Hungus, Amber Esau
Te Herenga Waka University Press, 2026
To celebrate Amber Esau’s terrific new collection, Hungus, Amber reads some poems and answers six questions. The conversation is like a surrogate review as I enthuse whole-heartedly on why and how I love the book so much.
a conversation
Paula: I love reading your collection so much. For all kinds of reasons. The rhythm of reading for a start. At times it’s like a lightning storm with my heart pumping, at times like that beauty moment when I stall and star gaze. Slow, fast, utterly inspiring. What was the rhythm of writing like for you?
Amber: A lot of the shorter poems and the foundations for the longer poems were written during my MA year but they really started crystallising once I had distance from the work. I had started editing it pretty soon after finishing my course but it was still very undercooked. I spent over a year not looking at the manuscript, reading and editing other poets’ works, before I could finally see mine better. The first draft of poems were a lot more slippery and while I love that uncertainty I was better able to accept where too much elusiveness was limiting my writing. The varying rhythms between the poems are likely in part due to these different concentrations of time. It’s also very Geminian of me to love a switch up like I do!! At my core, though, I am a turtle writer; slow on land, quick in the water.
Paula: Another love for me is your agility with words. Every line is sheer music delight, with sonic shifts and dances. Sweet sharp savoury. There’s hip jargon, urban slang, words that smash together or elide, words that jam in harmony, disharmony, similes that stick and surprise. I just want to hear you read the whole friggin book. Out loud. Honestly your use of words is inventive, life-rich, like a K-Rd dairy-on-the-corner milky hills mosh pit symphony. Do things sing differently as you move between page and performance?
Amber: Wooooah I really appreciate that, thank you. I never used to read my poems aloud until I finished writing them which often surprises people about my process. We all have our own internalised sense of rhythm and I have secretly always wanted to be a rapper. I think that kinda gets injected into the writing. If I say a poem aloud too early though, it starts trying to rhyme too much and I have to reset myself. This process creates a mean tension between the sounds of things and the meanings of them. I also grew up in a predominantly Samoan speaking household but I only spoke English. I understand Samoan better than I speak it and I think there’s something in there about learning a language only through the ears in relation to learning a language through the verbal and written word. The former is more mutable. Sometimes, I still have to say Samoan words aloud to know what I’m reading on the page and tbh, “fobbing” up my English is where I feel most at home. I think this might be a common experience within a lot of immigrant households.
Paula: The title, ‘Hungus’, magnetised me, with its connotations of both enormousness and hunger. And The Mantis, the equally mesmerising prankster figure on the cover who appears larger than life in poems, electrifies your writing ink. Did your relationship with The Mantis change over the course of writing the collection?
Amber: The Mantis is comical and menacing and laced in a sort of cartoonish violence that feels so familiar to me. I used to view it steeped only in its “badness” which was both alluring and repellent. Originally, the Mantis was very archetypal in my imagining and slowly I started wondering what the flipside to this figure would be… kinda in the way that Hinetītama becomes Hine-nui-te-pō. That’s where the Manaia comes out of. We all hold many contradictions and there are many factors that transform us – for better or worse, eh. Mostly though, I started to consider the Mantis’ capacity for change and how bloody annoying that is and how maybe that means it’s still possible.
Paula: Your collection has tendrils and roots in sky and land. It feels personal and it feels imagined. It feels political and it feels mythological. It feels like poetry of now and then and might be. Yep, as the blurb says ‘a work of world-building’. I love that. Was there an ignition point for the collection? Experiences, world, possibilities, real or imagined, that you wanted to ‘visit’ as you wrote.
Amber: Oh that’s mean as! Thank you! Originally, I planned to explore addiction/the addict in a way that echoes the different representations of Maui across the pacific. It wasn’t until the Mantis started bubbling to the surface that I had something to craft around. Warping Maui into the Mantis felt like an interesting entrance into the intersections of urban indigeneity and moana diaspora. It took a few versions of the work as a whole to realise that a big part of Hungus is about the idea of empire and ways we maintain certain legacies; of expanding so as not to be swallowed; of establishing hierarchies within a language; of projecting hurts as a form of self-preservation; of resisting meaningful change. In my experience, these also rhyme with the ways that power dynamics and inherited traumas are expressed within the home.
Paula: For me writing is a secret private intimate activity and also a public one, whether through Poetry Shelf poet connections or as a published author. Your moving acknowledgements page underlines how important other writers are to you, how important writing communities are. Do you need a secret private writing space alongside your nourishing community space/presence?
Amber: Definitely. I’ve gotten into a pretty consistent journaling practice which has helped me figure out what I’m actually saying, how I feel about my daily life, responses to current events, lots of dissecting my traumas lol, small notes for projects, and what I’m reading. Too many tokes back in the day means my memory is kinda shoddy though, so it’s been really useful writing about the books I read to help my recall.
Paula: In this upheaval world, a world that is straining and testing the foundations of humanity, what matters to you? As a writer yes, as a new voice yes, and as daughter, sister, friend, human being?
Amber: It’s hard not to be somewhat cynical about where humanity is heading, but publishing a poetry collection feels like an act of hope and faith. The other day, my brother, who doesn’t read poetry at all, texted me he’s been really enjoying the book, slowly reading through it, and cracking up that some poems have been sparking unexpected insights within him. It’s important to me that my brother, someone who has always felt a lil excluded from literary spaces, has found a place to dock in my poetry. This doesn’t mean that I’m anti-intellectualism – I’m just suss about the hierarchy of languages and knowledge systems lol. My idealistic ass still thinks that language fuckery is one of the many ways we might shift the collective psyche towards learning how to sit with uncertainty and make space for each other on our terms.
reading
Amber reads from Hungus
Amber Esau is a SāMāoRish (Ngāpuhi / Manase) writer from Tāmaki Makaurau. She is a poet, storyteller, and professional bots. Always vibing at a languid pace, her work has been published both in print and online. In 2023, she co-edited the queer poetry anthology Spoiled Fruit. She is a past recipient of the emerging Pasifika writer’s residency from the Michael King Writers Centre and the Ideas In Residence residency from the Basement Theatre. Hungus is her debut collection.
Te Herenga Waka University Press page
NZ Poetry Shelf 