Join Zarah Butcher-McGunnigle for the New Zealand launch of two powerful and innovative collections, Leaves Fall Off to Create Drama and Autobiography of a Marguerite, both published in April by Giramondo.
The launch will be hosted by Hana Pera Aoake, and feature readings from Hana, JM Francis, Josephine Kitsen and Siobhan Harvey, as well as the author herself.
Copies of Zarah’s books will be on hand for purchase, with light refreshments available.
This event is free, but please register your attendance via Humanitix. We hope to see you there!
Born in a time of war, I rose at dawn to watch troop ships gather in Wellington Harbour.
I come from pressed uniforms, boarding schools, the smell of pipe tobacco.
I come from Hail Marys and Paternosters, fragrance of incense, the smack of a strap.
I come from the pungency of green needles, sitting quiet in the crown of a pine tree.
I come from moonlight, appassionata and a passion for the music of Beethoven.
I come from a chatter-box kid and the cut and thrust of argument
I return by the chatter, the music, the tree and the discipline, to the quiet harbour.
Peter Rawnsley from Paper Cups (forthcoming Marmac Media)
Adrienne Jansen:
I’ve been reading the third collection of poems by Peter Rawnsley. Peter’s second collection was published by Cuba Press, who describe him on their website as ‘one of Aotearoa’s best-kept secrets.’ I agree, he’s a much under-recognised poet. He combines a sharp intellect, a wide reading base – particularly in science – a love of the natural world, a love of music, and a thoughtful Catholic faith. That’s a big spread.
And that’s why I chose his poem ‘Origins’, which opens his forthcoming collection. It’s a down-to-earth poem, that doesn’t have some of the imaginative leaps and mystery of some of his other work, but it draws together each aspect of his life in that succinct way that poetry can. Form is very important to Peter, and his choice of three 4-line stanzas, three 3-line stanzas, then one last 4-line stanza, will be careful and deliberate. I often don’t pay much attention to form, so it’s always interesting to see this unobtrusive but careful use of form. And of course the poem returns to where it began.
I’ve also been reading Pakiaka, which is the first volume of poetry from Gabrielle Huria (Ngāi Tūāhuriri/Ngāi Tahu). It’s one of those small beautifully produced books of poetry which feels like a gift. There’s a long poem in it called ‘How to Be a Good Ngāi Tahu.’ Rather than describe it, I’m going to include a couple of excerpts here. But go and find the whole thing. Read the whole book.
“Know your kai, how to get it, where to get it, how to work it, how to store it, and how to cook it.
Have a freezer packed with kai.
Have much more kai than you need just in case a relation calls, in which case over-feed them with everything you’ve gather.
Be ready to make a big feed 24/7 – there’s no such thing as a snack.”
“Have rights to a tītī island.
If you don’t have rights, marry someone who has.
If you can’t do that, have a standing annual order with a birder for a few buckets.
On the island if you have rights, you have a say.
If you married into the rights, keep your mouth shut – just do the work.
Don’t be a slacker every anywhere, especially not on the island.
Ngāi Tahu know how to work.
Lazy Ngāi Tahu must be half something else, probably from the north.”
Gabrielle Huria from Pakiaka, Canterbury University Press, 2025
Adrienne Jansen writes poetry, fiction and non-fiction for both adults and children. She’s published several collections of poetry, and is the co-founder of Landing Press, a small Wellington publisher of poetry that many people can enjoy. In 2026 they are working on an anthology of poems about water. She lives at Tītahi Bay, north of Wellington.
Peter Rawnsley is a retired public servant living in Porirua, New Zealand. Paper Cups, his third collection, will be published by Marmac Media, July 2026. He has also published Light Cones (Mākaro Press 2018) and Stones & Kisses (Cuba Press 2024.)
Gabrielle Huria is Ngāi Tūāhuriri/Ngāi Tahu. She lives with her extended whānau at Tuahiwi in North Canterbury. Gabrielle is a keen practitioner of Ngāi Tahu mahinga kai (traditional food gathering). Her collection of poems Pakiaka is part family chronicle and part a settling of accounts – a depiction of being Ngāi Tahu in a modern world.
REQUIEM FOR A PONY i.m. Antarctic ponies 1907– 1913
Ice melts Pony faces Requiem sound
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Stable song (pony choir)
Are we up Are we down Do we stand On the ground? Do we run Do we walk What to do With all this talk?
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Reading
When the sky bent Over the ponies And gave them A deep blue kiss They were already cold
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Psalm: for Captain Lawrence Oates (pony voices)
You led us through ice pastures Over frozen waters You stayed when the cruellest Blizzards left us belly-deep In snow At times we hardly moved Such terrible tiredness Only you knew we had become Ghosts Like a Sanctuary Lamp You comfort us still
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Homily
In the blizzard At Camp 15 Ponies wore vestments Of ice Kept the faith Remember them In the driven snow Of altar cloths In the click of sledgeometers In the cry of the wind The skull of a skua When sun slips Through leadlight windows It leaves patterns Think microscopic slides Of pony hair Flutters of fringe fibre Their own DNA
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Raise your voices
For ponies that swayed On boats for seven weeks And could never sit down For those that broke legs For those terrified By killer whales Yet jumped on command For those that fell Into crevasses For those that heard The gun For those who saw it
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Supper (pony voices)
At the foot of the Glacier We died on the altar of ice For you Snow buried our blood Remember those of us you froze Those of us you ate
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Benediction
Farewell our blessed ponies Now the sledges Are loaded with your Courage your perseverance Your Spirit and faithfulness May you dwell forever In the House of Ice
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Sestina for Pony Choir
Ice Pony Sky Falling Song Remembers
Remembers Ice Song Pony Falling Sky
Sky Remembers Falling Ice Pony Song
Song Sky Pony Remembers Ice Falling
Falling Song Ice Sky Remembers Pony
Pony Falling Remembers Song Sky Ice
Pony song Falling sky Remembers ice
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Post Requiem Photo Tribute (pony voices)
An open mouth of moving photos We walk towards or away from Solid and persuasive as a mass choir Ice maps the glow of snow melts darkness With a smooth tongue nestles like eggs In the petrie dishes of floating bays Wakes our stables with the loneliness Stares at us stares at us Till we’re not sure not sure What to do
Kerrin P Sharpe
Kerrin P Sharpe has published five collections of poetry (with Te Herenga Waka University Press, Wellington). She has also had poems published in a wide range of journals including Oxford Poets 13 (Carcanet Press), Blackbox Manifold, Poetry (USA), berlin lit (Germany), PN Review and Stand (UK). She has also appeared in Best New Zealand Poems and in 2021 and 2025 received Michael King Writers’ residencies.
Kerrin: “I wrote this poem on my Michael King residency in November 2025. To get inside the minds of the ponies I read all I could about them. One source that was inspiring was the book The Lost Photographs of Captain Scott by David M Wilson.”
i cried in front of my manager and it wasn’t comfortable it was the opposite of uncomfortable
just passed two goats headbutting by the expressway teaching each other common risk or self-preservation
i did not want a strand of new hair to tickle my old face! it was just a thought without a face to cry on
i think i grieve differently like everybody else
i know exactly what i cannot mean at all times and that seems a bit holy and disgusting like marriage or drinking alone
i’ll unliken that to this then to now then sleep find myself living still on both sides of the bed
and when i look back on the new dream and feel so ahead i’m pulling tears from an ancient moment
breaking through in front of nothing like no god everywhere
Amy Marguerite
Amy Marguerite (she/her) is a poet and peer support worker living in Pukekohe. Amy’s debut collection over under fed was published by Auckland University Press in March 2025. Her essay on the new generation of Aotearoa poets features in Te Whāriki: Reading Ten New Poets from Aotearoa, published by Auckland University Press in October 2025.
Little Prayers is presented at Lōemis Festival on Saturday 13 June 2026 at 6:00 pm, in the Hall of Memories at the National War Memorial, Pukeahu Park, Pōneke.
One of this year’s most powerful events is Little Prayers, which includes a song cycle piece by pianist and composer Norman Meehan, performed with vocalist Hannah Griffin and a small chamber ensemble in the Hall of Memories at the National War Memorial. The work sets poems by Bill Manhire, centred on his 2016 sequence Known Unto God, written for the centenary of the Battle of the Somme, and framed by Huia and Little Prayers – texts shaped by profound loss, the extinction of a native bird and the 2019 Christchurch mosque attacks.
Entries are now open for the 2026 Caselberg Trust International Poetry Prize!
This year’s judge is Emma Neale, whose collection ‘Liar, Liar, Lick, Spit’ (Otago University Press, 2024) won the 2025 Mary and Peter Biggs Award for Poetry.
The winning poem and judge’s report will be published in Landfall Tauraka Journal 252 (November 2026).
in the seam of a dream I find myself in the dream of a seam I write spilling onto the roads of imagined cities
I don’t know about you but poetry in Aotearoa in 2026 is a sizzling simmering dazzling arrival of new books. I keep picking a book from the review stack and find myself electrified nourished challenged utterly in awe with what words can do within and beyond the form and possibilities of a poem.
Thank you for your continued support as readers and writers, and for sharing the POETRY LOVE.
Poetry Shelf Playing Favourites: Anne Kennedy picks Bill Manhire
Poetry Shelf review: Before the Winter Ends by Khadro Mohamed
Poetry Shelf Breathing Room: Puanga by Airini Beautrais
Poetry Shelf celebrates Ariana Tikao’s Pepeha Portal – a review and a reading
an invitation
Poetry Shelf Off the Shelf: I want to start a new series on Poetry Shelf where we pick a beloved New Zealand poetry book from at least a couple of years ago, maybe twenty, maybe fifty, maybe a hundred. A poetry blast from the past. Choose the book. Write one or two paragraphs on why the book has stuck to you. With permission we could even include a poem from it. I will post on the blog.
Please note our Swanson Post Box lobby is closing in the next few days so will advise you soon of our new post box.
Pepeha Portal, Ariana Tikao cover image: Kate Stevens West (Kāi Tahu), Kurawaka/Tender Ties Kohikohi, 2021 University of Otago Press, 2026
To read Pepeha Portal is uplifting. The poetry offers an experience that nourishes the air I breathe, the physical ground I stand upon, the metaphorical paths I navigate, the way I move between past present future, the way poems can hold me in prolonged and vital embrace.
The collection is divided into two parts, ‘Pepeha’ and ‘Portal’. Two warm welcome palms held out to me as reader, let’s say to you as reader. Two versions of homecoming and homebeing perhaps, with vital movement between and beyond and close to. The first section, ‘Pepeha’, introduces self in Māori through connections to tīpuna place and stories, where the presence of people and ancestors acutely matter. The second, the ‘Portal’, the doorway, offers an array of life-rich movement in the Christchurch of Ariana’s childhood and the Ōtautahi of her adulthood.
Think place. Think belonging. Think aroha. Think wisdom. Think physical land. Think the ache of the land ravaged for-earth-ruinology, not for-earth-ecology: “rock spews into Whakaraupō / in the name of progress”.
I love how te reo Māori and English weave together across the collection, heightening the rhythm of two languages singing alongside each other, the way individual words are blooming with distinction, semantic nuances, cultural links. To have this precious language presence is vital when we are calling for te reo Māori to be both heard and visible in the streets, in schools, in parliament, in books published, the songs recorded, the stories shared. Let these lines from ‘To’u Reo’ settle upon your skin:
Then I remember Hana O’Regan: He ātaahua te reo i roto i a koe
Āe, the reo inside me is perfect
It’s in my blood like lava like a fire
like my pōua said Mana is a fire never extinguished
I keep jotting down words to carry through the collection as I read, like echo mantras: belonging, connecting, here, from. There in the moving eulogies to mother and father. There in the poem, ‘Ko Au Tonu’ with its echo-chamber line, “I am here”. And there in the terrific poem ‘From’. It’s like song. It’s like a self chant. I just want to hear the poem singing in the air. Here’s a taste of it (you can hear Ariana read the poem below):
I’m from Redgrave Street, Hoon Bay. Pōtiki of seven ‘half-caste’ kids raised in a house built by the state, with purple polyanthus and sweet peas blooming along the driveway
I’m from picking the hardened chewing gum off the footpaths, spitting out grit like pips, coaxing back flavour with persuasive saliva and metal-filled teeth
Musicality is important as I read, and I was super keen to hear Ariana perform some poems. Ariana, a musician and New Zealand Arts Laureate, is attuned to the cadence of words and her poetry reflects this, with her aural agility, a gift.
In the poem, ‘Intonation’, a poem dedicated to the late Moana Jackson, I find deep-seated heart, and again we are in a crucial stream of belonging and connections. The poem sings the praises of Moana and underlines we are not writing and reading in empty impoverished hopeless vacuums. We are writing and singing, joining and remembering, connecting and that matters. Here’s a stanza:
The time has come if we each tell one of his stories we will light up this place so bright we gotta wear shades
Ariana is crafting and sharing poetry with roots in the personal but it is also poetry speaking to for out and for the world. I stall on ‘Kua Whetūrakitia’, a poem shaped like an urn or a vase or beacon. A beacon of light that we hold up for Gaza.
I stall on ‘Settling’, a striking poem that holds the title word, a prickly spiky word,out to us, shaking the word a little like a snow globe, letting sediment settle upon us, the sediment that forms in the shaken jar. Turn the word again and settle is negotiating, negotiations. And another turn and it’s the Israeli settling settlers on the West Bank, as the Palestinians mourn their bombed whanau. This word. This settling, this unfolding and refolding gash in hearts settling.
I’m electrified by ‘Transforming’ and its call for action. Protest. Speaking out. It feels important this, that Ariana’s poetry, so personal and grounding, shines insistent light on global and local wounds and speaks out. In this ground-tremor poem, Ariana turns to the mokopuna:
Papa’s heat is also rising. We will summon those wiling to fight for Papatūānuku, those who won’t keep extracting from her – unlike us, who believed the the claim of the capitalists. These new fighters will speak our reo and dance with the fluid movement of bull kelp surging around the rocks. Wehi and wana will explode from them like white water from a blowhole. It is these mokopuna that we need. They won’t stay seated in rows. They won’t wear bows in their hair. Nau mai e tama. Nau mai e hine!
Much of collection was written during Ariana’s 2023 Ursula Bethell Residency at the University of Canterbury. In her endnote, she mentions her office corkboard: “I progressively added printed pages from the Ngāi Tahu digital atlas Kā Huru Manu, to use it as a visual reminder of our placenames and the stories behind them. As a way to track progress, I’d added coloured pins to the map. In the end, there were over thirty pins.”
And now, the extraordinary reach and intimacy of Pepeha Portal settles and unsettles and resettles me. I am musing on writing poetry as a form of travel, inner private intimate travel, physical travel, travel that sparks epiphany, travel that refreshes the light in which I view and hear and absorb the world.
This gift of a book is in the world. Thank you.
a reading
‘Te Waihora’
‘Transforming’
‘From’
‘Intonation’
Ariana Tikao is a Kāi Tahu writer, musician and New Zealand Arts Laureate. Her work spans poetry, music and interdisciplinary performance, and has been published widely in Aotearoa. Her book Mokorua: My Story of Moko Kauae was published in 2022 (AUP). Pepeha Portal is her debut poetry collection.
Te Pane Kākā o Tuwhare – Tuwhare Poetry Residency.
