Moroccan soup, not the usual extended family lunch or dinner feast. But on Wednesday Jackson McCarthy sent me the most wonderful email in response to my invite for a Monday poem. I loved it so much I felt other people would love it too – how many of us are struggling in these tumultuous times, our hearts breaking every morning at the daily news from Gaza, the Ukraine, the choices of our inhumane Government. And how those of us who write, wonder how to write through the dark and the light.

Shortly later I got an email from Peter Ireland at the National Library in Te Whanganui-a-Tara Wellington. He had discovered an eye-catching photograph in the archives that might fit an exhibition he is planning. I loved this email gift.

After reading Jackson’s email, and stalling on the photograph, after musing on silence and light, poetry, protest and road trips, I felt so warm and comforted, an idea fell into my mind, surprisingly delightfully, and I decided to write a blog entitled ‘Beacons of Light’ to celebrate my special birthday. Seven beacons for seven decades. Peter and Jackson have given permission for me to include the letter and the image.

This miracle birthday.

one: my two blogs

My blogs have held on by thin threads over the past few years, especially as I read and write at the pace of a garden snail, my energy jar’s tiny, and each day a patchwork cloak of dark and light. Mostly light. Yet I harvest so much joy, energy, love and connections by doing Poetry Shelf and Poetry Box. A beacon of light, beacons of light. I am happy for review books to be sent – I can’t promise to review and feature them all, but I absolutely love travelling within the pages of new books.

The letter from Jackson:

Paula,

Thank you for thinking of me!

I’ve been following along with your recent posts and greatly appreciated yours and Bill Manhire’s Gaza poems. For me, it is the tough but urgent subject. I remember talking to Hinemoana Baker about the violent streak in some of her recent poems, wishing I could allow myself a voice or a kind of imagery able to face a genocide. 

The truth is I can’t write about Gaza, but I can clear a space in the poetry for that suffering, a suffering that isn’t mine. I find it haunting my recent poems, which are concerned with dying, the city, dreams, and memory, albeit in oblique ways. 

I keep thinking of Ben Lerner, his poems “No Art” and “Dedication” (the former of which I think you might love), and in particular this phrase from “Dedication”: “For the mode of address / equal to the war / was silence”. 

But then I think again, of silence as ignorance, as violent in itself or consenting to Death somehow; as a kind of shroud of disinformation or apathy. I wonder if there are different registers of silence: the honorific silence that signifies mourning; the obliterating silence of a concert hall moments before music; the heartless silence of those who will not speak out; the lucid silence of what a poem, being a poem, necessarily occludes. 

Basically, yes, I’d love to send you something for Poetry Shelf. And I’m very grateful for your blog’s little lifeline in dark times. The poem is called “Song”, and it’s attached to this email. I hope you like it. 

Best,
Jackson

two: libraries, bookshops, books

Pedestrians and a balloon seller, Barcelona ca. 1925
Photographer: William Williams
Alexander Turnbull Library 1/4-100050-F

I have spent a number of years trawling in the archives over the decades, most especially when I was researching Wild Honey: Reading New Zealand Women’s Poetry, and most especially in the Alexander Turnbull Library in Wellington. What a treasure house. When Peter emailed this photograph I was transported back to the joy of discovery and curiosity. The image transfixed me – firstly it was a golden ticket to a road trip of another time. The light, the couple posing hands in pockets, the buildings, the quotidian pedestrian movement. Secondly it was a golden ticket to the time Micheal, Georgia, Estelle and I spent in fabulous Barcelona, on our extended road trip in Spain, Portugal and Ireland. Ah. I fall into a reverie of road trips.

And herein lies the delight of my second beacon of light – the way books are an essential form of travel. I haven’t yet been into a bookshop physically, but have sustained myself ordering books online. I am a big fan of Carole Beu and The Women’s Bookshop, Volume Books in Nelson, Unity Books in Wellington, and numerous bookshops in the Wairarapa. I highly recommend the NZ Bookhub as a way of tracking down books and supporting our local bookstores. My book parcel might contain a few novels, a nonfiction book, a cookbook, children’s books, overseas poetry. Instead of outings and travel, I splash out on reading.

And of course audio books. For those of us running on small jars of energy audio books are gold nuggets. I’ve been binging on Graham Norton’s books – he is a whizz at Irish accents, prismatic characters, twisty cryptic plots, and before you know it, you are back there in the embrace of Ireland. Oh heck Irish audio books full stop.

Every day I read poetry. New light that gleams from the review books stacked on my desk and the undiminished light in old favourites on the shelves in my poetry room. So many ideas sizzling for poetry in Aotearoa and in my own secret writing projects. As Poetry Shelf underlines, we are rich in poets and poetry books, poetry that moves, dazzles, challenges, comforts, sings, imagines and invents in a thousand and one ways. We can write poetry out of pain and love, simplicity and knots, music, mystery, old age, youth, experimentation, tradition, politics, confession, global turmoil, global healing, poetry that feeds the ear, the mind, the heart. Heck yes, we can write.

three: listening to music

Listening to music is full scale light, whether a beloved album on repeat or a favoured playlist. I love listening to whole albums. I recently read and loved two local poetry collections that prompted me to put an album on as I wrote the reviews.

Bob Marley makes an appearance in Nafanua Purcell Kersel’s sublime debut poetry collection, Black Sugarcane. I am big fan of Bob, so put Exodus on as I was writing the review. Reggae is a go-to uplift genre for me at the moment, but it also takes me back to Western Springs in the 1970s when I saw Bob and his band one blue-sky Sunday afternoon. Ah. Those standout music gigs. The Rolling Stones also on 1970s Sunday afternoon. Hearing Nina Simone at Ronnie Scotts in London, being right up the front for Prince’s astonishin final concert in Aotearoa, hearing opera diva Alessandra Marc at the Aotea Centre. My review and Nafanua reads here.

When I was reviewing and loving Cadence Chung’s brilliant Mad Diva, I played the opera Norma with Maria Callas singing. Have a listen to ‘Costa diva’, Hairs on end. You can read my review and hear Cadence read.

My daughter Georgia and I are big fans of The National (she went to concerts in Europe, USA, Australia and here), a band that has been a go-to listen for me this year, along with Reb Fountain, Marlon Williams, Boy Genius . . . and a bit of Bach, especially violin partitas, Lucinda Williams. Ah the joy of delving into the hundreds of albums I have amassed over the years. And yes! Georgia has just gifted me Matt Berninger’s solo album, Get Sunk.

four: food

Moroccan fish tagine

Food is also a form of travel, returning me to my favourite cuisines, favourite road trips. Even if I can’t eat banquets, I can nearly always cook. Daily bread. A meal, a soup, a baked treat. Food can be simple, nourishing ingredients, tasty combinations and easy to prepare. At the moment Moroccan, Spanish and Indian, with a serving of Italian is on my frequent playlist.

Fish tagine

saute one onion slowly, season
add two tablespoons of rose harissa spice paste
add sliced carrot, orange kumara and green pepper chunks
add a few cups of stock of your choice
maybe add some halved plump dried apricots or green olives
simmer for at least thirty minutes
add chunks of fish and cook for 5 minutes or so
sprinkle chopped herbs – coriander, dill, parsley

recipes are stepping points – change the spices, the protein
just like poems! We make them our own.

note: the tagine in the photo uses tomatoes, carrots, celery and green olives

five: looking at art

Michael Hight, ‘Tapuae-o-Uenuku’ (2021), oil on linen, 915 x 1830 x 33 mm
Private collection

Yes, you got it, art is also a form of travel, an elevation of spirits and mind. I am such a fan of art with heart. Art that makes you both feel and ponder something. I have lived with an artist for almost forty years. To be able to walk into his studio and fall into one of his sublime paintings, incandescent with light, is worth a thousand and one road trips.

Michael Hight, ‘Haast’ (2021), oil on canvas, 551 x 704 x 34 mm
Private Collection

From the kitchen table I get to travel with some of Michael’s paintings on the lounge wall, and the portrait of Frida my daughter Estelle did for me.

six: writing

Writing is not work for me. Writing is survival. It is love. Connections. I have written many different things over the last few years and my manuscripts and ideas are all at various stages. But one of them, The Venetian Blind Poems, will be published by The Cuba Press in July this year. It has been a joy working with two fabulous book-lovers, Mary McCallum and Paul Stewart. I wrote the first part of the book in my head when I was in Motutapu Ward having my bone marrow transplant and the second part when I began my recovery back home and the wider world seemed so tilted.

Today there is the real wolf
and the imagined wolf
mixing up with
an Airini Beautrais short story
and missiles are dropping
and children are starving
and I can only do one day at a time,
and The National is singing
and there’s a midnight moon
in the dead of the night
with the window wide open

seven: home, otherwheres

My seventh beacon of light and it’s hard to choose. So I find a quiet cushion and write down seven words that matter to me. I often ask poets to do this when I interview them, so I thought I would ask myself. Each morning I imagine a patchwork cloak of things I can do. Sometimes small patches, sometimes larger. The words I just have written down, are the words stitched into my day. After lunch I drape the cloak over my shoulders and dream. Maybe the umbrella word care fuels the beacons of light, beginning with the all important self care, and then moving onto caring for those nearby, and this beautiful broken astonishing planet we share.

joy
heart
kindness
connections
home
family
aroha

Celebrate New Zealand’s poetic talent: Nominate a New Zealand Poet Laureate

Kia hiwa ra!
Kia hiwa ra!

The National Library of New Zealand Te Puna Mātauranga o Aotearoa is seeking nominations for the New Zealand Poet Laureate Award 2025–2028.

Poetry is a quintessential part of New Zealand art and culture, and through the New Zealand Poet Laureate Award the government acknowledges the value that New Zealanders place on poetry.

The National Librarian Te Pouhuaki will appoint the New Zealand Poet Laureate after reviewing nominations and seeking advice from the New Zealand Poet Laureate Advisory Group.

Nominees must have made an outstanding contribution to New Zealand poetry, and be an accomplished and highly regarded poet who continues to publish new work. They must also be a strong advocate for poetry and be able to fulfil the public role required of a Poet Laureate. The role includes engaging with a wide range of people and inspiring New Zealanders to read and write poetry.

Candidates are expected to reside in New Zealand during their tenure as Laureate.

The term of appointment for the next Poet Laureate will run until August 2028.

• Nominate a New Zealand Poet Laureate
• Read about the New Zealand Poet Laureate

Nominations close on Wednesday, 30 July 2025 at 5pm.

The next New Zealand Poet Laureate will be announced on Friday 22 August 2025.

Enquiries about the New Zealand Poet Laureate Award can be directed to Peter.Ireland@dia.govt.nz

Poet Laureate website

Mother’s Day with ironing and sardines

Turned down an invitation from my daughters 
in favour of the porch in autumn sunshine, time

alone. Read about eclipses of the sun, paths 
of totality and how, at any given time, forty saros series 

are underway on Earth, each unfolding to a crawling pitch-black
stripe of bat confusion, restive roosting birds. Also, how a Mars-

sized body known as Theia smashed into our baby planet, hence
the moon. Huh. I had not known of Theia till today. Sardines

on toast for lunch, the pages oiled. Licked my fingers, 
washed them, wrestled with the board. Ironing slowly 

near the window, crisp yellow leaves beyond the pane, 
pressed sunlight into pillowslips for overnight release.

How any series set in motion must advance. How much, 
at any given time, I love – I love! – those girls.

Sue Wootton

Sue Wootton is a poet and fiction writer whose publications include the Ockham New Zealand Book Award longlisted novel Strip and Ockham New Zealand Book award poetry finalist The Yield. In 2023 she travelled to Menton, France as the 50^th New Zealand writer to hold the Katherine Mansfield Menton Fellowship. Sue lives in Ōtepoti Dunedin where she works as publisher at Otago University Press. Her website is suewootton.com 

Compound Press presents Some helpful models of grief, the new collection of poetry by Hana Pera Aoake, with illustrations by Priscilla Rose Howe.

June 27th, 5:30pm at Lamplight Books
G01/100 Parnell Road, Parnell, Auckland

Book sales, signings, and readings featuring special guests:
Arielle Walker
Carin Smeaton
Liam Jacobson

Praise for Some helpful models of grief:

“Everything Hana writes has a pulse. It could be moss, Britney or Plato but it sings a song that is nervous, in the body and out of the body, you’d be a fool not to take in all of Hana’s grins.”

—Talia Marshall

“Hana’s writing is daring, elliptical, charismatic and above all, interesting. The kind of writer where it doesn’t matter what the subject is, you know you are always in good company.”

—Hera Lindsay Bird

About the book:
A composite chronicle of various loves—desired, lost, or never realised—and their corresponding joys and griefs against the backdrops of contemporary art and late capitalism. These poems radiate with Aoake’s characteristic force, tenderness, intelligence, and humour, often all within the very same breath. The personal is the political is the personal.

Hana Pera Aoake (Ngāti Mahuta, Ngāti Hinerangi, Tainui/Waikato) is an artist, writer, curator and sweaty milf from Aotearoa. Hana’s first book, ‘A bath full of kawakawa and hot water’, was published with Compound Press in 2020. Their second book, ‘Blame it on the rain’ was published in 2025 with no more poetry (Australia). They are also publishing a book of essays with Discipline (Australia) in late 2025. Hana is currently slogging through hell and doing a PhD at Auckland University of Technology. Hana lives in the shadow of Pūtauaki maunga and likes dirt and worms, long walks on the beach, Pilates, orange wine and sparkling water.

compound press

lamplight books

Twenty-nine books made the longlist for the 2025 ASLA DANZ Children’s Book 
Awards, selected by over 110 children and teenagers from across Australia and New Zealand. The longlist came from an outstanding field of 135 books made up of Graphic Novels, NonFiction, Poetry, and Young Adult Novels celebrating diverse people and communities in a balanced and authentic way. 

Here are the winners:

Nonfiction: The Trees by Victor Steffensen and illustrated by Sandra Steffensen (Hardie Grand Explore) 

Poetry: Pasifika Navigators by 52 Pasifika Student Authors (Mila’s Books)

Graphic Novel: Ghost Book by Remy Lai (Allen & Unwin) 

Young Adult: Catch a Falling Star by Eileen Merriman (Penguin Random House New Zealand) 

I am delighted to see Eileen Merriman has won the YA category with her novel To Catch a Falling Star (Penguin, 2023). The book, with both nuance and complexity, navigates tough issues. Aged fifteen, Jamie Orange participates in school musical productions, is secretly in love, but faces persistent and crippling mental health challenges. The story and the characters are utterly moving. The novel is an unforgettable, thought-provoking read, so I am pleased to see it get this recognition.

In my Poetry Shelf review I wrote: “Ah. Triple ah. Quadruple ah. Catch a Falling Star is a sad, contemporary, thought-provoking, must-read story that revives you no matter how little sleep you have had! The word I take with me is hope, the image I hold is two teenagers bonding over books and coffee. Utterly riveting! Utterly humane.”

You can read my review here.

I look forward to celebrating Pasifika Navigators by 52 Pasifika Student Authors on my blogs.

Tomorrow
an Aotearoa dispatch

at the end of the phone call
I say
I’ll ring you tomorrow
and mean it but know
it’s a luxury, a sweet promise
that may
     or may not
come to pass

it is spring for my mother, autumn here
and cheap tricks are still
the news, this man with his crowns
fake gilding everything
making mockery of good
taking time and more
from the world
because he can

*

we are built forward-looking
time, we hope, the giver of something
better
something different from today
we steel ourselves
for tomorrow
     seeing
if we can hold
– I think of āpōpō, this word, this
sense of soon

in German, tomorrow is a promise
of morning; in French and Spanish, too
handed down
from Latin mane
– there it is again, time
     tumbling
through centuries

*

in places where I have loved
we said à demain with a kiss
a cheerful bis morgen
or a nod and mañana
language confident
    morning 
on our tongues

*

a journalist told of a girl
who, when rushed on a stretcher
from a mound of broken
everything, asked, “رايحة على المقبرة؟”
Am I being taken to the cemetery?
 – that was six months ago
that today is this day
in Gaza, there is today after today after today

in Gaza language is dangerous
is death, is covered in dust
what is tomorrow in Gaza?

*

in Tanzania, when we said kesho
it meant something less certain
not ‘tomorrow’ but
     ‘not today’
and Bahasa’s besok offered
forward motion over days or weeks
time like water, finding
its path
       not clearly mapped
language keeping us
waiting
unspoken       space

*

I left my mother’s house
a suitcase of uncertainty
ziptied and checked
    my baggage
at its limit, carried
from Maryland to here

we spoke our vows to tomorrow
despite the weight of things
     rolled with my shirts
      tucked in a drawer
     folded in this poem

now I’m across
the international dateline
       my mother’s tomorrow my today
skipping through time, living
a small miracle
   – see? I said when I landed
     safe
it’s Wednesday already 

*

I ask a friend about tomorrow
in Ukraine
she says the word: завтра
but also tells me
it could be завтрашній день
        tomorrow-days

I think about
living in two places, tomorrow-days
there and here
time zones meaningless
simultaneity of loss

*

I send an email, promising
this poem tomorrow
and I mean it but turn over
the notion of
     not today
because that much
is certain

“رايحة على المقبرة؟”- Am I being taken to the cemetery?
from an article by Pacinthe Mattar, in The Walrus, 13 Nov 2024

Michelle Elvy

Michelle Elvy sent a series of weekly poem dispatches from the USA to post on Poetry Shelf. This poem is the final in the series and is sent from Aotearoa, her second home.

Michelle Elvy is a writer, editor and teacher of creative writing. Her books include the everrumble and the other side of better, she has edited numerous anthologies, including Te Moana o Reo | Ocean of Languages, edited with Vaughan Rapatahana (The Cuba Press), and the forthcoming Poto! Iti te kupu, nui te kōrero| Short! The big book of small stories, edited with Kiri Piahana-Wong (MUP).

Black Sugarcane, Nafanua Purcell Kersel
Te Herenga Waka University Press, 2025

Moana Pōetics

We build a safe around our birth stones.
Craft it with a dream, a gourd, a drum-made
chant.

Pile it high with frigate bird bones,
song bones, bones of
cherished names.

We rub sinnet along our thighs and lash
our cache. Our stories kept sound, where words
and names and songs are not forgotten.

One day before, now, or beyond, something
with a heart drops a hank of its flesh
before us. It sounds like a drum and we know

it’s time
to undo the rope, iron-rock and bone-sand.
The stories, they tell us

that if we are the dark blue seas then we are
also the pillowed nights and days, soft with
clouds, spread half-open.

We are a tidal collection, hind-waters of the
forever we rally on, to break the staple
metaphors from the fringes.

Safe.
We sound together on a dance or
bark an intricate rhyme.

We, are the filaments of a devoted rope. We,
who contain a continuance and

call it poetry.

Nafanua Purcell Kersel

Nafanua Purcell Kersel’s debut poetry collection, Black Sugarcane is a book to savour slowly, with senses alert, ready to absorb the aroha, the myriad pathways, the songs, the prayers, the dance of living. The first line of the first poem, ‘Moana Pōetics’, is a precious talisman: ‘We build a safe around our birth stones.’ It is a found poem that uses terms from the glossary in Mauri Ola: Contemporary Polynesian Poems in English, edited by Albert Wendt, Reina Whaitiri and Robert Sullivan (Auckland University Press, 2010). The poem draws us deep into the power of stories, night and day, the ocean, safety, the power of rhythm. And that is exactly what the collection does.

The book is divided into five sections, each bearing a vowel as a title (ā, ē, ī, ō, ū), the macron drawing out the sound, as it does in so many languages like an extended breath. When I read of vowels in the poem, ‘To’ona’i’, the idea and presence of vowels lift a notch, and poetry itself becomes a ‘sweet refresh’, a warm aunty laugh: “Aunty Sia’s laugh is like a perfectly ripe pineapple / a sweet refresh of vowel sounds”.

Let me say this. There is no shortage of poetry books published in Aotearoa this year to love, to be enthralled and astonished by. We need this. We need these reading pathways. Sometimes I love a poetry book so much I transcend the everyday scene of reading (yes those bush tūī singing and the kererū fast-swooping) to a zone where I am beyond words. It is when reading is both nourishment and restoration, miracle and epiphany . . . and that is what I get with this book.

Begin with the physicality of a scene, a place, an island, a home. The scent of food being prepared and eaten will ignite your taste buds. Pies filled and savoured, luscious quince, the trickster fruit slowly simmered, a menu that is as much a set of meals as a pattern of life. Move into the warm embrace of whanau, the cousins, aunties, uncles, parents, grandparents, offspring. And especially, most especially, the grandmother and her lessons: ‘”If you want to learn by heart, / be still and watch my hands” (from ‘Grandma lessons (kitchen)’).

Find yourself in the rub of politics: the way you are never just a place name and that where you come from is a rich catalogue of markers, not a single word. The question itself so often misguided and racist. Enter the ripple effect of the dawn raids, or the Christchurch terrorist attack, or poverty, or climate change, crippling hierarchies. And find yourself in the expanding space of the personal; where things are sometimes explored and confessed, and sometimes hinted at. I am thinking pain. I am thinking therapist.

Find yourself in shifting poetic forms, akin to the shifting rhythms of life and living: a pantoum, a found poem, an erasure poem, long lines short lines, drifting lines. Find yourself in the company of other poets, direct and indirect lines to the nourishment Nafanua experiences as a writer: for example, Lyn Hejinian, Kaveh Akbar, Karlo Mila, Tusiata Avia, Selina Tusitala Marsh, Serie Barford, Konai Helu Thaman, Dan Taulapapa McMullin. So often I am reminded we don’t write within vacuums. We write towards, from and because of poetry that feeds us.

Bob Marley makes an appearance so I put his album, Exodus, on repeat as I write this. It makes me feel the poetry even more deeply. This coming together, this ‘One Love,’ this getting together and feeling alright, as we are still fighting, still uniting to make things better in a thousand and one ways.

I give thanks for this book.

a reading

Author photo: Ebony Lamb

‘Moana Pōetics’

‘Grandma lessons (kitchen)’

a conversation

Were there any highlights, epiphanies, discoveries, challenges as you wrote this collection?

In a way, I guess the whole collection was a bit of a discovery process and the poems are little epiphanies. This is not the book I thought I would write at all. I had other ideas to really ‘brain’ my way through to a book but, in the MA workshop process I found that I needed to lead with heart and let the stories that have been waiting in my heart and family have the page. This sounds deep, and it was, but it was also faster so it’s one of the ways I coped with the pace of that year. 

I had many challenges writing this collection, many physical and logistical but I had such incredible support which is why my acknowledgements page is so long! The whole process of showing up—to the page, to my workshop group, to my supervisor, to myself and my family expanded my potential, and so the collection. Creatively, the acceleration of the MA year intensified my decision making and focus, but the time I took afterwards to dial down the intensity, rest and discover what the collection needed to be in the long-run brought many epiphanies, one being the structure of the collection using the long vowel sounds ā ē ī ō ū.

What matters when you are writing a poem? Or to rephrase, what do you want your poetry to do or be?

I want my poetry to make me feel something. I started writing poetry in my youth to be able to explain or process my own feelings and observations. So my first draft is always to myself. Of course, I also want my poetry to make the reader feel something, as well as understand the words, concepts, perspectives. So that’s my wish at a macro level, feeling. When I write a poem, I feel a sense of play, and unfiltered curiosity which I hope comes across, even subtly as interesting or inviting to the reader. 

Are there particular poets that have sustained you, as you navigate poetry as both reader and writer?

My Grandmas, obviously, and the poetry of their love and prayers. Also, I think almost every moana poet, storyteller, writer, playwright, orator whose words I’ve come across have kept me going in some way—as well as many more, moana or not, who I’ve not named in my acknowledgements! I will always, always be in awe of poetry and it will always fuel me.

We are living in hazardous and ruinous times. Can you name a few things that give you joy and hope?

Art, theatre, drag, music, old photographs, pets, karaoke, books, the Mana Moana concert (Signature Choir & NZSO), Tinā the movie.

Hang time with family, even if we’re not doing anything, being together is a blessing.

Working in community, I see joy and hope and potential every day in my mahi at Nevertheless NZ, a Māori, Pasifika and Rainbow mental health organisation where I have the honour of helping people through these ruinous times with connection, creativity and poetry! 

Rangatahi, I have three teens of my own and work with many young people so I’m kept engaged in the chaos and energy and ultimate blessing that is our youth. In April, I helped out at NYDS/Taiohi Whakaari-a-motu, a week-long performing arts programme for ages 14-19. Being with the students as they learned and lived through the arts for a whole week topped up my joy and hope tanks no end.

Nafanua Purcell Kersel (Satupa‘itea, Faleālupo, Aleipata, Tuaefu) is a writer, poet and performer who was born in Sāmoa and raised in Te-Whanganui-a-Tara, Aotearoa. Her poetry has been widely published. She has an MA from the IIML at Te Herenga Waka—Victoria University of Wellington and won the 2022 Biggs Family Prize in Poetry for Black Sugarcane, her first book. She lives in Te Matau-a-Māui Hawke’s Bay.

Te Herenga Waka University Press page

Trigger warning: suicide, racism

This poem is offered in the spirit of fierce love, justice, historical accuracy and statistical clarity. It is offered at a time when:

• The latest UNICEF Innocenti Report Card 19: Fragile Gains – Child Wellbeing at Risk in an Unpredictable World, placed Aotearoa firmly at the bottom for child and youth mental health with the highest suicide rate out of 36 OECD and EU countries.
• The Whakatika Report: A survey of Māori experiences of racism (2021) found that 96 percent of Māori felt racism was a problem for them and/or their wider whānau to at least some extent.
• The current Youth2000-2019 survey series shows that experiences of racism and mental health inequities have increased over the 20 years of Youth2000 surveys. Current youth statistics for self-reported suicide attempts among high school secondary students: Māori 12.7%, Racialised non-migrants 7%, Racialised migrants 7.4%, Non-racialised migrants 3.5%, and descendants of settler colonial Europeans (Pākehā) 3.5%
• Over a quarter of Pacific students reported serious thoughts of suicide in the last year (26.4%) in 2019, increasing from 18.8% in 2007
• The Youth 2000-2019 report notes: “Embodiment of Whiteness that affects everyday interpersonal interactions; those perceived as White had better social experiences than those perceived as non-White. • Disadvantage among racialised migrants persisted intergenerationally; it can take several generations before disadvantages begin to abate, particularly for Pasifika populations.”

This poem is a response to this data. And a response to the coalition government budget that cut $9 million of Ministry of Pacific Peoples budget under David Seymour’s leadership, he who made public statements about blowing up the Ministry referencing Guy Fawkes. This poem is a response to the current coalition government and its attacks upon Te Tiriti o Waitangi, as well as blatant misrepresentation of the country’s founding document. It is a response to the whakamomori, suicide, of a tāne Māori public servant two days before the budget was announced, amongst targeted attacks on Māori and Pacific jobs in the public service. This poem is a response to our whānau experiencing three suicides in the first half of this year and the toll that this widespread despair and harm is having in our communities.

E V I L      I N T E N S I F I E D

“Bad as the Chinese are, the South Sea savages are worse, and any extensive importation of them would have … a most pernicious effect, even were the country solely occupied by Europeans; but, when we consider what a large native population of our own we have, the evil is intensified.”
31 May 1870, Evening Post, Dunedin, New Zealand

We came,
So many centuries
later,
#tongantime
cheap labour
on banana boats,
ready for factory floors,
when they opened the doors
during the big boom.

We fuelled the dirty engine rooms
of the economy,
then cleaned them.
Then, the end of the golden weather
oil crises, over reliance on England,
high inflation, wage stagnation,
structure, policy,
a problem
population.

Overstayers.
Oversize.
Overweight.
Excess.
Coconuts.
Taking jobs.
Last on, first off,

No surprises
about whose jobs
were lost.

When I found that stats
that showed,
that before the end of the golden weather,
we (Pacific peoples) were MORE likely to be employed
than the general population…
it made some *noise* inside me…
Us?
Lazy, overstaying
leeches and moochers,
so fat, on the public purse.

We… were harder working?
This truth
worked its way
through me.

We were not
the dead-weight
long brown tail
slowing down
an otherwise fine
upstanding beast?

But the story goes,
we overstayed
our welcome,
we were described as violent,
yes, the adverts on TV
were paid for
with National Party money.
And the fine print of the exit clause
was whispered out of the mouths of babes
in school yards…
bunga, black, coconuts,
the N-word.
My six year old pig-tailed self,
I heard it all.

How did the words fall?
Heavy. Horrible.
Scary. Unsafe.

Sickening.

The research says
racism…
is…

demeaning, disregarding, humiliating, demands submissiveness, makes disposable, degrading, hostile, emboldened, psychologically aggressive, invasive, nonchalant and contemptful, gloating, flaunts power and success, overjoyed by dominance, a false sense of superiority, looking down upon, excluding, it sees itself as having a superior work ethic, more merit, being self-made, self-entitled, self-centred, and more worthy of a “good life”

It is unaccountable, taken for granted, embedded deep…
And how does it feel when it falls?

One hundred and ten empirical studies say:

stress, emotional distress, distaste, fear of rejection, rumination on previous experience, defence mechanisms, avoidance strategies, intrusive thoughts, rejection sensitivity, anxiety, vigilance, scanning for threat, stereotype threat, self-doubt, internalised negative perception, depression, fear of future, panic attacks, aggression, hyper-awareness of surveillance, the hyper-and micro-aggression, criminalisation, dangers of incarceration, exhaustion, adrenaline from the adrenals of constant fight and flight, cardiovascular impact (heart race pumps more), hyperventilation (rapid shallow breathing), cortisol, drop in carbon dioxide (dizziness, light headed), digestion system suppression (dry mouth, sensory sensitive), cognitive emotional fear, dysregulates the stress response system, shame affects the limbic system, the prefrontal cortex is enables rumination, impairs executive functioning, upsets emotional regulation, disregulates the hormonal axis, affects the automatic nervous system, weakens the immune system…

It has a crushing
effect on communities of colour,
“racial battle fatigue.”
Exhausting.

Researchers use the word,
“weathering”
to describe the relentlessness
of the breaking down, eroding
wearing down
and dissolving of the
human spirit.

Researchers note
that individuals
have a differential exposure
to racially based stressors.

It is NOT racist to say,
that it is mostly NOT white people
who experience the
relentless stress
of “weathering”.

But maybe,
weathering is a word
that disproportionately
includes white people,
who have been determined “other”
“crazy”, “mental”, “insane”,
“retards”, “spastic”, “handicapped”,
“queer”, “gay”, “homo”,
faulty, less than,
not whole,
not same,
but
*different*.

Not
normal
enough.

And they also
face
daily, crushing
discrimination,
corrosion
caused
from the
highest,
horrible,
and most holy
of places.

This is similar,
but not the same
as being ethnically *marked*
visibly, in ways you can’t unskin,
inescapably
associated with dark black,
yellow peril,
red indian,
or the savage sea brown of
“evil intensified”.

Every country in the Anglosphere
has a living breathing target.

Here: Māori,
followed by Pacific peoples,
although let’s be real,
we are the “colourful”
inconvenient “cousins”
better if we just went home
but we are not
the bullseye eye
target
of disgust.

My Pacific family,
can we be honest,
from the churchgoing,
polite seats,
we watch the
arrows
flying mostly
in their direction.

Especially
the swarming attacks
in the hive minds
led by the Beehive.

In this region, yes,
it is us.
Polynesians.

For so long,
the word Polynesians here,
did not include Māori.

Why?
Because Māori can’t overstay.
Because they can only be in the way.
You can’t Dawn Raid Māori.
Because they can’t: “Go back to where you came from!”
Because they are the people whose home,
has been taken
as *our* own.

In 1856, The physician and New Zealand politician, Dr Isaac Featherston, said it
was the duty of Europeans to ‘smooth down … [the] dying pillow’ of the Māori race.

1881 the prominent scientist Alfred Newman pronounced that, ‘the disappearance of the race is scarcely subject for much regret. They are dying out in a quick, easy way, and are being supplanted by a superior race.’

But, they’ve survived
the genocide
that was predicted.

They’ve survived the wars
we don’t talk about,
or teach about,
of European occupation.

Now, we see a slow
conquer and divide
of evil intensified.
A daily day,
Newstalk A to Z,
a weekly weathering
the Media Works
with poisonous prejudice,
seeping toxic Stuff
Heralding intolerance
from the highest on high,
self-titled Dominion,
into the smallest of small,
New Zealand Media and Entertainment
in every hall,
of our cities.

Politicians dishing toxic
doses of
demoralising despair,
seeding superiority,
speaking with
irradiated tongues,
tricking our young,
our men,
our women,
our whānau
into feeling
unworthy.

Knowing, somehow,
even if it’s too late
to take
the lives
of evil intensified,
our
society,
us,
we,
together,
relentlessly
unkind,
can
make
them
want
to
take
their
own.

Karlo Mila

Dr Karlo Mila (MNZM) is an award-winning poet of Pākeha and Pasifika descent (Kolofo’ou, Tonga, Ofu, Vava’u, with ancestral connections to Samoa). For seven years, Karlo ran the leadership programme Mana Moana at Leadership New Zealand. Mana Moana was based on her postdoctoral research on the ancestral intelligence of Pacific peoples in the region, indigenous Pacific languages, knowledge, and understandings of how to heal. She has worked in suicide prevention and been a researcher of mental health and wellbeing among Pacific peoples in Aotearoa, New Zealand. Karlo’s work is widely anthologised. She has three books of poetry. She is currently writing two books, one non-fiction and a new book of poetry. Karlo lives in Whanganui-a-Tara with her partner and three of their five children.