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.

High Wire, Michael Fitzsimons, The Cuba Press, 2025

Now turn around
and see whitebaiters at the river mouth
and the puka leaf in the corner of the garden,
a rim of green brilliance,
and your home filled with homeliness,
noise and kids in every room,
and a woman with a voice like a bell,
singing a mountain hymn
right there in the kitchen.
And you far above the earth,
singing along.

Michael Fitzsimons
from ‘Remission’

Michael Fitzsimon’s new collection, High Wire, is a celebration of life: evocative, intimate, reflective. Home is a vital anchor as we absorb entwined threads of childhood, mythology, illness, recovery, reading, writing, routines and sidepaths.

The first section, a longish sequence entitled ‘All This’, offers the reader vital breathing space, a sweet slowness of arrival. In this current smash of global upheaval, when to pause and refresh feels like a necessity, Michael’s precious book is a gift. I am sitting here, in a zen-like state, the pīwakawaka dancing outside the bedroom window, a helicopter circling overhead, and I’m emptying my mind, falling into the sublime space of contemplation. Falling into this poetry uplift.

I slip into lines that are pinpricks upon the skin, sometimes pungent, sometimes tender, sometimes delicate: “Many are the things, she says, that can run a plough / through your heart.” The lines might expose a personal chord or the wider, collective wounds we face:

“If I don’t listen to Morning Report
it’s going to be a good day,
full of bounce and soft foliage.”

At one point, the poet lists the people in pain who surround him, at another times figures such as Bart Simpson, Henry VIII, Heraclitus, Parmenides, his yoga teacher, make an appearance. The circumstances of living and reading and writing are jagged and miraculous and everything in between. It’s high wire and it’s rejuvenating.

The second section, ‘And More’, comprises individual poems, a pocket-book suite of images and thoughts, and again, as with the first sequence, I am reminded of the exquisite breathing space, the spareness and physicality of Vincent O’Sullivan’s poetry. Again we are entering the varied rhythms of living, the acute epiphanies, the rewards of observation, the ebb and flow of memory.

When I put this precious book down, the pīwakawaka is now still, the helicopters now quiet, the missing dog walker found, and I feel like crying. It’s that curious and sublime mix of joy and wonder and delight. It’s intoxicating. It’s restoring. I am mindful how the rhythm of writing is so important, whatever the genre, because the rhythm of living is so very important. How words can sing and shine in our hearts when we most need them. And that moment is now.

I think about your struggle
to get it down,

your doggedness
in the quiet afternoon,

one more cup of coffee,
one more seagull drifting by the window,

your search for the hidden thing,
patient as an angler.

from ‘The writer’

A reading

‘Credo’

‘Four Square philosophy’

‘The fin’

A conversation

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

I wrote many of these poems in the long aftermath of a cancer diagnosis. As the months and years ticked by I felt increasingly over the moon for simply being here, for all the people around me and the beautiful natural world I inhabit on the edge of Wellington harbour. I hope the collection reflects an acute appreciation for the most simple things in life, and also an awareness of how precarious life is.

The first half of this collection is a series of short pieces / poetic fragments. This loose form gave me the freedom to try and capture poetically the rambling thoughts and feelings from that time of recovery. The mind is roaming widely but I think and hope there is a cohesion there.

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

I want my poetry to be honest to the thoughts and feelings I am having. I want there to be a core of emotional truth underlying the words which the reader might recognise in their own lives. To convey that truth in an interesting poetic form, in fresh images and story and metaphor, is always the challenge.

For me writing a poem is an interplay between the things I set out thinking I want to say and the things that arise unexpected in the writing of the poem. My best poems come as something of a surprise to myself.

I have found there are many different starting points for a poem. It might be an image or an idea, an object or a phrase, a memory or a strong emotion. It might be something someone said, it might be something I have read. The seeds of a new poem lie everywhere.

I value simplicity and accessibility in poetry. I would like my poetry to contain elements of surprise, gratitude and wonder.

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

There are many poets I love. Particular favourites are Billy Collins, Mary Oliver, William Stafford, Charles Simic, Carol Ann Duffy and Wisława Szymborska. On the local scene I like Geoff Cochrane, Jenny Bornholdt, Peter Bland, Brian Turner, Elizabeth Smither and many others.

I am inspired by the work of other poets but I have learned not to try and copy them. I am always learning from them but the goal is to speak in my own voice, reflect my own experience of what it means to be human.

I am sustained by the dedication of other poets to the craft (I am not alone in this addiction to writing!) and I am sustained by so many knock-out poems that take my breath away.

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

My friends and family – all three generations.

The beauty of the natural world that surrounds me. I live by the sea and walk the coastline most days.

The nourishment of the spirit – reading, singing, meditation, yoga.

Michael Fitzsimons has published three books of poetry. His first collection Now You Know was recommended in RNZ’s annual poetry highlights. His second collection, Michael, I thought you were dead, dealt with a cancer diagnosis and was described by Joy Cowley as ‘a feast for the soul’. His third collection, High Wire, was published in February this year.

Michael is a professional writer and member of the three-person South Wellington Poetry Society. He was co-founder of the Wellington communications and publishing company, FitzBeck Creative. He has co-written two books with Nigel Beckford: With a Passion, the extraordinary passions of ordinary New Zealanders and You Don’t Take a Big Leap Without a Gulp – finding the courage to change careers and live again.

He lives with his wife Rose in Seatoun on a hill overlooking the harbour. They have three children spread from Wellington to Warsaw to upstate New York.

The Cuba Press page

The six stages of these 100 days

we used to cry    
a lot
we cried about [                              ]
and [                                   ]
and [                                              ]
(you know)

we used to ask how
and who on earth
we asked [                                      ]
and [                                      ]
and [                                ]
(so many questions)

we used to rant and rave
megaphones to our mouths
we yelled about [                              ]
and [                                                  ]
and [                                                              ]
(can’t they hear us?)

we used to comfort each other
bottom’s up, we’d say
we’d say [                                       ]
and [                                                           ]
and [                                                                    ]
(don’t they care?) 

we are in the middle of it now     
it’s for real
we are numbed from [                              ]
and [                                           ]
and [                                   ]
(they’re not listening, they don’t care)

we can’t cry anymore
so we make fun
we tell jokes about [                                                  ]
and [                                                                                                      ]
and [                                                                                                                         ]
(loud as love, louder than bombs)

we laugh and we laugh and we laugh

Michelle Elvy
20 April 2025; day 90 of the first 100 days of the 47^th presidency of the US

  Note: There is no seventh stage, because there is no acceptance

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).

Sudden Valley Press is OPEN for poetry manuscript submissions until 31 May 2025. (They are only open for unsolicited submissions during the month of May each year.)

Details and guidelines here

Unity Books Wellington

57 Willis Street, Wellington, New Zealand 6011

23 May at 6 pm

Join us for this special celebration with The Cuba Press. We’ll be launching Wonderland by Tracy Farr and Tackling the hens by Mary McCallum.

Wonderland by Tracy Farr was the winner of the NZSA Laura Solomon Cuba Press Prize 2024 that’s already received high praise;
‘Passionate, beautifully constructed, sorrowful and yet immensely hopeful.’—Fiona Kidman.

‘Mesmerising. A book that leaves you filled with wonder, and deeply moved. I loved it.’—Gigi Fenster.

Mary McCallum is a writer and publisher who lives in the Wairarapa and Pōneke. Tackling the hens is her new poetry collection. Her own published work includes award-winning novel The Blue, a poetry book XYZ of Happiness and a children’s novel Dappled Annie and the Tigrish.

All welcome to celebrate these two new, wonderful books.

Please join Tender Prss on Saturday 31 May to hear readings from Rachel O’Neill’s new book, Symphony of Queer Errands, accompanied by a musical performance by Lucky Pollock!

Celebrations will kick off at 5.30pm at gallery and bookstore Plomacy, located at 8 Brown Street, Ponsonby.

Gaza

The dead boy tries to open his eyes.
He wants to see the world he is leaving.
But there is nothing to see here,
nothing and nothing, and anyway he is gone.
His parents held him while he died
but they are both dead, too.
Or he held them, no one remembers.

Bill Manhire

Bill Manhire’s most recent books, all published by Te Herenga Waka University Press / Victoria Press, include Wow (2020), Some Things to Place in a Coffin (2017), Tell Me My Name (with Hannah Griffin and Norman Meehan, 2017) and The Stories of Bill Manhire (2015). He was New Zealand’s inaugural poet laureate, and founded and for many years directed the International Institute of Modern Letters at Victoria University of Wellington. He has edited major anthologies, including, with Marion McLeod, the now classic Some Other Country: New Zealand’s Best Short Stories (1984).

Gaza

We shriek and scream and holler and shout and
sign petitions and hold placards and boycott and
demand peace and listen to Gaza and weep

And our shrieks and screams and hollers and shouts
our petitions and placards and boycotts
our demands for peace and words and tears for Gaza

fall upon deaf ears

The borders are blocked food is scarce
aid is stopped displaced families are murdered
hospitals targeted under extensive ground operations

we are witnessing genocide

We will not stop shrieking and screaming
and hollering and shouting and signing petitions
and holding placards and boycotting and
demanding peace and listening to Gaza and weeping

we will not stop

Paula Green
4 am, May 19th 2025
Aotearoa New Zealand

This is protest not poetry.

Full list of winners here

Last night I live-streamed The Ockham NZ Book Awards 2025 and it was top-shelf viewing. I absolutely loved it. I loved hearing the sixteen finalists read (ordering more books today!!) and I loved the opening speeches of Mark Todd and Miriama Kamo. You can watch the full ceremony here.

Sixteen wonderful books that underline the strengths of our writing across voice and genre: books that are vital, significant, penned with aroha, full of heart, sparking connections, a multiplicity of voices, knowledge, wisdom, insight, challenge, storytelling, poem making.

Two opening mihi stood out for me.

Mark Todd, the co-founder of Ockham Residential, shared a few personal thoughts on why books matter: “It is important to keep producing stories that help us reflect upon what reality is ( . . . ). I’ve just finished reading East of Eden by John Steinbeck (sorry it’s not a local book) but fuck it’s good (. . . ) Writing helps us to understand each other, to reflect upon our own lives, our own ethics, good writing helps us all, in those ways, to potentially bind us together.”

Miriama Kamo was brilliant as MC. She began her mihi with the call of the birds: “While some forces move to dull the choir that the many birds we know make together, is what makes the forest truly sing, and that inclusiveness instinct is what draws us together tonight, honouring and celebrating the many diverse voices of our writers, and their voices are more important that ever in moments of political turmoil and social and personal anxiety. Books give us a chance to reflect, to slow our heart beat down, in a time of increasing polarisation. Books remind us of the validity of other perspectives, in times when power claims certainty of how we must think and act, books teach us nuance. In times of ugliness, books can cat beauty, and our finalists do all this, whether they explore ambiguity and the concepts of truth and untruth, or help us to explore colonisation and inheritance and settlement and belonging in new ways, whether they draw us into a meditative space to explore nuances of New Zealand culture, or present us simply with images that speak to the heart and soul. Books draw us deeper into our own humanity.’

Thirdly I loved Kirsty Baker’s speech as winner of Judith Binney Prize for Best First Book of Illustrated Nonfiction with Sight Lines: Women and Art in Aotearoa (Auckland University Press). Her speech included this: ‘It’s an honour to have Sightlines honoured here tonight, although outside of this room the world feels almost unbearably dark and heavy, hard won rights are being stripped back, equity is being erased, people are facing genocide. Look around the globe and humanity seems to be showing us the absolute worst that we are capable of. So often though it’s the artists and writers who remind us that we can collectively effect change. As the indomitable artist and writer Bell Hooks has said, “The function of art is to do more that tell it like it is, it’s to imagine what’s possible”, so to artists and writers in this room, keep on imagining.

The poetry winners

I am mindful every year that for every astonishing book that makes the longlist, the shortlist or the winning spot, there are other equally astonishing books that don’t. History has a catalogue of astonishing and much loved books that have not won awards. So first I offer a warm hug to those who missed out. There is a reader out there who has held your book to their heart.

I celebrated the four poetry finalists on Poetry Shelf and I utterly loved them them all. Four equally moving reading experiences as my features attest, but today I salute Manualiʻi by Rex Letoa Paget (Samoan/Danish) (Saufoʻi Press), winner of the Jessie Mackay Poetry Prize for Best First Book of Poetry and Emma Neale winner of the Mary and Peter Biggs Award for Poetry for her collection Liar, Liar, Lick, Spit (Otago University Press).

Emma Neale, Liar, Liar, Lick, Spit (Otago University Press)

The Lake

This child feels it like blue pollen that makes her hive of fingers dance.
This one a groove along his spine that must be filled with running.
Another as music that only rises here, deep in his mind, never sung.
This last, as crystal numbers that link, fold and fall like pleats in time.

We think they all must know the lake’s mother tongue.
They are her water cupped in our hands,
new skins for the old light we believed in.

Emma Neale, from Liar, Liar, Lick, Spit

“I want to choose the words so that each potential nuance fuels and remains true to the poem’s psychological energy. I want the poem to resonate with sonic qualities so that it shows traces of its musical ancestry. I want the poem to have a hot nucleus of emotional truth.” Emma Neale, conversation with Paula Green

Emma’s poetry has always been a gift for the ear, and this collection is no exception, the linguistic dexterity, the rich lexicon. With her new collection, there is a terrific density of sound and effect. Every poem an intricate arrival of sonic mesh knit chord soar whisper. How it strikes the heart as you read.

To be reading this book is so very timely, when we are grappling and despairing at inhumane leadership, at planet-and-people-polluting toxic lies, at the self-serving manipulations of self-serving politicians. How to read and write in the age of weasel Trump and weasel Luxon Seymour Peters? What can language do? Ah.

I hold this book close to my heart because it reminds of the reach and possibilities of poetry. We can speak of the child, sons and daughters, mothers and fathers. We can write of loss and love, grief and abuse, epiphany and recognition. Failings and flailings. We can write out of and because of omission, and we can write out of and because of erasure.

There are multiple tracks and clearings as you read. You might feel the sharp blade of reading along with the sweet balm of self care. Take ‘Genealogy’, for example, a poem that steps into a complicated weave of ancestry, where Emma asks, so astutely, ‘is every white genealogy poem an erasure poem / is every postcolonial poem an erasure poem will we ever be fair / and true and clear’.

Or take ‘An Abraham Darby Rose’. Take this poem and sit with under the tree in the shade and embrace its physicality, an attribute that is a gold thread of the collection as whole. Spend time with the rose, honing in on both thorn and petal (‘peach-toned ruffles’), before facing the needle sting of the son’s departure, the self-examination within the greater context of life – and sit there finding ripples of comfort as the speaker gently places plantings in ‘the soil’s quiet crib’. Take this poem and hold it close.

Imagine we are in a cafe. Imagine we are in cafe reminding ourselves that silence is a form of consent. To write is to fertilise our community gardens. To write, as Emma does, and speak of tough stuff is to strengthen who and how we are in the world. To navigate, as Emma does, being mother daughter sister friend. Human and humane being. To gather a box of groceries for the welfare centre: ‘in the hope that kindness migrates invisible currents / to pollinate every tyrant’s heart’ (from ‘Wanting to believe in the butterfly effect’). To gather a folder of poems.

Ah. This precious book with its layers and weave of vulnerability and admission. This book of hauntings. This haunting book. This necessary fertile sequence of plantings. I love this so very much indeed.

Paula Green, from Poetry Shelf review

I want to hold this morning
under an agapanthus sky
with a gentle, moth-eyed horse
as if the thread of language
could ever weave a hide
against the hook and ache of loss
when we carry it
deep as the mare carries
the sprint, the vault,
in her hocks, her fetlocks.

Emma Neale
from ‘The Moth-eyed Steeplechase Horse’

You can read the full review with our conversation here.

You can hear Emma read poems here.

Emma Neale is the author of six novels, seven collections of poetry, and a collection of short stories. Her sixth novel, Billy Bird (2016) was short-listed for the Acorn Prize at the Ockham New Zealand Book Awards and long-listed for the Dublin International Literary Award. Emma has a PhD in English Literature from University College, London and has received numerous literary fellowships, residencies and awards, including the Lauris Edmond Memorial Award for a Distinguished Contribution to New Zealand Poetry 2020. Her novel Fosterling (Penguin Random House, 2011) is currently in script development with Sandy Lane Productions, under the title Skin. Her first collection of short stories, The Pink Jumpsuit (Quentin Wilson Publishing, 2021) was long-listed for the Acorn Prize at the Ockham New Zealand Book Awards. Her short story, ‘Hitch’, was one of the top ten winners in the Fish International Short Story Prize 2023 and her poem ‘A David Austin Rose’ won the Burns Poetry Competition 2023-4. Her flash fiction ‘Drunks’ was shortlisted in the Cambridge Short Story Prize 2024. The mother of two children, Emma lives in Ōtepoti/Dunedin, Aotearoa/New Zealand, where she works as an editor. Her most recent book of poems is Liar, Liar, Lick, Spit (Otago University Press, 2024).

Otago University Press page

Manualiʻi by Rex Letoa Paget (Samoan/Danish) (Saufoʻi Press)

DARLING I KNOW YOU SUFFER AND I’M HERE FOR YOU.

we laugh like we used to.
before the kids.
before the house.

back when debts were settled with
two coloured cats eye marbles
and my only pokémon card
i bought with my lunch money
off my rich palagi mate.

when ceilings were creaking floorboards
humming girl power anthems and
ain’t that just the way that life goes
down
down

down
down.
like mike splitting free throw lines.
i wanted to be the paekākāriki express.

chipping and chasing wild watercress
shotgunned under rooftops of punga eels
who sheltered clay soil paths dad spent a summer digging.

he carved our names into tree roots staircased to a creek
where we’d wash our legs scraped with blackberry.

we ran through maize he grew
chasing mystic moon views rising
at the edge of his green thumb.

he planted his seeds with
bootstraps
calloused hands and
we don’t need no education.

survived in
motor oil
whiskey breath
rothman cigarettes.

half his mates didn’t survive
asbestos or asphalt.

a few sit round his lounge now
broken boned road workers
fingers twisted in carpal tunnel
gifting bags of greenery.

cancer scares
cancer skin
four hundred dollars
a week in pension. 

gettin up
getting high
gettin down
gettin no-no-nowhere.

i sit across a table in remuera where
white collars popped discuss
what to do with their third property.

i stare at perfect crooked teeth dipped
in italian red wine
gnawing chipped paint off their beach house
in a town

they can’t even pronounce.

reclined in a railroad home
dads bones rattle and radiate
we throw our hands up to celebrate
him eating the first solid thing in weeks.

Time spins on a record player
our wishes crackle into dust.
can we pause for a moment?
can we go back to the start?

i missed my favourite part.

i visit dry creeks wishing for the same thing.
sandalwood burns through hallways and yeah

ain’t that just the way that life goes
down.
down.
down.
down.

Rex Letoa Paget

There is so much to love about this collection, I want it to remain an open field of possibilities for you. It is self portrait and it is family gatherings, it is prayer and testimony, it is grief and it is love. How it is imbued in love. The presence of grandmothers signals the importance of familiar anchors, of nourishment and nurturing, of roots and self growth. There is music on the line, music on the turntable, music recalled. In the opening section, ‘Manuali’i’, the eclectic movement of words and lines on the page offers sweet shifts in visual and aural rhythms, as though there is no one way to pin sky-gazing or family relationships or writing poems to a singular form. The lower case letter at the start of sentences enriches the music.

The second section, ‘Icarus’, initially conjures the Greek myth, and I find myself sidestepping into notions of life as labyrinth, the risk of burning up, of plunging down and of drowning. More than anything I am revelling in Rex’s language, because, in both subject matter and lyricism, this is poetry of becoming. Verbs favour the present tense, writing exists in the moment of living, writing is a vital form of connecting. But the verbs do more than this, these tools of action, whether physical emotional or cerebral, stall delight and surprise me within the wider wordcape of a poetic language that is succulent and sense rich.

At times there is a profound ache, contagious, human, humane, and we are in the ‘Elysian plains’, there with the poet’s grief as he remembers his father. This is writing as inhalation as much as outward breath, not explaining everything, tracing threads to the Gods or ancestors, to the places we become, the connections that matter. And yes, I keep returning to the idea of poems as sustaining breath.

To travel slowly with this sublime collection is to enter poetry as restorative terrain, to encounter notions and parameters of goodness, fragility, recognition, to link the present to both past and future, to question, to suggest, to travel, to connect. Oh! and Manuali’i has the coolest illustrations.

Paula Green, Poetry Shelf review.

You can hear Rex read here

Rex Letoa Paget (Samoan/Danish) is a fa‘afatama crafter of words born in Aotearoa, now living on the unceded lands of the Wurundjeri people. His poetry and storytelling are his compass through space and time. His works are giftings from his ancestors and have been published in Tupuranga, Te Tangi A Te Ruru, AUNTIES, Overcom, No Other Place to Stand: An Anthology of Climate Change Poetry from Aotearoa New Zealand, Rapture: An Anthology of Performance Poetry from Aotearoa New Zealand, Spoiled Fruit: Queer Poetry from Aotearoa, and Australian Poetry Anthology Vol 10. His offerings are lessons, learnings, and acknowledgments for the timelines and traditions of yesterday, today and tomorrow.

Saufo’i Press page