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Poetry Shelf noticeboard: Vaughan Rapatahana reviews Wild Honey with small interview – plus a plug for WORD!

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Full review here

Vaughan Rapatahana has just a posted a terrific feature on Wild Honey on Jacket2. I am usually doing the reviewing and posting so felt nervous being on the other end of the critique. Especially when I am in a cycle of terrible doubt about what I do and write, the state of the planet, the covid issues, the political game playing at home and abroad, about whether people read things any more. I wake in the night and worry about this.

I felt incredibly moved and restored by Vaughan’s engagement with the book – by his acknowledgement that this was an important arrival in view of a history of women poets in the shadows, by his considered attention. I send a bouquet of thankfulness.

I am reminded that books are an important part of who we are – and that we must do everything in our power to create them, publish and circulate them, review them, celebrate them, even challenge them if needed. Read and talk about them. Gift them!

This paragraph in particular moved me so much – there are people in the world building houses of knowledge, peace, forging multiple connective links:

I am immediately reminded of the work of Hirini Melbourne and his concept of whare whakairo, or a carved meeting house, whereby everything in and about this construction fits into and lends support, stability and splendour to every other component. The parallels are manifest. Granted that I am transposing women poets into his words, however Melbourne’s description of te whare whakairo rings out as so similar to Green’s own kaupapa in Wild Honey, namely, “The whare whakairo is … a place of shelter and peace. It is a place where knowledge is stored and transmitted and where the links with one’s past are made tangible … [it] is a complex image of the essential continuity between the past and present …” (Melbourne, 1991). 

I also answered a few questions for the feature, after a run of wakeful nights with world and local worry, so my self-filter wasn’t on – I was answering from that secret-self-core that is private and wakes in the dark to dream, worry, invent and somehow find the truth.

Last year I did Wild Honey events throughout Aotearoa where women came and read, and I have never experienced anything like it. Such a strong feeling as younger and older writers made connections, different kinds of voices were heard together. I felt like I was holding something enormous that I created but that it got bigger than me as so many women told me what the book meant to them. It was overwhelming and it was wonderful.

I am due to do a Wild Honey event at the Word festival in Christchurch with a stunning group of women poets and I can’t wait. Come and say hello!

Jacket 2: Vaughan Rapatahana on Hera Lindsay Bird, Simone Kaho and Mere Taito

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from Vaughan Rapatahana at Jacket 2:

 

‘Kia ora. Talofa lava. Malo. Greetings, once more.

I am honoured and humbled to continue to commentate on poetry and poets in Aotearoa New Zealand, which swerve away from so-called ‘traditional’ ways to write a poem and concomitantly, away from traditional topoi.

In this commentary, I will extend from my final commentary post of March 2016, which was entitled ‘Coda 2,’ although that title is obviously a misnomer, as this country just keeps on producing poets of great ability, with serious credentials and a willingness to  s t  r  e  t  c  h  the paramaters of what a poem is, should be.

So, I am privileged to here introduce three further women writers — Hera Lindsay Bird, Simone Kaho and Mere Taito. All have recently had published new collections of poetry: the ‘new’ in this commentary title refers to this aspect — for all three have been writing poetry for some time. For me, they are intelligent, rather intensely tremendous talents.

I think that I will here replicate what I wrote in that ‘Coda 2’ piece, as the sentiments are exactly the same —

All three fit, if you will, the parameters I claimed would establish the future direction of an increasingly multicultural country. None of them could be classified as pākehā middle-class poets and all tend towards the experimental and/or performance and/or indigenous striates of poetry. Significantly and obviously, all three are women. Theirs is the future of poetry in the skinny country of Aotearoa — inevitably, for as I have stressed several times previously — the demographic of Aotearoa is rapidly and rather radically on the move into major diversity.’

Full article here

 

See my reviews:

Hera Lindsay Bird

Simone Kaho

Mere Taito and a poem

 

 

 

Slam, slam … & thank you Mams – Vaughan Rapatahana’s take on Slam Poetry & NZ stalwarts

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Vaughan Rapatahana has just posted a piece on Jacket2 that casts a spotlight on various poetry activities in New Zealand. Great to see. Thanks, too, for the thumbs up Vaughan.

‘In this, my last commentary post of this series — apart from a brief Coda next week — I want to talk about two distinct areas of the Aotearoa-New Zealand poetry scene that I have alluded to previously, but nor really covered copiously as yet.

One is the vital and brimming Poetry Slam situation in this multicultural land — a scene that is really expanding fast, most particularly among younger poets, and certainly among Polynesian poets who tend not to live in stuffy urban areas, but more likely in places like Mangere, where I grew up. I reckon this bodes extremely well for the future of (their) primarily oral-delivery focussed work, for they seem less interested in being seen in print in established/mainstream journals and much more energized by the live performance, the audience, the competition, the sometimes Americano rap/hip-hop, often Pasifika, definite ngā mōteatea rhythms and beats running through their pieces. Mind you, some DO already have print collections out there … Kei te tino pai tēnei (This is very good.)’

 

and part two:

 

‘So I also want to focus on another essential aspect of New Zealand’s poetry scene — the Stalwarts, the people — very often women, thank you Mams, who keep poetry in this country alive and kicking via their commitment to writing about it; reviewing it as in the several online blogs, like The Tuesday Poem as organised by Mary [McCallum] and Claire Beynon, which ‘carries a poem and commentary on the poet’s work every Tuesday’; publicizing it; organising it — often  regionally: mostly unpaid and as dedicated labours of love.’

 

Full blog here