We moved so often there seemed no space between arriving and departing, interrupting and interrupted, and no one waving. But one of my English teachers told me, Books will sustain you.
But I clutched the turning page like the last straw in a constant wind of change, wishing I could distil the books and drink the stories, to find out who loved who and if one of them was me.
David Gregory
David Gregory arrived in Christchurch NZ from the UK on a three year contract in 1982 and found a supportive literary community here. In spite of spending a year back in England on a job exchange, the pull of NZ was strong for him and his family. That whanau has grown to include four grandchildren. He has worked on coastal environmental issues for most of his working life. He has combined this with establishing his reputation as a New Zealand poet with three books to his credit and a fourth due to be launched soon.
His poetry has appeared in many NZ publications and a number of anthologies and has been performed at venues in NZ and overseas.David is a founder member of the Canterbury Poets Collective. With the late John O’Connor, himself a noted poet, he established Sudden Valley Press (SVP). SVP has published over thirty well-received poetry books. David is the current Manager and one of the editors for Sudden Valley Press.
I am thinking of the great cedar in front of my house the feeling of flying with pīwakawaka, tauhou and tūī when I gaze out the second-storey window high on the hill
I am thinking of the drone views of fires that started the year, orange sky over brown slopes, animals scurrying to safety among 23,000 acres aflame in LA’s surrounds
I am thinking of the idea of refuge
I am thinking of our Aotearoa spaces, the National Parks Act of 1980 that saw natural beauty as something worth reserving, as something of ‘national interest’
I am thinking of US public lands, some 28% of this vast terrain, area declared protected and out of reach of human avarice
I am thinking of the idea of refuge
I am thinking of the 20,000 rangers and the fragility of their jobs, people working for the Everglades, the Smoky Mountains and Zion National Park, named for the idea of refuge
I am thinking of the idea of refuge
I am thinking of scientists at Fish and Wildlife whose work is to see things we don’t see every day, of civil servants whose job is to serve our planet in ways we may not consider from our comfortable homes
I am thinking of the rare beetles and spiders who have little protection now, of the black-footed ferret, endangered with no voice of its own, of spotted owls and silent manatee, of little birds found only in tropical forests in Hawai‘i, of the grizzly and grey wolf, their majesty disregarded
I am thinking of the idea of refuge
I am thinking of the lumber company exec who manages our forests, of the new order to log two-hundred-eighty- million acres
I am thinking of Thoreau; I am thinking we can never have enough nature
I am thinking of the discarded safety measures founded in the US Endangered Species Act, granting protection for more than half a century, but if a tree falls in a forest we cannot protect, do we hear the sound?
I am thinking of the great cedar outside my window, guarded under Aotearoa law, a haven for small souls
I am thinking of the idea of refuge
I am thinking of Robin Wall Kimmerer and a life of reciprocity, of Mary Oliver eating the fish
I am thinking of Wendell Berry, poet citizen farmer living for the land
I am thinking of what Selina said Hone said
I am thinking of the idea of refuge
I am thinking of the orphan bear cub, saved by Taoseño from wildfire and nursed back to health, Smokey the new symbol of forest fire prevention, living a long and protected life – I met him when I was a kid, on a field trip to the National Zoo
I am thinking of the idea of refuge
I am thinking of Ursula Bethell’s Pause hanging over my desk, of Brian Turner, wild hearts and Wild Dunedin I am thinking of land as a poem and the language of Joy Harjo with her horses
I am thinking of John Muir and how to reach the universe through forest wilderness
I am thinking of the idea of refuge
I am thinking of protection, I am thinking of safety I am thinking of the rumble of words on the page
I am thinking of how to see the forest and the trees
I am thinking of the idea of refuge
I am thinking of Gilgamesh cutting down the biggest cedar I am thinking of that ancient story, how great trees fall and walls rise
Michelle Elvy after more news of more firings in the US, early April 2025
In this evening event, Poet Laureate Chris Tse and fellow poets Mary Macpherson, Arihia Latham, Margo Montes de Oca, Ada Duffy, Simon Sweetman, and Jackson McCarthy, will read new work in response to photographs of 19th Century Aotearoa from the exhibition A Different Light: First Photographs of Aotearoa.
Chris Tse (he/him) was born and raised in Lower Hutt, New Zealand. He studied film and English literature at Victoria University of Wellington, where he also completed an MA in Creative Writing at the International Institute of Modern Letters. In 2022, he was named the 13th New Zealand Poet Laureate. His poetry, short fiction, and non-fiction have been recorded for radio and widely published in numerous journals, magazines, and anthologies. He has published several collections of poetry and his latest book Super Model Minority (2022) was long-listed for the Ockham New Zealand Book Awards 2023.
Ada Duffy (Kāi Tahu Whānui) is a poet who was raised in Ōtākou under the shelter of Pukekura.
Arihia Latham (Kāi Tahu, Kāti Māmoe, Waitaha) is a writer, creative, and rongoā practitioner. Her poetry collection, Birdspeak, was published by Anahera Press in 2023, and her short stories, essays, and poems have been published and anthologised widely. Arihia’s poetic short film, Takaroa, was part of Mana Moana and won best film at the Aotearoa Poetry Film Festival. It has since screened in Italy and will be shown at the Helios Sun Poetry Film Festival in Mexico. Arihia is also an arts columnist for The Post. She lives with her whānau in Te Whanganui-a-Tara.
Mary Macpherson is a poet, photographer, photobook maker, and art writer from Te Whanganui-a-Tara/Wellington. Her poems have been published in print and online journals in Aotearoa, most recently in Landfall, The Spinoff, and Ōrongohau | Best Zealand Poems. Mary’s poetry collection, Social Media, was published by The Cuba Press in 2019. Her photographs are in the collections of Te Papa Tongarewa, The Dowse Art Museum, and Te Whare o Rehua Sarjeant Gallery. She is a part of the team who organise Photobook/NZ, Aotearoa’s biennial photobook festival at Te Papa. She is currently working on a photobook to be published with Rim Books, called one foot on the bottom, which uses her mother’s family photographs mixed with her contemporary work.
Jackson McCarthy is a poet and musician from Auckland who is currently studying in Wellington. He is of mixed Māori and Lebanese descent. His work has been published widely, including Ōrongohau | Best New Zealand Poems, Landfall, Starling, and The Spinoff. He currently serves as an editor at both Symposia and Salient magazines.
Margo Montes de Oca is a poet and researcher of Mexican and Pākehā descent living in Te Whanganui-a-Tara.
Simon Sweetman is a music journalist, short story writer, and poet.
Clay Eaters, Gregory Kan Auckland University Press, 2025
To wander
Looking for what we have lost
On that other side of silence
A surface that lets us write so many things into it
Knowing the little that we know
In the few ways we know how
Gregory Kan from Clay Eaters
I have just finished reading Gregory Kan’s Clay Eaters and I am caught in an eddy of multiple hauntings. How to translate this transcendental state of reading? How to share this poetry nourishment? I will begin with the notion that the collection resembles a landscape of braided rivers: a polyphonic source, the tributaries, the gentle currents and the torrents, the obstacle boulders and the jagged edges, the ripples and the calm. The beauty. The fierceness. The shifting waters. The place to stand and ponder. The place to stand and be. Poetry as braided river. Poetry as wonder.
Poetry that is personal and invented and incredibly moving.
Who were you, really
Outside of us, outside of me
Outside of all my
Useless bargaining
There are autobiographical braids. The family who moves from Singapore to Aotearoa. The poet who returns to Singapore six years later to do compulsory military service on Pulau Tekong. A father who suffers a stroke. A partner and a beloved cat who dies. Siblings and their offspring.
Poetry that is slowly unfolding as we traverse the braided currents. The visual layout offers shifting movement as we move amidst silence, the double spacing, the single spacing, the space to ponder, the spare and the dense, the jungle and the family room, the familiar and the unfamiliar.
Poetry as mapping. Maps are a recurring motif on an island that has a chequered history of cartography and naming, where orienteering is a key lesson for the military trainees. Yet I find myself viewing this as more than jungle mapping, because these poetic braids are a way of mapping self, of heart. There are the slippery currents of losing and finding one’s way in both past and present, the porous areas between here and there. There is no translation for a dish, kueh: ‘Neither cake nor jelly / Neither dumpling nor pudding / But somewhere between them all’. For me that signalled the inhabited space. Nothing set in concrete. Nothing static. The forever changed. Like the braided river flowing, the same but different.
This is poetry that navigates a tough experience, the poet’s military cadet years, those jungle ghosts, where spirits may dwell in trees: ‘The island didn’t seem like a place for people’. Where it’s the ‘Endless trees running deep into the red clay earth’. And it’s the weight of packs and mysterious stories and escape longings. The hammering weapons. Heart wrenching. This ache.
And then.
This is poetry that draws forward the father, there in his invalid wheelchair or his study, notebooks piling, books on shelves. The difficulty and ease of being with him, then and now. And the family, the mother, the siblings and the offspring, coming into view. And a scene, this together family scene, after the ‘archetypal family feast’, that is a catch in my throat, as the dreams accrue and connect:
Piecing our dreams together
In a wild mosaic
A basin
For other dreams
And in this haunting braid of life and death and loss and challenge, the death of a beloved cat, Giilgamesh, much caressed, sorely missed.
I am deeply drawn into this collection, drawn and redrawn, as hold my breath and wait, just for this moment, here with the expanse of autumnal blue sky, the kererū now calm, after weeks of drunken frenzy, this red clay lining the tongue speaking, an aftertaste in my coffee. And yes this collection has stuck to my skin (see below). I loved hearing Gregory read (again see below) – actually I would love to listen to a whole audio book. This gift. This poetry gift. Thank you.
Satellite view of the island
The jungle canopy a green so dark it’s almost black
It looks like a giant black square in the sea
The giant black square is a photo
Of us
Attired strangely
Walking on a soft dirt road at night
We look like we have walked a very long way
We look like we don’t know
where we have come from at all
a reading
Gregory reads from Clay Eaters
a conversation
Were there any highlights, epiphanies, discoveries, challenges as you wrote thiscollection?
The entire thing was a surprise, really, and a journey of discovery. When I started writing it, I had no idea where it would go.
It all started with the island. That’s where I started digging, again.
It’s humbling to return to the site of such trauma. Often it’s embarrassing to me. But I tried to treat my past selves and memories with as much kindness and acceptance as I could muster, and that in and of itself constituted a large part of the process.
I also learnt lots of things about the island’s history that I hadn’t known when I was there. That was very humbling.
What matters when you are writing a poem? Or to rephrase, what do you wantyour poetry to do?
That’s a difficult thing for me to generalise. I think each poem has its own tendencies, and my role is to follow them, tease them out. The writing leads me, instead of me leading it, if that makes sense. To me it feels more like a form of stewardship or collaboration, like tending to a garden.
As far as what I want the poems to “do”, I want them to stick to the skin, perhaps without the reader fully realising it. Also, even though my work tends to be very personal, I want readers to see themselves in it too, to catch glimpses of themselves in the gaps.
Are there particular poets that have sustained you, as you navigate poetry as both reader and writer?
Raul Zurita, Susan Howe, Myung-mi Kim, Tusiata Avia, Hera Lindsay Bird, Anne Carson, just to name a few!
We are living in hazardous and ruinous times. Can you name three things thatgive you joy and hope?
Love, food, and the idea that change is not just possible but certain.
Gregory Kan is a writer and developer based in Pōneke/Wellington. His first collection of poetry, This Paper Boat, was shortlisted for the Ockham New Zealand Book Awards for poetry in 2017. Under Glass, his second collection, was longlisted for the award in 2020. He was the 2017 Grimshaw Sargeson Fellow.
Lines composed less than a mile from the nearest Kum & Go
Two months have passed & each time I see that suggestive sign I think of impermanence, as well as faceless figures emerging from the shadows to entertain the kind of desire that makes thrillseekers of us all before disappearing & taking on a new form. & so I find myself buying a souvenir at a gas station just to remind me of my need to hold on to every place that offers up somewhere soft to land or a breeze to carry my breath back to those I’ve missed. Seasons, lovers or inspiration—come what may, there is a reckoning with what the tides deposit on the shores of our dreams for us to collect like trinkets. Once, a pearl got caught in my throat & all I could sing were songs about never seeing the cordial coastlines of home again. I left the doors to the past and the future unlocked in the hope that I would be visited by songs yet to be written. You see, I’ve been on Wellington time this whole time, so I know how this part of the story ends & what will greet me when I step across the threshold. Beauty can take the form of the memories & secrets passing through a petrol-stained concrete forecourt, lives lived through seasons that test the roles they’re meant to play. Lovers & enemies alike grasp at the plausibility of fate to decide whether or not to| pay mind to the return of the Machiavellian mastermind, who doesn’t need shadows to trick or treat. We know that there’s more than two colours that can dictate whether we stay still or take a chance on change, more than two ways of looking at the same cloud in an ever-shifting sky. We all feel this in our blood. I’ve drawn a line between fluorescent lighting & photoperiodism to settle the ellipsis, so that I may swallow the pearl & sing of my own homecoming without forgetting where I’ve been or the landscapes that held my absence
Iowa City, November 2024
Chris Tse
Chris Tse is the New Zealand Poet Laureate for 2022-25. He is the author of three collections published by Auckland University Press, and co-editor of Out Here, an anthology of Takatāpui and queer writers from Aotearoa. Chris is a former editor of The Spinoff’s Friday Poem and has guest edited issues of Best New Zealand Poems, Starling, and Cordite Poetry Review. In 2024, he participated in the International Writing Program Fall Residency at the University of Iowa.
sitting here at the junction box of war and peace and flowing waters hearing the soundtrack of bush haven hearing the dawn bugle the flyover the kōrero the silence searching in the manukā for remedy cables mourning every raised weapon every sacrifice every empty stomach displaced refugee every cruel act the weasel words from weasel politicians jamming our children in square learning boxes slamming our hospitals in low voltage budgets cramming our planet in polluted circuits extinction coils feeling in this breaking dawn the connecting calls for peace picturing protest placards holding voices of resistance past and present picturing aid workers risking life to nurse and feed and shelter picturing a global jigsaw puzzle of greed and smash and grab for how long have we imagined peace have we called for peace for how long have we imagined blue sky transformation today we are standing here holding our currents of hope and yes today we are joining in calls for peace calling calling calling
Paula Green and Bridget Mahy, 6 April 2025, National Library, Parnell
What an honour to receive the Margaret Mahy Award 2025. What mattered to me more than anything was writing and delivering the lecture. I decided to celebrate why I love writing poetry for and with children, why I love reading and writing children’s poetry (and other genres), as much as I love reading and writing adult poetry (and other genres). And I wanted to fill the room with children’s voices as much as I filled it with my own.
To activate a child’s love of reading and writing within poetry playgrounds feels even more vital at the moment. Poetry is an excellent way to get children falling in love with the possibility of words, to see and engage with the world in new and nourishing lights, to grow stories, to build empathy, knowledge, fascinations, curiosity.
I created a patchwork-quilt lecture – in keeping with my tiny patchwork quilt mornings – and explored poetry, in ten patches, as both kite and anchor. I got personal and maybe I got political.
To stand in a packed room after almost three years was like a small miracle. To have sixty-second conversations with so many people felt like a second miracle.
I am so grateful to Storylines for this opportunity. To Libby Limbrick and Bridget Mahy for their thoughtful, insightful words. To the National Library for their care and support as event hosts. Especially dear Elizabeth Jones and Crissi Blair. I just loved it. To friends, family and fellow authors. Yes the occasion did smash me, as I have not yet left my recovery road, but it was so very special.
We are all finding ways to navigate and respond in these times, global upheavals (what word to use?) that take me back to my lengthy Italian studies, to the rise of Hitler, Mussolini and fascism. To our coalition government that is endangering our wellbeing and that of the planet. I witness our stretched health system, our incredible nurses and doctors, underpaid, working long hours, without access to new/newish drugs, equipment and trials available overseas 9life-saving, life-extending). It is just not good enough.
What to read? What to write? What to say and do and choose? Do we need comfort or challenge or a vital mix of both?
I feel like my energy jar is on empty.
Sadly, I am going to put both my blogs on recharge for maybe two weeks – but I do want to maintain these sites as nourishing hubs for children and adults in Aotearoa who love reading and writing.
Te Moana o Reo: Ocean of Languages editors Michelle Elvy and Vaughan Rapatahana
To celebrate the arrival of Te Moana o Reo: Ocean of Languages, I invited nine authors to read their introductions and their pieces in both languages (where applicable). I also gave the editors three questions to answer. To hear a language spoken is an uplift, to hear its music and rhythms, the word endings, the differing vowels and consonants, is aural nourishment.
I began my recent Margaret Mahy lecture on writing poetry for and with children by describing a scene. I was sitting in the shade at the beach cafe at Te Henga Bethells writing the lecture when an Italian family turned up. We started a conversation in Italian and it felt like the Italian room in my head at opened up again. There we were speaking of books and art and food and cities. And I felt alive with the Italian cadences. Just as I feel switched up a level when Scottish words and accents lead me back to my Scottish grandmother, my father’s linguistic heritage. Having spent over a decade at the University of Auckland doing Italian degrees, I have always felt this: we are what we speak as much as we are what we eat.
So Te Moana o Reo: Ocean of Languages, edited by Michelle Elvy and Vaughan Rapatahana is very special to me, this lovingly assembled anthology. More than forty languages come together, across multiple genres. As Chris Tse says on the blurb: ‘Although language is the common thread that binds these pieces together, the range of stories contained is as broad as the languages represented, each a surprising burst of colour and sound.’
Each contribution is prefaced with a tiny introduction by each author. There are twelve essays that reflect upon myriad ways language matters: how it connects, forges identity, is organic, the bearer of narratives, myths, history, genealogy, politics, culture, home anchors.
This is a book that will enlighten, set your ears and heart travelling, get you thinking, communicating, sharing. As Emma Neale says on the blurb: ‘This polyphonic, polyglot collection reminds us that we underestimate the small at a cost: the cost of joy and wisdom.’ Indeed. A storehouse of colour and sound, joy and wisdom. Settle into listening. Renee Liang’s terrific reading ends with the word ’embrace’, and that is the word I am offering you, a sublime anthology offered as warm embrace. Thank you.
The readings
Iona Winter
‘Tōrea’
Kay McKenzie Cooke
‘Language as Species’
Lynn Davidson
Lynn reads ‘When Yellow’s on the Broom’
Gina Cole
Gina Cole reads ‘na suluwanu e sega ni mate rawa’ ‘immortal deepstaria’
John Geraets
John reads ‘Whangarei Walks’
Mikaela Nyman
Mikaela reads ‘Hålla Fast’ ‘Holding On’
Nod Ghosh
Nod reads ‘Kokrano Chul’
Serie Barford
Serie reads ‘The Temptation of Apples’
Renee Liang
Renee reads ‘Embrace’
The readers
Gina Cole is a Fijian/Pākehā writer living in Tāmaki Makaurau. Her short story collection Black Ice Matter won Best First Book Fiction at the 2017 Ockham New Zealand Book Awards. Her fiction, poetry and essays have been widely anthologized. Her science fiction fantasy novel Na Viro is a work of Pasifikafuturism. She holds an LLB(Hons), an MJur and a Masters of Creative Writing from University of Auckland, and a PhD in creative writing from Massey University. In 2023 she was appointed a Member of the New Zealand Order of Merit (MNZM) for services to literature.
Iona Winter (Waitaha/Kāi Tahu) is a poet, essayist, storyteller and editor. She has several published collections of poetry and short fiction; most recently In the shape of his hand lay a river (2024). Her upcoming book A Counter of Moons, creative non-fiction speaking to the aftermath of suicide, is due for publication in 2024. In 2023, Iona founded Elixir & Star Press, as a dedicated space for the expression of grief in Aotearoa New Zealand. The inaugural Elixir & Star Grief Almanac 2023, a liminal gathering, included over 100 multidisciplinary responses to grief. Widely published and internationally anthologised, Iona creates work that spans genre and form, and lives in the Buller region.
John Geraets lives in Whangārei and his personal work plus a range of group projects can be found at johngeraets.com. His Everything’s Something in Place was published in 2019 by Titus Books.
Kay McKenzie Cooke (Kāi Tahu Kāti Māmoe) lives with her husband Robert in Ōtepoti with their tamariki and mokopuna living close by. She is the author of four poetry books and three novels. Currently, at the request of whānau, she is working on collecting memories into some semblance of order.
Lynn Davidson was 2021 Randell Cottage Creative New Zealand Writer in Residence. In 2023 she was Mike Riddell Writer in Residence in the Ida Valley, Central Otago. She had a Hawthornden Fellowship in 2013 and a Bothy Project Residency in the Cairngorms in 2016. Her memoir Do you still have time for chaos? was published by Te Herenga Waka University Press, Wellington, in 2024. Lynn calls Aotearoa New Zealand and Scotland home.
Mikaela Nyman is from the Åland Islands in Finland and lives in Taranaki. A critically acclaimed writer of poetry, fiction and nonfiction in Swedish and English, she was honoured to be the 2024 Robert Burns Fellow. As an adult, she decided to write herself back to the language universe she’d been born into. She is the author of the climate fiction novel Sado (2020) and co-editor of Sista, Stanap Strong! A Vanuatu Women’s Anthology (2021). Her first English-language poetry collection The Anatomy of Sand is forthcoming with Te Herenga Waka University Press in May 2025.
Nod Ghosh is a graduate of the Hagley Writers’ Institute, Ōtautahi Christchurch, and has had work published extensively in New Zealand and overseas. “How to Bake a Book”, a creative writing textbook with a difference, is due soon from Everytime Press. Further details on Nod’s other books can be found on the website: http://www.nodghosh.com
Renee Liang is a poet, playwright and essayist. She has toured eight plays and collaborates on visual arts works, dance, film, opera, community events and music. Some poetry and short fiction are anthologised. A memoir of motherhood, When We Remember to Breathe, with Michele Powles, appeared in 2019. In 2018 she was appointed a Member of the NZ Order of Merit for services to the arts.
Serie Barford was born in Aotearoa to a German-Samoan mother (Lotofaga) and Pālagi father. Her most recent poetry collection, Sleeping with Stones (Anahera Press), was shortlisted for the Mary and Peter Biggs Award for Poetry at the 2022 Ockham New Zealand Book Awards.
Questions for the editors
Editing an anthology can offer multiple joys as you scavenge your shelves, libraries and the archives for contributions across genres. What surprised or delighted or challenged you?
Michelle: I was delighted by how many authors took on the challenge to write something that held personal meaning (exploring family history and culture, traditions and frictions) while doing it with such intensity – the demand of the small form. Even the fictions are an exploration of our realities. The creative nonfictions blend so well with the small fictions, and this is a wonderful outcome of this book.
The challenges lay, first, in the attention to detail that was required with so many languages. Many people played a role, including translators and language experts who worked with the authors and editors, and then the font selections that happened on the design end. As well, there were challenges for the final presentation, beyond fonts: how to give space to each author and their commentary, plus their biographical information. We began with an idea for micros but each piece is supported by various parts, many of them presented with two languages. We also made the important decision to grant the needed space to each piece; these are not stories that can be crowded on the page. This book demonstrates how space can be a meaningful contribution to contents, and the designer gave careful consideration to all these aspects in this ambitious and beautiful collection.
Vaughan: I was/am delighted that there were so many willing participants, from a multitude of language backgrounds in Aotearoa New Zealand, who expressed themselves so articulately via a range of genre. Indeed, I was a little surprised by the plenitude of languages we – the editors – were able to include, realising along the way that there were/are still more tongues to wag, as it were!
I love how the anthology is prismatic in its reach. It feels absolutely vital we hold Aotearoa’s multiple voices and languages to the light. How what we speak matters. You have written an excellent introduction that responds to the question, ‘Why this anthology?’. What motivated you to create this rich gathering?
Michelle: It began when we hosted a Phantom Billstickers series for National Flash Fiction Day in 2022. Those posters included 10 writers whose work shines for the language(s) it represents, and they were shared nationally, also representing the varied geographies of the authors: Ivy Alvarez, David Eggleton, Vera Dong, Teoti Jardine, S J Mannion, Selina Tusitala Marsh, Neema Sing, Piet Nieuwland, Mikaela Nyman and Cristina Schumacher. That series inspired us to think further on this idea – we knew there would be many gems representing the many more languages of Aotearoa. And we were right: we put out a call for submissions and found many finely tuned works representing such a wide range of voices. We also invited some writers to send work so we’d have excellent balance between new voices and some of our already known poets and writers. Some of the pieces are previously published, some are new; the original 10 from the Phantom Billstickers series are also included, of course.
We state this in the introduction, which you’ve referenced: We live in an increasingly multicultural and multilingual society…. In the twenty-first century, we navigate an ocean of languages in this country. And so, we set out to tune in to the many languages around us, to hear how they might ring out on the page.
We wanted to create a book that would bring into focus just how multicultural our world is – and how this is the dynamic reality of Aotearoa. Little did we know then how this book might matter even more by the time it was published.
Vaughan: I must stress that the idea for this anthology, the constant driving force, was from my co-editor Michelle Elvy, who kindly invited me to join the project. I was more than happy to assist, especially as my own background has been so strongly emphatic of the need to realise that the English language or rather agents of it, is a veritable Hydra whereby Indigenous tongues have for so long been and continue to be usurped by it. All the more important for me, then, was to stress the viability and versatility and visibility of other languages in – and of course beyond – this country. Tēnā koe mō tēnei kōwhiringa a Michelle.
You both write terrific poetry. Go voyaging in poetry oceans. What matters when you are writing a poem? Does it change things when the world is so awry?
Michelle: Thank you! The world is off-kilter these days, yes. How to write in such a time? For me, poetry offers a space to consider our world in both real and imagined terms. It’s a space where we can express direct observations as well as intentions, or desires. In a class just this week, we were talking about working at the ‘edges’ and how this opens possibilities. The most interesting, and most gratifying, thing is to see how we can hang there on the edge, sometimes a sheer cliff; we sense the vertigo, the off-balance nature of things, yet find a way not only to express it but to live in it. Uncertainties permeate our world; poetry offers new spaces for those voyages you mention. I love that idea of poetry oceans; it implies calm and storm, and poetry allows for all of it.
Vaughan: For me, writing a poem is almost always a vital existential action, a form of personal solace. Penning a poem for me is akin to breathing. More, doing so certainly enables better navigation across this Antipodean cultural ocean, as well as the cultures I am fortunate to also take part in when back in Asia for long periods. By the way, I do not subscribe to the point that the world is ‘so awry’. Complex, contradictory, exasperating at times – but this is an historical constant, where poetry can be, should be, panacea.
It is on my mind every day. How to navigate this toxic world? What gives you joy? Hope?
Michelle: We can find joy in the quiet. We can find joy in the spaces between us. We can find joy through collaborations and connections. We can find joy in the act of sharing. For me, joy comes when there are no other distractions – it’s often private but sustaining. This is a noisy world, with baffling and destructive forces all around us. And so: I find joy in small, good things. Which brings me back to this ocean of languages.
My hope is that people will pick up this book, share it – and find ways to think more deeply about who we are and about why our many voices matter. My hope is that beyond a single book there is a much bigger message. With the threats against individual freedoms, with the attacks on spaces where we express ourselves, this is a book for our times. (In my dreams, I fly across the US and launch a coast-to-coast book drop. I’d skip Texas and Florida but collaborate with the Little Free Library and their efforts to counter the banned books policies.) My hope is that this will sing out as an important chorus from Aotearoa New Zealand. It’s something vital, I think.
Vaughan: Again, I do not believe that this is a ‘toxic world’. There is so much to be thankful for. In my own case, it is still being alive after my recent diagnosis of high-grade cancer and the ongoing treatments. Joy and hope spring from seeing another sunny day; being with my wife and our whānau – including our dog; being supported by many; laughter; nga karakia me nga inoi te wā katoa.
Michelle Elvy is a short story writer, poet, editor and teacher of creative writing, working across many genres. She is founding editor of Flash Frontier: An Adventure in Short Fiction, and her anthology work includes, most recently, Ko Aotearoa Tātou | We Are New Zealand and A Kind of Shelter Whakaruru-taha. Her books include the everrumble and the other side of better. She has edited numerous anthologies, including the forthcoming Poto! Iti te kupu, nui te kōrero| Short! The big book of small stories, edited with Kiri Piahana-Wong (MUP). She is currently sending a weekly poem dispatch rom the USA to post on Poetry Shelf.
Vaughan Rapatahana (Te Ātiawa, Ngāti Te Whiti) is a poet, novelist, writer and anthologist widely published across several genres in both his main languages, te reo Māori and English. His most recent collection as co-editor is Katūīvei Contemporary Pasifika poetry from Aotearoa New Zealand (Massey University Press, 2024). Co-edited with David Eggleton and Mere Taito. Vaughan has embarked upon a long term critique of agents pushing the English language globally, as is evidenced by his inaugurating and co-editing English language as Hydra (Multilingual Matters, Bristol, UK, 2012) and Why English? Confronting the Hydra (Multilingual Matters, Bristol, UK, 2016). A book he considers his most important book is this year’s Sexual Predation and TEFL (Teaching English as a Foreign Language) (De Gruyter Brill, The Netherlands) for which the link is here.
NZ Poetry Shelf 