Listen to Ariana Tikao read ‘Star link’

Star link

as our dead rise
heading for the stars
what if they get snagged
on a satellite

will they be caught
forever in a rotating
purgatory-like state
as if stuck on a glaring

disco-blaring merry-go-round
that no-one can get off
what if they land on the
celestial star-link waka –

this is a genuine concern

i imagine a static-y
incoming msg from my
mum trying to give
me her beauty tips

but they’d come in
90 mins apart fits
& starts    ////// don’t    
//////  for     /////     get

your //////         lip /////
//////     stick /////
and //// re/////    member
lux//// soap  ///// ponds

dry ///// skin ////
cream /////     after
///// rins     ////   ing
with /////  cold ///// water

i think i’d prefer
‘te huka mate’
were offline most
of the time

Ariana Tikao

The first of the stars

Ask the wind why it howls
Ask the storm cloud why it thunders
Ask the Living Earthly Things why do they
seek shelter from the lashing rains

Little Brother he will answer
‘Kua riri au ki ōku tuākana!’
I am angry with my brothers

You know how brothers are 
Sometimes they fight
like only brothers fight
With terrible ferocity

Ask Little Brother
‘He aha koe i riri ai?’
Why are you angry?

Little Brother he will answer
‘Kua hīanga rātou i tō mātou matua
Kua hiki atu ki te pōuri kei runga’
They have betrayed our father
lifting him to the gloomy darkness above

So Little Brother rages
even as his mother weeps
and all his brothers fall before him
All except one

Ben Brown 2025

Puaka

 

Set in the blackness of space
         your glare is a whisper,
a glimmer, a sliver, your gleam
a loosened feather of flame,

your light a phantasmagorical ghost
to haunt our fire-eating solar system
         through light years
that in earthly time measures

four and a half centuries
before your light and fire
finally makes land
as a pre-dawn solitaire

diamond nestled bright
in a cushion of dark velvet
         sky above my door,
your gleam as factual

as science, or time
and far too real for myth
or song alone. Puaka, you are family,

each winter rising again early
         in our southern sky
to blaze blue,
singular, easy to locate
and kind enough to draw near

as we eat or pray or sing,
your appearance so vast, your light
so ancient, yet somehow, new
and near and small
        enough to fit my eye.

 

Kay McKenzie Cooke

NOTE: Puaka (Puanga, sometimes Poaka) Rigel, is the star southern Māori iwi and hapū look to as a harbinger for the Matariki cluster. More information can be found here.

What the stars say 

I hear bird bones crack, splinter. I hear offal slosh in a bucket. 

Matariki have seen it all before — my star companions remain silent. Have they gone mad?

Yes, mad as a meat axe. 

I hear gunshots at the growing wall,
I hear laughter at cocktail hour
out of mouths as wide as mako shark. 

The bleached face of Sirius gives no clue, all are catching a ferry to the Isle of the Blessed. 

My ageless self, trapped in a maimai — who knows how temporary? 

It seems I am lasting forever, as long as stories repeat. 

I blush and quiver to see myself
related to this pale imitation of the gods.

Reihana Robinson
from Auē Rona, Steele Roberts, 2012

The poets

Ariana Tikao is a Kāi Tahu writer, musician, and curator from Ōtautahi. She was a 2023 Ursula Bethell Writer in Residence at Canterbury University, and was awarded as a New Zealand Arts Laureate in 2020. She has co-written two books Mokorua (2022) and Te Rā: The Māori Sail (2023), and her first poetry collection Pepeha Portal will be published by Otago University Press in 2026.

Ben Brown (Ngāti Mahuta, Ngāti Koroki, Ngāti Paoa) writes children’s books, short stories and poetry for children and adults, general non-fiction, freelance articles and memoir. In 2006 he won Best Picture Book with artist/illustrator Helen Taylor in the NZ Post Children’s Book Awards with their book A Booming in the Night. His poetry has been published in various anthologies here and around the world and Radio NZ and The Radio Network have also recorded him. In 2011 he was the Maori Writer in Residence at the Michael King Writers Centre in Devonport Auckland. His poetry collection Between the kindling and the blaze was shortlisted in the 2014 Nga Kupu Ora Aotearoa Maori Book Awards. In 2021 he was appointed inaugural Te Awhi Rito New Zealand Children’s Reading Ambassador. He was the Te Kaipukahu University of Waikato Writer in Residence in 2024. He is also a father of two, which he considers his best work to date.

Kay McKenzie Cooke (Kāti Māmoe, Kāi Tahu) lives and writes in Ōtepoti. She is the author of four poetry collections. Her first poetry collection Feeding The Dogs won the Jessie McKay prize in 2003.

Reihana Robinson’s latest poetry volume BE THE RISING HUMAN is available from Carson’s Bookshop in Thames, Paradox Books in Devonport and on Amazon and KDP.