A few years ago I bought Ben Lerner’s The Hatred of Poetry because of the title and because there is, indeed,  an awful lot of awful poetry that I have felt hatred towards.  However, despite the title, the book, is ultimately a celebration of poetry and these are six poems I certainly find worth celebrating.

Tusiata Avia’s ‘How to be in a room full of white people’:  I guarantee any person of colour who reads this poem will nod – if not cackle – with recognition at line after eviscerating line.  One of my favourite grenade lobs: “ Listen to what funding white people have applied for again, now they have whakapapa.”

Hone Tuwhare’s ‘Rain’: When one of my oldest friends asked me to do a reading at her wedding, I chose Rain because it’s such a beautiful piece.  The groom came up to me afterwards and was like: What the hell does that mean?  (FYI: they are still married).

Tayi Tibble’s ‘Homewreckers’:  The poem begins, amusingly, with a young Maori woman’s lament: “When I was a girl/God tested me with stepbrothers.” Samoan step-brothers, to be exact, who break shit and generally torment the narrator.   But as the poem unfolds it gets more melancholic as the narrator reflects on  truths about her own life.

Chris Tse’s ‘What’s Fun Until it Gets Weird‘:  This had me at “bukkake.”  Actually, it had me way before that as it recounts an excruciatingly awkward game of Crimes Against Humanity where the writer has to explain various sexual terms to his insatiably curious mother and aunties.

Talia Marshall’s ‘KIng of the Dive’: Talia’s essays always take me somewhere surprising, utilising language in a way that  never fails to fill me with a mixture of jealousy and awe. Her poems are no different.

Aziembry Aolani’s ‘Parking Warden’:  Aziembry wrote this when he was a student at the Maori and Pasifika creative writing workshop I convene at the International Institute of Modern Letters.  He actually works as a parking warden and I love that he represents his specific point of view here, throwing shit right back at the people who throw shit at him.

Victor Rodger, September 2021

The poems

How to be in a room full of white people

See         the huge room
Count     the brown and black people in the room
again
Count     to one or two or maybe three
again
Count     to only you
again
Breathe  in onetwothreefourfivesixseveneightnine / hold /
Breathe  out onetwothreefourfivesixseveneightnine

                                                      <>

Listen      to white people talk about_____________and___________
                 and________________________________
Listen      to white people talk about writing
Listen      to  white  people  who  are  writing  as  black men and
                 black women
Hush       for prize-winning white people talking
Listen      to white people who are painting dead,  black  bodies
                 with bullet holes
Listen      to  white  people  say  they  don’t  know why they are
                painting dead, black bodies with bullet holes, but their
                art-school tutors are encouraging them to keep going

                                                      <>

Hear       white  people  pause  before  they miss the word they
                used to use
Hear        the tiny-tiny pause
Hear       white people say diversity
again
Wonder  if you could unscrew that word  like a lid,   what might
                 be inside the jar

                                                     <>

Listen      to white people call you the name of the other brown
                  woman writer
again
Repeat     your name for white people who ask you to repeat your
                 name
again
Listen       to white people say: That’s such a beautiful name, what
                  does it mean?
again

                                                        <>

Listen        to  white  people  say:  I   went  to  Some-oh-wa  on   my
                   holiday,   I  didn’t  stay  in  Up-peer,  I stayed on  Siv-vie-
                   ee,  it’s  traditional,  they haven’t  lost  their  culture  like
                   the Mour-rees, I stayed in the  village,  everyone  was so
                   authentic
Listen         to white people say: What do your tattoos mean?
                    But do they have meaning?
                    But were they done in the traditional way?
                   We saw the proper ones – you have to be a chief  to have
                   them
Hear          white  people  say:  My  daughter  has  a  tribal  tattoo,  it
                   looks really similar. Celtic.
again

                                                           <>

Hear          white people say: I own a diary, the Hori kids steal the
                    blue lighters and the red lighters
Listen         to white people say: Crips and Bloods
Listen         to white people say Hori again and look at you
again
Listen         to white people say: Well, you’ll know what I mean?
Listen         to this in your head for weeks
Listen         to this in your head for weeks

                                                           <>

See             white people clasp a brown hand
Hear           white people mispronounce te reo
again
Listen         to white people talk about their roots and their discovery
Listen         to  white  people  talk   about  their   research   and  their
                    discovery and  the  discovery  of  their  great-great-great-
                    great
Listen         to  what  funding  white  people  have  applied  for  again,
                    now they have whakapapa

                                                            <>

Watch         white people watch you as you enter
Wonder      if you’ll have to empty your bag
again
again
again
Breathe      in / onetwothreefourfivesixseveneightnine / hold /
Breathe      out / onetwothreefourfivesixseveneightnine
Breathe      when you leave
                     and then feel so angry  that  you  walk  back  in and walk
                     around
again
Pretend       to white people that you’re not watching them watch you
again
Watch          white people’s eyes follow you when you leave
again
Watch          white people startle when you use the words white
                      people together
Listen           to white people tell you they don’t like  being  lumped
                      together like that
Watch          white people when black and brown people are  killed
                      again because they are black and brown people
Hear             white people say: It’s hard to be white too
Listen           to white people say: I feel culturally unsafe
Listen           to white people say: I’m a woman of colour,  white’s a
                     colour
Listen           to white people say: I don’t see colour
Listen           to white people say something about the human race
                      and  something  about  we’re all the same and that all
                      lives matter
again
again
again

                                                            <>

Try                 to reframe it
again
Try                  not to sound so negative
again
Try                 to stick your fingers down your throat and  vomit up
                       the poison pellet
again
again
again
Try                 to  say  something  positive at the  end of  this poem, so
                       you  don’t   come  across  as  the  angry  brown  woman
again
                        writing  about the things  that  white  people don’t want
                        to be true.

Tusiata Avia

from The Savage Coloniser Book, Victoria University Press, 2020

Rain

I hear you
making small holes
in the silence
rain

If I were deaf
the pores of my skin
would open to you
and shut

And I
should know you
by the lick of you
if I were blind

the something
special smell of you
when the sun cakes
the ground

the steady
drum-roll sound
you make
when the wind drops

But if I
should not hear
smell or feel or see
you

you would still
define me
disperse me
wash over me
rain

Hone Tuwhare

from Come Rain Hail, Bibliography Room, University of Otago Library, 1970. The poem also appears in Small Holes in the Silence: Collected Works, Hone Tuwhare, Godwit, Random House, 2011.

Homewrecker

When I was a girl
God tested me with stepbrothers.
I was eight years old.
I was thirteen.

They were mean.
I began to nurse
a few feminist embers
that they were happy to fan

with their grandmother’s
leaf-shaped ili slapped
on the back of my head or
the whip of wet tea towels
exposing the white in my legs.
I wondered if it was true
that you can grow too used to
the feeling of pink pain spraying?

On a good day
you might have called them spirited
the same way Satan is spirited,
all cigarette butts and stink bombs.
I was offended by the audacity
bleaching their bright Samoan smiles. Well,

I was soulful. Only used to
baby-soft sisters and playing the piano
and it physically hurt me.

Every wince seemed to shuck
my ribs from my spine as I witnessed them
pulling electronics apart like a carcass,
searching for the static in the back of the stereo.

Then one Christmas an uncle
whose actual relationship to anyone
we couldn’t quite place
gave the younger one
a mechanical Beavis or Butthead
I dunno which one
but you’d press the button
on his plasticated stomach
and he would say something
rude and crass and gross
but ultimately forgettable.

He unwrapped it,
studied it.
It seemed like for once
in his little brutal life
he was actually considering
his words, choosing tenderly
until finally he gave his reply
and his reply was
Should I break it?

And we all sighed and rolled our eyes
with the distinct feeling that life
was suspiciously too predictable
and already we knew everything
that we would ever be doing.
Well, I didn’t grow up wrecking things
but very often
the world wrecked itself around me.

Even if I was light
on the kitchen floorboards
the geraniums curtseyed,
fish threw themselves
from their fishbowls,
punks crumpled
on their skateboards
and I always won Jenga.

Even my mother said I had a talent
for extracting things from people
and so had to be careful.
No one was going to light up
violently and tell me
that I was taking something from them.
Life’s not a game of Operation.
Stop playing with people.
But I’m a lonely Mum. I’m a Libra
I’m a Libra just like you.

As a teenager,
a man whose opinion I truly trusted
said I was a dangerous girl
and this made me so afraid of myself.
I avoided being alone with her.
I never left her unattended.

I made sure she had someone
with her at all times.
Even if they belonged
to someone else, they were mine.

And pink pain became desirable.
As an adult, the sensation
found a home in my chest.
It reminded me of tea towels
and hidings and how
fresh to death and nervous
but alert, and alive I was then.

I can’t remember the last time
I ever saw my brothers but recall

Playing Jenga
and how long it would take
to stack the blocks
perfectly
only to take turns
trying to take
without destroying.
Which is where I learnt
to understand the risk
and do it anyway.
I just hold me breath.
Wait.

Tayi Tibble

from Rangikura, Victoria University Press, 2021

Chris Tse

Chris Tse reads ‘What’s Fun Until It Gets Weird’. Originally published in Aotearotica #4. Recorded at The Sex and Death Salon, WORD Christchurch, 1 September 2018. Thank you to Rachael King and WORD Christchurch.

King of the Dive

Lately, I have been feeling a little like the reaper
but I’m drinking again and this guy from Auckland
tries to tell me that when he walked into The Crown
it felt like he was home and there’s not much of a moon
but I still have to slay him, and I remind him that Friday
was mob night and Jones is a good cunt and boy is there
but I still tell the table he was conceived at The Crown Hotel
well not literally but his father was playing pool
and the other boys were noodles who fucked liked planks
and he had excellent posture and loved Johnny Marr
and Tuhoe Joe would jam up the jukebox with $2 coins to stop me
because I was the gold heron that was not there for the band
I wanted Prince, Dragon and George McCrae and Tuhoe Joe would put pies
in the warmer because I was the only bitch who ever asked for one at 2am

Talia Marshall

Parking Warden

My colleague says my skin colour shows that I like rugby.
I tell him, ‘I don’t follow rugby …’
He says, ‘Your skin tells me though …’
My skin has never spoken to anyone.

A man yells from a moving vehicle,
‘Get a fucking real job!’
He extends one of his fingers towards me.
That. Is. Talent.

A woman says the job I do is ridiculous.
Despite paying for the wrong space,
she continues to question my presence.
‘Like why do you even?’
Is that even a question?
‘I’m actually quite odd,’ I reply—
awkward and triumphant silence.

I am called a fat shit.
The driver isn’t in the best shape himself.
‘Why don’t you go for a run, ya fat shit!’
He snatches the fresh white print.
I try to catch laughter in the middle of my throat.
I walk almost 30 kilometres a day,
and I’m Polynesian.

At a pedestrian crossing,
I overhear a woman tell her child,
‘You see, son. If you work hard at school, you won’t have to do a job like that.’
She points to me.
I turn to the child, ‘And I have a walkie-talkie!’
The child smiles.
To his mother’s evil eye,
I pull a thumbs up.

Two elderly ladies ask for directions.
One lady says, ‘Darling, you don’t speak the way you look …’
The other: ‘You’re a very polite young man … Good for you …’
I pity them.

I see taxis on broken yellow lines
double-parked on a one-way street.
A driver spots me and alerts his companions.
‘Go, go! The brown one is here!
The brown one is there!’
I see panic spilling out of their ears and exhaust pipes.

‘Does anyone give you shit, bro?’
asks a man gripping a can of beer.
‘Why would they? Look at you …’
I attach a printed headache to a vehicle.
‘You’re a big dark-skinned brother. No one will give you shit, my kill!’
I have a sudden vision of myself, as fresh kill, on the roof of a parked vehicle.

A mechanic spots me checking resident and coupon zones.
He screams,
‘Warden! Warden!’

Just another white jaw rattling to remind me of what I am.

Aziembry Aolani

from Turbine 2020

Victor Rodger is an award-winning writer and producer of Samoan (Iva) and Scottish (Dundee) descent. Best known for his internationally acclaimed play BLACK FAGGOT and for spear heading the revival of Tusiata Avia’s WILD DOGS UNDER MY SKIRT,  his works of fiction  have been included in the Maori/Pasifika anthology BLACK MARKS ON THE WHITE PAGE as well as the upcoming LGBTQIA+ anthology OUT HERE. His first published poem, SOLE TO SOLE, is also part of the upcoming Annual Ink poetry anthology, SKINNY DIP. Victor leads the Maori and Pasifika creative writing workshop at the International Institute of Modern Letters and was this year named an Officer of the New Zealand Order of Merit for services to theatre and Pacific Arts.

Tusiata Avia was born in Christchurch in 1966, of Samoan descent. She is an acclaimed poet, performer and children’s book writer. Her poetry collections are Wild Dogs Under My Skirt (2004; also staged as a one-woman theatre show around the world from 2002–2008), Bloodclot (2009), Fale Aitu | Spirit House (2016), shortlisted at the 2017 Ockham New Zealand Book Awards, and The Savage Coloniser Book (2020), winner of the Mary and Peter Biggs Award for Poetry. Tusiata has held the Fulbright Pacific Writer’s Fellowship at the University of Hawai’i in 2005 and the Ursula Bethell Writer in Residence at University of Canterbury in 2010. She was also the 2013 recipient of the Janet Frame Literary Trust Award. In the 2020 Queen’s Birthday Honours, Tusiata was appointed a Member of the New Zealand Order of Merit for services to poetry and the arts.

Hone Tuwhare, of Ngāpuhi descent, (1922 – 2008), was born in Kaikohe and moved to Dunedin in 1969 as the Robert Burns fellow. He spent the last years of his life at Kākā Point on the South Otago coast where his small crib has been renovated for an upcoming creative residency. He was a boiler maker, husband, father, and as one of Aotearoa’s most beloved poets received numerous awards and honours. His poetry has been gathered together in Small Holes in the Silence, a big anthology that contains many poems translated to Te Reo Maori (Random House).

Tayi Tibble (Te Whānau ā Apanui/Ngāti Porou) was born in 1995 and lives in Wellington. In 2017 she completed a Masters in Creative Writing from the International Institute of Modern Letters, Victoria University of Wellington, where she was the recipient of the Adam Foundation Prize. Her first book, Poūkahangatus (VUP, 2018), won the Jessie Mackay Best First Book of Poetry Award. Her second collection, Rangikura, is published in 2021.

Chris Tse is the author of two poetry collections published by Auckland University Press – How to be Dead in a Year of Snakes (winner of Best First Book of Poetry at the 2016 Ockham New Zealand Book Awards) and HE’S SO MASC – and is co-editor of the forthcoming Out Here: An Anthology of Takatāpui and LGBTQIA+ Writers From Aotearoa.

Talia Marshall (Ngāti Kuia, Ngāti Rārua, Rangitāne ō Wairau, Ngāti Takihiku) is currently working on a creative non-fiction book which ranges from Ans Westra, the taniwha Kaikaiawaro to the musket wars. This project is an extension of her 2020 Emerging Māori Writers Residency at the IIML. Her poems from Sport and Landfall can be found on the Best New Zealand Poems website.

Aziembry Aolani (Ngāpuhi / Kanaka Maoli) is a poet with a sweet tooth and a love of animals, and he is a mad gamer. He has been studying at the International Institute of Modern Letters at Victoria University of Wellington, and his work was recently published in Anton Blank’s Ora Nui Journal.

 

You can watch online here

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COVID has again meant that New Zealand has gone into lockdown. Divine Muses would like to thank the Central Library for enabling this year’s reading to go online and thanks the poets for their time in taking part in the reading.

Writers, our online journal TURBINE | KAPOHAU – A NEW ZEALAND JOURNAL OF NEW WRITING is now accepting your submissions – poetry, creative nonfiction and fiction all welcome, but please read our submission guidelines first!

Go here for details

Poetry Shelf is launching a new season, Readers Pick Poems, that will appear every Friday over the next few months. I have invited a group of readers to choose some Aotearoa poems they love. First up cartoonist Tara Black. She has chosen poems by Karlo Mila, Anna Jackson, Jackson Nieuwland, Hera Lindsay Bird and Rebecca Hawkes.

The poems

Leaving Prince Charming Behind

For a while I thought we were living the fairytale
but sadly I realised that this was      the myth
and you were so busy believing
that we were living the happy ever after
                I don’t think you noticed for a while
I’d rejected the role of princess in your production.

I am Rapunzel with her dreadlocks shorn
             trying to pull down the tower with broken nails
cursing your name.

I believed you the architect of my isolation
and it didn’t matter
what you tried to do
the poison apple was lodged firmly in my throat
and not believing in glass slipper
redemption
I worked my own midnight magic for all it was worth
re blood, white cloth
mirrors on the wall.

My poor dark prince on your gallant white horse
the shoe didn’t fit
your kiss couldn’t wake me up
to your way of thinking.

I transformed myself into
a beautiful dragon
you felt honour bound
to slay.

Karlo Mila

from Dream Fish Floating, Huia Publishers, 2005

Bees, so many bees

After twenty years of marriage, we walked out
of the bush and on to a rough dirt road
we followed till we saw a pond
we might be able to get to.
The ground was boggy and buzzing.
The pond was thick with weed
and slime. It was not
the sort of pond anyone would
swim in, but we did – picking and sliding
in to the water over the bog and bees,
bees we suddenly noticed were
everywhere, settling on our hair
as we swam, ducks turning surprised eyes
our way. After twenty years
of marriage what is surprising isn’t really
so much the person you are with
but to find yourselves so
out of place in this scene, cold
but not able to get out without stepping
over bees, so many bees.

Anna Jackson

from Pasture and Flock: New & Selected Poems, Auckland University Press, 2018

I am an ant.

In fact, I am the happiest ant in the world.

I wasn’t always the happiest ant in the world,
and I didn’t become the happiest ant in the world
by getting any happier                                                       

Another ant got sadder.

Jackson Nieuwland

from I Am a Human Being, Compound Press, 2020

THE EX-GIRLFRIENDS ARE BACK FROM THE WILDERNESS

The ex-girlfriends are back…
emerging once again from the tree shadows…
into the primordial burlesque of autumn
with their low-cut…
reminiscences… and soft, double ironies…
trembling once again into their
opulent…
seasonal migration patterns
a corsage of wilting apologies
tethered to the bust…

The ex-girlfriends are back…with their
hand-beaded consistencies…
& various unhappy motives…
dragging their heart like a soft broom through leaves…
and they go on hurting… like the lit windows
of a dollhouse in winter…
with a too-big house outside…

The ex-girlfriends are back
but in a romantically ambiguous way…

The ex-girlfriends are back and have transcended
the patriarchal limitations of romance…
unlike the new girlfriends…
still handcuffed to monogamy…
slowly writhing…
with their naughty…post-hetereosexual fatalism

The ex-girlfriends are back
with their unfounded Soviet aspirations…
and anti-hegemonic arts initiatives…
draped over a piano on the edge of the thicket
playing the lonely upper hand of chopsticks…
in their vague tropical displeasure…

The ex-girlfriends are back
and the post-girlfriends…
and the ‘let’s not put a label on this’ girlfriends…
all of them at the same time, walking through
a beaded curtain of water…
like too much Persephone and not enough underworld…
wearing nothing but an Arts degree…
and the soft blowtorch of their eyes…

You can feel their judgements come down upon you
like too-heavy butterflies…
but there’s nothing you can do about it!
and worst of all
they don’t even want anything…
they’re just standing there…performing many

enigmatic life blinks
re-mentioning Deleuze and Guattari
in loneliness and natural lighting
The ex-girlfriends are back
with their sanity pangs
and various life fatigues…
like a stuffed-crocodile exhibit
still begging for death relevance
in the glass case of your heart
But you are the museum director now!
Walking talent on a gold leash
& there’s nothing anyone can do about it!

The ex-girlfriends are back
like the liquidation sale of an imported rug megastore
that’s been liquidating for centuries…
getting rich off all that…tasselled goodbye money
as they grind your face yet again into
the hand-knotted…
semi-Persian wool blend…of their hearts
begging once more for closure.

The ex girlfriends are back
with their pre-distressed sadnesses
and their…talent
unlike yourself
who is both undistressed and talent-free!

Yet somehow still above them all
like the grand arbiter of happiness
laughing in your ermine neck ruff
as you push them one by one
down the waxed fuck-ff chute
of their bad erotic failures

Hera Lindsay Bird

from HERA LINDSAY BIRD, Victoria University Press, 2016

Nemesis Mine

yours is the name I hate most of all
which I know because I have been repeating it
between my teeth      instructing my minions
to conduct increasingly elaborate heists
that will lure you     at last          to your doom
       which is destined to be
      me         obviously

I burglarize a priceless artwork
which you had acquired at significant personal cost
I cut out the gently smiling face in the painting
and replace it with a selfie
so when you steal it back the painting is worthless
on the black market
but you do not get rid of it         
my spies report
       that you keep it under your pillow             
     gilded edges jutting out

you construct a laser superweapon 
to etch a gigantic tag of your name across the moon
on my birthday           ruining my luxury
moon themed full moon party        
to which I specifically did not invite you
though I did arrange a data leak     of the coordinates
      when you arrive in your warship    cannons booming
      my heart leaps in my throat     whilst I dive for cover

how many times have you sailed recklessly
over continents and ocean trenches     in hot pursuit
launching torpedoes as I careen in your spyglass sights   
cackling away on my gold plated jet ski        O nefarious
O dastardly        I live
to hurl bullion       back at you              from a slingshot
while my space squad of highly educated dolphins
breaks into the hull of your craft 
they purloin small items of enormous sentimental value
and release the conspiracy of lemurs you have trafficked 
       and trained to paint flawless reproductions 
       of frankly dated masterworks      

loose at last     the bandit-faced primates
graffiti your clandestine labyrinth 
with the same tasteless repetitive sunflowers  
but you have already arranged for special forces
to capture me at the border
loathsome       busybody        
      I hate you              I hate you
      I wouldn’t have it any other way

and yet         my last several escapades went off
without a hitch   
and I can no longer intercept
your vile machinations         on any channel
even the encryptions only you and I use
mortal enemy         the world is boring
without your meddling     
      I lie awake     
      awaiting intel        

apparently you are spending your days
in a state of deranged reasonableness
you have been waking early to jog
without your bespoke catsuit or balaclava
your throwing stars rusting in their cabinet      
you have taken to hand crocheting
hanging baskets for your carnivorous plants
you have filed tax returns on a number of offshore accounts
thereby defeating their very purpose
and you have quibbled
          on consumer review sites for home appliances
          under your real name

I cannot abide all this        ruin by prudence
come for me   you coward 
get! in! your! pirate! ship!
you say           you have been taking “therapy”
you are “working on yourself”
your psychoanalyst has some
     “reservations”
      about our          “relationship”

ahoy there      mouthbreathing brigand
thinking yourself too damaged for a final duel
I see it             I do      who knows you better than I
sniveling craven       stand and fight      yes    
your shame is coiled up inside you
and ready to play       yes
your shame is a slinky
delightful in rainbows
as it loops over itself going down
and down and down the spiral
stairwell       in the frivolous castle
you built for your dreams      
      this is not an invitation to tell me
      the unfinished business of your childhood

but do you really think you can outdo me
in abjection                 never fear
I will draw my own shame out of my throat
like a sparkling feather boa I will drape it
over my shoulders                  I will perform
a sensual dance using my shame as a prop
I will helicopter my shame wildly in front of my crotch
oi enemy oi nemesis          look at moi
through all our capers and larceny
did you think I couldn’t anticipate this twist
      our ultimate boss battle
      a public redemption arc 

I always expected we would grow old together
spending our ill gotten gains
to purchase adjacent volcanic island lairs
like two humongous tits jutting up from the ocean
we would spit at each other across the archipelago
and in the evenings
with our weakening arms
     we would row halfway out in our canoes
     and wrestle

Rebecca Hawkes

Tara Black is an Aotearoa cartoonist with a deep abiding love for fried potato. She can often be found in the front row of book events, illustrating authors and their ideas. You can find her work in places which almost exclusively start with the letter ‘s’: The Sapling, Stasis Journal, The Spinoff, The Suburban Review, and her website, taracomics.com. Her first graphic novel, This Is Not a Pipe, was published by Victoria University Press in 2020.

Hera Lindsay Bird was a poet from Wellington. She hasn’t written a poem in a long time, and no longer lives in Wellington. 

Rebecca Hawkes is a queer pākehā poet, painter, and PowerPoint slide ghostwriter living in Te-Whanganui-a-Tara. Her chapbook ‘Softcore coldsores’ can be found in AUP New Poets 5. She is co-editor of the journal Sweet Mammalian and an upcoming anthology of climate change poetry, and is a founding member of popstar performance posse Show Ponies. More of Rebecca’s writing and paintings can be found in journals like Starling, Sport, Scum, and Stasis, or online at her vanity mirror.

Anna Jackson lectures at Te Herenga Waka/Victoria University of Wellington, lives in Island Bay, edits AUP New Poets and has published seven collections of poetry, most recently Pasture and Flock: New and Selected Poems (AUP 2018).

Karlo Mila is a mother, writer, poet and indigenous knowledge geek.  She lives in Tāmaki Makaurau with her three sons.  Karlo is especially over-active on Facebook.  She works in the area of leadership for her day job, trying to understand and explore what that means when drawing on the ancestral knowledge of those who have lived in this region for over three thousand years.  Of Tongan, Pākehā and Samoan descent, figuring out and living what this means in this contemporary context is often centred in her work.

Jackson Nieuwland is a human being, duh. They are a genderqueer writer, editor, librarian, and woo-girl, born and based in Te Whanganui-a-Tara. They co-founded the reading/zine series Food Court. This isn’t even their final form. Their debut collection, I Am a Human Being, won Best First Poetry Book at the Ockham NZ Book Awards 2021.

Tomorrow I am launching a new season on Poetry Shelf. I have invited a number of readers to pick a handful of Aotearoa poems they love. No easy task! I have trouble reducing all the poems I love to an anthology, so I know assembling a tiny gathering is a challenge. Over the coming months you will see the choices of Tara Black, Victor Rodger, Emma Espiner, Peter Ireland, Claire Mabey, Foodcourt, a crew from AWF, Sally Blundell, Rebecca K Reilly and Francis Cooke, among others. I am both excited and moved by this season – especially because these readers have put in their own time and enthusiasms to share a connective love of poetry.

This photograph is as close as I get to the ocean at the moment. The blurry photo is standing in for my blurry mind. Me walking up and down the road to gaze out to the Tasman Sea. For so many of us in Tāmaki Makaurau, we get to the ocean at the moment by reading, by dreaming and finding new and old ways to be and stay at home. Music helps. Cooking comfort food definitely helps. Poetry too can be such a connecting delight, reaching across the divides to fingertap warmth, ideas, feelings, music, whether soothing or spiky.

I am grateful to the readers, poets and publishers who have contributed so generously with writings, cartoons, permissions and choices.

🙏 It is with great sadness, I farewell Lydia Wevers. This is my well-thumbed much-loved copy of Yellow Pencils: Contemporary Poetry by New Zealand Women, the second anthology that drew local women’s poems under a spotlight. So many readers, writers and students, along with friends and family, are sharing how this remarkable woman has affected them; mentored, inspired, opened windows. As the writer of Wild Honey I followed in her groundbreaking footsteps. From my Level 4 isolation, I am linking in grief with everyone who is mourning, with others who are also lost for words. Let us toast Lydia today. Let us toast her warmth and acumen, her dedication to writing, research, fresh ideas, New Zealand books and, above all, humanity. 🙏

for your heart

a prayer for your lungs inhaling the salted oceans
a prayer for your knees buckled in sludge and flood
a prayer for your stomach wounded by one man’s hatred
a prayer for your shoulders bearing the freight of the world
a prayer for your hips holding your small child close
a prayer for your hands that soothe and caress
a prayer for your tongue that sings to heal

a prayer for the Muslim’s heart, warm and beating
a prayer for the Christian’s heart, also warm and beating
a prayer for the beating-heart warmth of the tangata whenua
a prayer for the beating-heart warmth of Afghan refugees, so recently welcomed
a prayer for your heart beating in time with the sun and the stars
a prayer for your heartache traversing the rough and the wild
a prayer for your heart in sync with the land and the water
a prayer for she and he and they

a prayer for your ears listening to ever-bleak media feeds
a prayer for your eyes breaking up over images and statistics
a prayer for your fingers unravelling daily knots and tough choices
a prayer for your tiredness and a prayer for your despair
a prayer for your silence and a prayer for your protest
a prayer for your movement over corrugated roads and bendy tracks
a prayer for the lonely and the unloved or the led astray

a prayer for your face that shuts out the name-calling
a prayer for your arms that lower the raised weapon
a prayer for your leaders that face boulders and crevasses
a prayer for your legs that cross cruel divides and welcome bridges
a prayer for your body that is sick or wounded or dying

a prayer for the blue sky overhead with the kerurū coasting 
a prayer for your children lost in daydream kites and story locomotives
a prayer for your children digging garden soil and planting spring seeds
a prayer for kawakawa leaves brewing and manukā balm
a prayer for your lentil soup warming and your words of love
a prayer for your arms open wide and your arms embracing

a prayer for your heart
a prayer for your heart
a prayer for your heart
yes you and you and you

Paula Green

September, West Auckland