Korekore Rawea: Karakia (Low energy)

When we close our eyes
in mihi to the divine
it makes us feel our tūpuna
our whenua
that we all
take a breath
in thanks
we shall not hate
that we will, love
reach out
and support one another
in shared
karakia

 — Robert Sullivan

 (from Hopurangi Songcatcher: Poems from the Maramataka. Auckland University Press)

 For this poem, apart from the spiritual blessing of karakia, and its power to heal, I was also thinking about the Palestinian doctor, Izzeldin Abuelaish and his book I Shall Not Hate. I had the privilege of meeting him during an Auckland Writers’ Festival. His message of reconciliation is powerful.

Some final words

If I had to pick just one word to sum up my term as Poet Laureate, it would be: community. Everything that I’ve done or experienced in the role over the past three years has been possible because of people who see the power of poetry to bring people together – whether it’s in a creative writing workshop for students or including a poetry reading on the line-up of a musical festival.

Poetry is written from a poet’s individual perspective and experience, but once their poems are released into the world, in print or from a stage, they take on a life of their own. I’ve seen the spark in people’s eyes when a poem connects with them or they experience poetry in a way that changes their perceptions of what’s ‘allowed’. Whether that spark is a moment of delight or recognition, it’s the unmistakable power of words and storytelling to help us to make sense of ourselves and the world.

We’re so lucky to have a thriving poetry scene in Aotearoa. Visit one of our independent bookshops and you’ll see shelves and tables bulging under the weight of new poetry releases. There are regular open mics, slams and readings in many towns and cities, and plenty of places to find poetry online and in print. Read NZ’s 2025 National Reading Survey found that 32% of adults in Aotearoa have read a poetry book all or part way through in the past 12 months, a significant increase from 25% in 2021. Ka rawe!

However, we can’t take any of this for granted. It’s been a tough time for artists and creatives: funding is scarce, venues are shutting down and audiences are understandably being more cautious with where and how they spend their money. There’s also A.I.’s impact on the creative sectors, which has already highlighted concerns with copyright and ethics. Despite these challenges, none of this diminishes the value of the arts and how they contribute to health and well-being.

It’s been a privilege to travel around Aotearoa and the world sharing my work, connecting with audiences, and promoting the incredible poets and poetry we have in this country. Every conversation, interaction and event has changed my own ideas about poetry and reenergised my love for it.

Although my focus has been on Aotearoa’s poets and poetry, I’ve also met many international poets during my term. I’ve shared stages with people whose work I’ve admired for years, like UK Poet Laureate Simon Armitage, Warsan Shire, Sandra Cisnero and Nicholas Wong, as well as poets previously unknown to me like Andre Bagoo, Babs Gons, Daryl Lim Wei Jie, Felipe Franco Munhoz, Phodiso Modirwa, Kim Moore and Joanna Yang.

Ōrongohau | Best New Zealand Poems 2023 event, Te Papa, August 2024.
Pictured left to right are: Cadence Chung, Jackson McCarthy, Hannah Mettner,
Leah Dodd, Sinead Overbye, Arihia Latham, Chris Tse, Emma Shi,
Isla Huia, harold coutts and Tracey Slaughter

It’s impossible to thank everyone who has supported me during my term, but I would like to mention a few people: Rachel Esson and the team at the National Library for welcoming me as part of their whānau; Peter Ireland for his sage advice and care; Zoe Roland, Reuben Love, David Vieco and everyone who has assisted with the many events we’ve put on; Phantom Billstickers; Jacob Scott; Matahiwi Marae; Te Mata Estate; and Aotearoa’s incredible independent book stores.

I also want to thank the many festivals, event organisers and organisations who have invited me to perform or speak. Thank you for your hospitality and for creating spaces for poets to shine.

To the poets I met on my travels – it’s been a joy to read your work and perform alongside you, seeing first hand the ways you bring your stories and truths into the light.

Finally, I wouldn’t have made it through the past three years without the love and support of my parents, family, friends and colleagues. Thank you for putting up with my absences and for making sure I took time out to recharge.

It’s been an honour to be New Zealand’s Poet Laureate. Nothing could’ve prepared me for the incredible adventures I’ve had over the past three years. I wish whoever steps into the role all the best – I can’t wait to see all the amazing things they’ll do during their term.

Keep writing, keep reading and keep sharing. Poetry can be found everywhere you look, especially where you least expect it. And don’t forget to visit the National Poetry Day website to see what’s happening near you this week.

Until we meet again... mā te wā.

Audience at the ‘(Re)geneartion next: The Poet Laureate steps down’ event. Photo by Chris Tse. 

Celebrate New Zealand’s poetic talent: Nominate a New Zealand Poet Laureate

Kia hiwa ra!
Kia hiwa ra!

The National Library of New Zealand Te Puna Mātauranga o Aotearoa is seeking nominations for the New Zealand Poet Laureate Award 2025–2028.

Poetry is a quintessential part of New Zealand art and culture, and through the New Zealand Poet Laureate Award the government acknowledges the value that New Zealanders place on poetry.

The National Librarian Te Pouhuaki will appoint the New Zealand Poet Laureate after reviewing nominations and seeking advice from the New Zealand Poet Laureate Advisory Group.

Nominees must have made an outstanding contribution to New Zealand poetry, and be an accomplished and highly regarded poet who continues to publish new work. They must also be a strong advocate for poetry and be able to fulfil the public role required of a Poet Laureate. The role includes engaging with a wide range of people and inspiring New Zealanders to read and write poetry.

Candidates are expected to reside in New Zealand during their tenure as Laureate.

The term of appointment for the next Poet Laureate will run until August 2028.

• Nominate a New Zealand Poet Laureate
• Read about the New Zealand Poet Laureate

Nominations close on Wednesday, 30 July 2025 at 5pm.

The next New Zealand Poet Laureate will be announced on Friday 22 August 2025.

Enquiries about the New Zealand Poet Laureate Award can be directed to Peter.Ireland@dia.govt.nz

Launching ‘Still Is’

On Friday 21 June, the National Library hosted the launch of former Poet Laureate Vincent O’Sullivan’s last poetry collection Still Is, published less than two months after he passed away in April.

Book cover of Still Is (Te Herenga Waka University Press, 2024).

The evening was a heartwarming celebration of Vincent’s life and career, with contributions from Vincent’s family and those who knew him well. Te Herenga Waka University Press’ Fergus Barrowman shared lively anecdotes that highlighted Vincent’s wit and talent, shedding light on what it was like to work closely with him for 40 years.

I was honoured to be asked to read at the launch alongside former Laureates Bill Manhire and Jenny Bornholdt, and poets Gregory O’Brien and Diana Bridge who all spoke movingly about their friendships with Vincent. We each read a poem from Still Is as well as one of our own poems to complement Vincent’s. I wrote a new poem for the occasion in response to Vincent’s poem ‘The Trouble With Windows’.

Subtitles missing

Lately I have become untethered from stillness.
Here, in my little brown house caught in the shadow
of a neighbouring tower block, every room
rattles my patience. The tui and the sparrows
frolick at my kitchen window. I have never been
able to read their intent. I watch my neighbours
watch the day go by, each window a screen
of unquiet resolution. I feel as if we are
collectively haunted by some outdated expression
of freedom because the day is a dream we dream
when we have no other way to take flight.
On this side of the glass the view is idyllic
and industrious: every car on the motorway
is a passing vignette and every container ship
works against silken blue. Across the harbour,
the Eastern ranges remain staunch in their place.
Time collects on the wind, unbothered, while
my attention divides and scatters itself again
and again in search of an elusive synchronicity.
My imagination’s fieldnotes are entirely made up
of subtitles for every window I look into or
out of. Nearly all of them are questions, like
‘How can we prove what never occurred?’
and ‘What waits for us on the other side?’.
Like daybreak, the tui and the sparrows reappear.
They ask for so little. A lesson, surely, given
we are prone to asking for what must be earned.

— Chris Tse

Chris at the Still Is book launch and reading. Image credit Marcelo Duque Cesar.

A tribute to Vincent O’Sullivan (1937–2024)

He is one of us, he is one of our own.
He bears the coasts, the mountains for us,
He calls to the north and the south on our behalf,
To the east and the west, he carries the voice of his people.

Nō tātou ake ia, he tangata ia nō tātou tonu
Ka wahā e ia ngā takutai, ngā maunga, mō tātou,
Ka karanga ia ki te raki, ki te tonga mō tātou.
Ki te rāwhiti, ki te hauāuru rā anō, ka kawea e ia te reo o tōna iwi. 

(Translation: Piripi Walker) 

These words were written by Vincent for Requiem for the Fallen, a collaborative work with his close friend, the composer Ross Harris, which was performed at Old St Paul’s for the New Zealand Arts Festival in 2014. These lines seem apt, as the National Library shares its sense of loss to New Zealand letters, with Vincent’s death in Dunedin on 28 April.

Vincent O’Sullivan. Photo by Helen O’Sullivan

The relationship the National Library and Alexander Turnbull Library had with Vincent lies at the heart of our work, and evidence of this abounds. It includes his research here as pre-eminent scholar of Katherine Mansfield, notably producing his co-edition of the five volumes of Mansfield’s letters with Margaret Scott between 1984 and 2008. The Turnbull Library is also home to Vincent’s literary papers, at MS-Group-1526.

In 2013 Vincent was appointed New Zealand Poet Laureate. He made his intentions clear early on: ‘I don’t think many prescriptions for poetry stand up apart from one – if it isn’t individual, if it’s not “the cry of its occasion”, then why aren’t we doing something else’ His time as Laureate was marked by a generosity towards and recognition of fellow poets in New Zealand and around the world, with a special place reserved for the voices of the oppressed poet.

His volume of collected poetry Being Here, was launched at the National Library in April 2015 and we have chosen to include its title poem to represent his achievements, his profundity and elegance. The photo of Vincent was taken in Italy by his wife Helen.

Requiescat in pace, Vincent.

— Peter Ireland, for the National Library

Being Here

It has to be a thin world surely if you ask for
an emblem at every turn, if you cannot see bees
arcing and mining the soft decaying galaxies
of the laden apricot tree without wanting
symbols – which of course are manifold – symbols
of so much else? What’s amiss with simply the huddle
and glut of bees, with those fuzzed globes
by the hundred and the clipped-out sky
beyond them and the leaves that are black
if you angle the sun directly behind them,
being themselves, for themselves? I hold out
my palms like the opened pages of a book
and you pile apricots on them stacked three
deep, we ask just who can we give them to
round here who hasn’t had their whack of apricots
as it is? And I let my hands tilt and the plastic
bag that you hold rustles and plumps with their
rush, I hold one back and bite into it and its
taste is the taste of the colour exactly, and this
hour precisely, and memory I expect is storing
for an afternoon far removed from here
when the warm furred almost weightlessness
of the fruit I hold might very well be a symbol
of what’s lost and we keep wanting, which after
all is to crave the real, the branches cutting
across the sun, your standing there while I tell you,
‘Come on, you have to try one!’, and you do,
and the clamour of bees goes on above us, ‘This
will do’, both of us saying, ‘like this, being here!’

— Vincent O’Sullivan

Ōrongohau | Best New Zealand Poems 2023 selected by Chris Tse

Since 2001 the International Institute of Modern Letters has been home to Ōrongohau | Best New Zealand Poems. There is a guest editor for each selection and in 2023, this was our Poet Laureate, Chris Tse. Our Poets Laureate feature prominently in editors to date and Chris joined Laureate alumni Elizabeth Smither, Ian Wedde, Vincent O’Sullivan, Jenny Bornholdt, Selina Tusitala Marsh, and David Eggleton in accepting this rewarding if daunting assignment.

Of the 25 poems (from nearly 4000!) to make the cut, Chris observed:

‘Individually, these 25 poems are tender, aggressive, funny, angry, and contemplative. Collectively, they emphasise the power of poetry to communicate with an open heart without fear of retribution. These are the poems that surprised and delighted me the most, that made me pause to sit in my own discomfort or revel in another poet’s joy. Above all, they’re the poems I thought other people need to read.’

To read Chris’s full introduction and to read (and hear some of) the poems, and to spend time looking back down the years of New Zealand poetry in this century, have a look at the Best New Zealand poems website.

Thank you, Chris, a job well done!

Peter Ireland
for the National Library

Half-time

It was a scorching day in Washington DC in late July, but rather than seeking shelter from the heat and humidity in one of the city’s many air-conditioned museums, I found myself in a school gymnasium thrumming with the laughter of 40 kids and adults chasing a soccer ball across the polished floor. The kids were ‘poet-athletes’ taking part in a summer camp programme with DC SCORES, a not-for-profit organisation that uses soccer and poetry to ‘give kids the confidence and skills to succeed on the playing field, in the classroom, and in life’. My indoor soccer days were far behind me, so I was there in my capacity as Aotearoa’s Poet Laureate.

I was in Washington DC as a member of Slow Currents, a cohort of Asian diaspora writers from Aotearoa and Australia. In 2022, we participated in online workshops with Asian American writers, including Pulitzer Prize winners Viet Thanh Nguyen and Hua Hsu, and acclaimed Palestinian American poet George Abraham. The main purpose of our trip to DC was a two-week residency to work on our individual projects and to meet with key people in the Asian American writing community to share knowledge and ideas about how we can empower and create opportunities for our own communities. We also lined up some last-minute events while we were in town, including performances at the famous Busboys & Poets, and the first-ever open mic at the Kennedy Centre. (The Asian American Literature Festival, which we were due to participate in, was abruptly cancelled in the week leading up to us arriving in the States. To date, the Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center has failed to give organisers and participants a transparent reason for the cancellation. There’s murmurs that the programme’s trans and non-binary content spooked the Sminthsonian’s conservative stakeholders.)

The culture galleries at the National Museum of African
 American History & Culture, Washington D.C. Photo by Chris Tse. 

Before leaving a typical Wellington winter for summer in Washington DC, I reached out to the New Zealand Embassy to see whether there might be opportunities for me to partner with them for an event while I was in DC. The timing couldn’t have been better—the Embassy had been working with DC SCORES to plan a day to celebrate the FIFA Women’s World Cup being hosted in Aoteaora and Australia.

Despite my initial scepticism about soccer and poetry being natural bedfellows, I was instantly won over by the kids’ enthusiasm for both. After sharing some of my poems, I fielded some creative and incisive questions from the kids. What I love about moments like this is that it strengthens my own relationship to poetry, and reminds me how powerful it can be to connect with others through the power of storytelling and poetry. As much as the laureateship has been about raising my own profile as a poet and promoting poetry in general, it’s also taught me a lot about myself and how the role of Poet Laureate can act as an intermediary — something like a poetry matchmaker, if you will.

Today is National Poetry Day, which means I’m now halfway through my two-year term. Over the past year, I’ve met and spoken with thousands of people of all ages and backgrounds, from running writing workshops in schools to meeting with a public sector organisation’s pan-Asian staff network. Each of these engagements has been a chance to share my love of poetry and gauge people’s feelings about what is often considered an impenetrable and inaccessible art form.

I know some have had bad experiences with poetry because of how it was taught at school, but my appeal to them is to let that go — start afresh and embrace poetry that speaks to them and their interests. As an artform, poetry is as varied as music or film—there truly is something out there for everyone, from Chaucer to spoken word. I’m heartened when teenagers tell me they’re reading contemporary New Zealand poets (by choice!) or when a retired grandmother makes their debut at an open mic. All of this reinforces to me that poetry can be for everyone — it’s about finding a way into it that resonates with them.

I’d be lying if I said the past year hasn’t been hectic — my entire life has shifted to put poetry front and centre. It’s been chaotic in the best way and surprising too (for starters, I never imagined I’d see my face plastered on the backs of buses). Invitations to speak and perform have come from as far as Invercargill and Leeds in the U.K., which is where I’ll be next month for a festival. As I told the kids at DC SCORES, I knew I’d never represent Aotearoa in sport, but I’m immensely proud to represent our country and its phenomenal poets on a global stage.

Chris Tse reads to poet-athletes at DC SCORE's summer school programme in Washington D.C., July 2023.

If there’s one thing I want to achieve before my term is over, it’s to shift perceptions about poetry being ‘difficult’ to help people find new ways into enjoying it. We’re surrounded by poetry, from the way shadows scatter themselves on the pavement to someone being moved to speak out about injustice.

I’ve no doubt that I have another busy year filled with poetry ahead of me, and I can’t wait to share it with Aotearoa and the world. 

Chris would like to thank the New Zealand Embassy in Washington DC for arranging his visit to DC SCORES, and Creative New Zealand for its support of the Slow Currents residency.

Number 13 — Inauguration weekend poem

I’m trying to get into the habit of writing new poems to read at each event I participate in as the Poet Laureate, and I knew that for my inauguration weekend, I wanted to read something that acknowledged the Poets Laureate who have come before me.

I decided to write an acrostic using the surnames of the 12 previous Laureates. I’ve found that the acrostic form has forced me to write more linearly than I usually do. Thus each line revealed itself one by one over a couple of months as I chipped away at the poem. The final result is part homage and part manifesto, a testament to the power of poetry to change hearts and minds.

Number 13

Must be the way a poem kickstarts a world into being that

alters how time leans into itself. The rise and fall of oceans

never felt so slow or sticky on your skin, salt crusting between

heartbeats. The delicious moon—all-seeing and all-knowing—

inches across the night sky while sad songs crackle on the

radio. Must be fire and flood swooping in to play their part when

everything is bent beyond recognition. Pray for the good old days.

The before times. The once and once more. We have a habit of

U-Turning when faced with not liking where we’re heading. Oh

wicked, stubborn fate—who’s to say that we can outpace the

hardest of truths? That we are fallible. That we are fools for

attempting to chart our own lives. Poets will ensure that these

revelations are broken to us in the kindest way, like a parent

easing their child into a bedtime ritual. The mind wanders,

skips over crucial details when recalling a memory

made at our most vulnerable to scarring. Are those made

in usual circumstances worth holding in the eternal vault?

Take dreams as an example: there is nothing unusual or

humbling about sleep. Most dreams aren’t memories worth

entertaining. And yet, I have a recurring dream in which

RuPaul asks, ‘What would you say to 10-year-old Christopher?’.

This is the trope I hate the most: tricking my inner child to

unpack intergenerational trauma or make peace with what

returns to sting me when I let down my guard. If I only had

nerve to excoriate the judges for this scripted farce, but I can’t

escape expectation. I’ve been thinking about legacy and

royalty—arrangements designed to make us feel like we

belong to some powerful chain. Link by link we forge

ornamental pathways backwards and forwards, left and

right—words whistling in every direction in search of

new ears to fall upon. A poem is a key, is a map, is a

hidden place filled with the answers to questions you

only ever ask yourself when you’re alone. There’s nothing

lost between a poem and its reader—an open mind and

derring-do will take you far if you hand yourself over to

the invisible strings of each melodious line. If gravity were to

loosen its grip you might find yourself melting into the

eventide, echoes of other worlds ushering you onwards,

grief-stricken by what has been, or empowered by what is

granted a spotlight in your fantasies. I still long for utopia

or at the very least a future where we no longer need to

teach children how to hide from mass shooters stalking

their school corridors. I have excavated and polished all

my fears and frustrations to display in the world’s most

complicated museum exhibition. No amount of hurt can

quieten my overachiever Asian gene or deny my status as an

unreasonable artist with many obsessions to nurture until

everything is about race or gender or queerness. I want an

easy life too—hands free to caress the world in its velvets,

not to obsess or fret about the sharp edges that catch my

wild tongue. A pattern must be broken. A heavy heart needs

emptying to make room for courage. So I listen to Robyn’s

‘Dancing On My Own’ for the thousandth time to feel something

deeply—to unearth a memory loaded with the most powerful

emotion that will transform my simple words into a paean to

our shared joy. In the future, our desires will be soundtracked by

sadbangers—we will cry and let our cathartic tears crystallise

under our feet as we dance ourselves towards the blinding

light of better days. We will sing; we will lift our arms and

levitate, enraptured by the possibility that poetry holds.

If this is the path, if this is the way forward, let all our

voices be bold. Hear me: I am the Poet Laureate and I

approve this message! Now is the time for poetry to

nurse our crushes until we all die of embarrassment. I’ll

stand tall, facing the past, and instruct everyone to keep

tipping the scales in our favour. Assume the position—

ease our bodies against the tide that roars at us, “No

Admission”. I believe in our strength; I believe in self-

deprecation and letting poetry ruin every party it crashes.

Must be the page turning or the world tipping on its

axis, tradition glazed with the woozy afterglow of poets

reciting verse to manifest rebirth, a murmuration of

starlings filling the vast attics of our futures. If there’s

harmony there must be a chorus, voices matched and

etched into the walls we are learning to scale with ease.

Give me neither poverty nor riches; give me myself again.

Give me love and give me hope; give me myself again.

Line by line and brick by brick, build something that will

equip us to change the world. I am sentimental for a 

time that does not yet exist but that I know is somewhere

out there—a half-beginning, a half-sense of something

not entirely out of reach. Must be the way a poem can

tell you where to stand to see every crack or where to

start a fire to light the way for others. Describe what you

expect to see on the other side. Tell us how you want to feel.

— Chris Tse

Chris Tse (the 13th Poet Laureate) holding his tokotoko carved by Jacob Scott.
Photo by Rebecca McMillan Photography. All rights reserved. 

Welcome to Chris Tse our new Poet Laureate

The National Library is delighted to celebrate National Poetry Day by announcing Chris Tse of Wellington as the New Zealand Poet Laureate for 2022-2024.

Te Pouhuaki National Librarian Rachel Esson described Chris’s appointment as recognition of “a poet leading a generational and cultural shift in the reach and appreciation of poetry in Aotearoa.”

Fellow poet Freya Daly Sadgrove says Chris “will unite and embolden the full breadth of Aotearoa’s poetry community as well as entice new audiences with his innovation. He’s a glam-rock poetry superstar with a big, gorgeous heart and he will raise the profile of Aotearoa poetry right now like no one else.”

Self-portrait Chris Tse. Photo provided. 

For Tse, his appointment was a thrill and an honour.

“The number 13 is a lucky number in my family, so it feels very auspicious to be named the 13th New Zealand Poet Laureate.

“Stepping into this role as a queer, Asian writer is an incredible and life-changing opportunity. I’m thrilled and honoured to be following in the footsteps of some of our literary greats.

“New Zealand’s poetry scene is thrumming with diverse and innovative voices on both the page and the stage, and I can’t wait to use my tenure as Poet Laureate to help people discover the riches of this scene.”

Congratulations Chris we look forward to hearing more from you.

Why Hollywood won’t cast poets in films anymore

1. There are public reasons and there are private reasons.

2. The public reasons are toothless exaggerations

3. In private, we recount the times we’ve been made to feel damaged.

4. The night writes its power ballads behind closed doors.

5. We have dressed our wounds with the sins of our tormentors.

6. When we were happy, we filled our suitcases with fresh bread.

7. Now that we are filled with rage we choke our duck ponds with dry crusts.

8. There was a time when the colour of a nightclub brawl did not exist.

9. Nowadays, a bookstore drive-by shooting no longer elicits social media outrage.

10. We must acknowledge that there are no more wars left to cry over.

11. Except for the wars we wage against ourselves, which we refuse to acknowledge.

12. We carved our names into every building to remind ourselves never to return.

13. You can dance for a destination, but you will never get there in one piece.

14. Careers based on public humiliation are no longer worth curating.

15. At no point have we accepted responsibility for casting the first stone.

16. If it’s all lies, we must pretend not to notice.

17. If it’s all truth, we must pretend not to care.

18. Either way, it’s meant to hurt.

19. It’s meant to make you want to leave your husband for a tax accountant.

20. It’s the way we step out of a burning theatre as if nothing’s wrong.

21. As if the smoke in our eyes is a lover’s smile caught in sunlight.

22. An uncontrollable fire is perfectly fine, given the state of the world.

23. Then why do I feel so angry?

24. Are you angry?

25. I’m angry.

— Chris Tse

Poster announcing Chris Tse as the new Poet Laureate.
Thank you to Phantom Billstickers for the poster.

Whale Psalm

The whale, says Jonah, is the black night filled with terrible screams.
The whale is missiles that winnow the grain from the wheatfields.
The whale is the city with bombed-out basements and burning high-rises.
The whale is the country, bogged down in booby-traps and wreckage of tanks.
The whale shoulders the load, a tower of coffins.
The whale is village-fiddlers tuning up a death march.
The whale is soldiers shouting their poems in the ruins.
The whale is a prayer on the lips of children.
The whale is liberty pecked at by birds of prey.
The whale is the enemy, with its taboos, its vanity and its ignorance.
The whale is life incarnate and a desperation to survive.
The whale is the weight of creation stranded on the tipping point.
The whale is always further away than first thought, but inescapable.
The whale wants to save us.
The whale wants to win the war.
The whale turns the spotlight on the whale-hunters and the war-generals.
The whale has climbed the diving board above the dried-up sacred fountain.
The whale must dive into the circus barrel, and there is no way out.

— David Eggleton

Mostly Black

Before, as it was, it was mostly black,
dark beaks, polished talons, feathers, a black
regime drenched in the melancholy black
of rains that took tides further towards black.
From hinges of sunlight hung blocks of black,
and risen humps of islands were matt black.
Cinders sailed from bush burn-offs, carbon black.
Beads on antimacassars gleamed jet black.
Through pine's silent groves possum eyes shone black.
Above tar-seal a melted rainbow turned black.
At disintegration of monolith black,
green, all that blue can be, then back to black.
Green of pounamu lost under lake's black.
Blackout's lickerish taste, blood-pudding black,
and midnight mushrooms gathered from deep black.
Tattoos drawn with bent nib and homemade black.
Batman's mask, a dull sheen of cue ball black.
The primeval redacted, placed in black
trash bags, or else turned out as burnt bone black.
Pull on the wool singlet of shearer's black,
for blacker than black is New Zealand black,
null and void black, ocean black, all black.
In Te Pō's night realm, from Te Kore's black,
under the stars spreads the splendour of black.

— David Eggleton

Te-Ara-a-Parāoa, Path of the Sperm Whale

Aotearoa's white peaks spyhop above waves,
seeking albatross worlds of mislaid moons.
Screeching kākā skim fast through tree-tops.
Parāoa breaches in a frost-smoke chrysalis.
Iwi on the shore perform haka of welcome.
Drizzle dances on the head of the whale.
Hoisted up out of water, blowing a guffaw,
blunt headlands slap and wallow in their turn.
A living wall slides past, gentle-eyed, vast.
Luminous planktons glow in dark ocean;
neon flying squid flash through salty air.
Silvery-bubbled, ripple-driven, Parāoa
tilts her tail-flukes, keels and plunges:
guiding her calf down Kaikōura Canyon.
Bob of a fur seal pup snouts through
seaweed wrack, in the surf's long swell.
A breeze licks over spun gobbets of foam.
A green tendril climbs sunwards in a spiral

— David Eggleton

Matariki

Matariki's eyes are fiery in the night.
Feather-shawled mountains gleam their beaks.
Great trunks, sawn through, tumble and tilt.
Bold carvings, auctioned in whispers,
echo as prophecies, sung by wind-swept trees.
The hangi smokes great boars, basted in juices.
Plagued by caterpillars, slithered by eels,
a patchwork quilt of farm unravels.
In lightning and hail, each snail snivels;
learned visitors take shelter with skinks,
under rocks from nesting angry falcons.
Ghosts hoard waka in marshes, under silt.
An arcade is roofed with engraved glass;
a pedestal is bound by polished brass;
faces are wound tighter than a watchspring.
Wigs become a sheep flock gathering.
There's daughter of the kauri, Amber Reeves,
sailing for London from the Antipodes.
Through cavern gloom, suspended by ooze,
many worms glow as the matrix broods.

— David Eggleton

Key to the Hermit Kingdom

Once far to the back, now far out in front,
to bear the brunt and wear the shame,
the minister for health arrives by stealth;
children have assembled for the last bull-run.
The basis of life in these islands is sun.
Random offence takes knee-jerk exception
to a nation's internet solipsism.
They want to topple Cook's statues, wave through
freedom protestors, tweeters who invite you
to burn replicas of J.K.Rowling at the stake,
or shout cancel in Putin's graffitied face,
then pose on Instagram to game the blame.
As yesterday's cassette static unspools,
white noise buzzes across the tells
of a whole world in bruise-coloured blue,
globe mortified by heat-wave distortion,
though too we might die of rabid exposure,
our tarpaulins snatched away by storm-cells,
Our gathered thoughts await their closure;
while all look on, thanks to their lit devices;
and beware the naked blade that flashes
in dearer chainstore supermarket aisles;
beware pop pop pop of police gunshots,
attempts to liberate property from capital.
When asked, step away from those unmasked;
accept the chill vaccine that burns the arm.
Everything depends on the arrival
of red wheelbarrows from China for big box stores,
before global supply links break again:
ever-remoter quotas of autumn's dry spell
frozen, like jagged truths of rock pools drained,
those barren rocks where marooned sailors listen
for the lure of mermaids and police sirens.
Winter's stew of anonymised outrage
lasts lockdown season in the Hermit Kingdom.
Then jet-set Spring arrives, tanned and smiling,
in a jeep towing Summer's caravan,
which brings an all-weather finish to year's end.

— David Eggleton

The End of History, and Warhead

The End of History

1989, when the fall of Berlin's wall
chiselled away loose masonry,
brought promise for humanity,
as tank man stood tall in Tiananmen Square.
Dignity seemed worth more
at the end of the Cold War than ever before.
Lovers kissed for cameras, which made
every photograph special, like a bouquet,
while wires that held the whole shebang
upright were hidden well away.
They placed white carnations in rifle muzzles.
They dumped Klashnikovs for bumpers of champagne.
They waved banners and the snare drum beat.
They climbed to the top of decline and fall.
The fix was in, nothing for it but to swim.
1989, when the world-wide-web's pipedream lit up;
telexes hiccupped, telephones tittered, faxes coughed,
though so many were soon to return
in coffins from whatever war was next.
Some had paintstripper to remove the pain;
some smooshed their wonted ancient grain.
Sir Galahad rode in with leather apron on,
making light of the massacre, the heavy weather,
the forked lightning, the stacks of stooks
in summer stubble, scorched for yonks.
Choppers prepared for evacuation.
Citizens rejoiced in satellites, holding hands,
blindly high on their own resolution,
across the ocean and down in the deeps,
whose dungeons opened and released the Fates,
in bubbles of oxygen that seemed herculean.
Yesterday's progress ended and was rebooted.
Deplorables became renewable; edibles became incredible.
Assemblies clanked through flung-open gates.
And you will know us by our toppled hopes,
the flogged scars and stripes that bless the bloody flag.
We were going forward, the damned, on our five-year plan,
in spirit of prayer to stardust of paradise,
with lassoed monuments and new statues raised;
but hope is the thing that scatters,
through tarred and feathered streets,
as tear-gas arrives and water cannon swings.
There were human pyramids and plagues
of new missiles; jogging shoes hung from gallows.
The blow-up globe was punctured and hissed
with escaping breath as another dream
began to count down to lift-off;
and then we were stuck in the 1990s,
with a long night coming on,
and very few left to sing revolution's song.

— David Eggleton

Warhead

Say no to the Mad Emperor of the Russians,
in thrall to his own truth-flubbing trolls,
and his judo-player skills and his steroid flushes.
An unholy fool, dancing like a very angry bear
on the hot coals of burning Ukrainian cities.
Let him be deposed and shunted to a far-off gulag,
drowned like Rasputin, stopped like Trotsky with a pick-axe.
Let him not die in his bed like the monster Stalin,
for he is one of those tyrannical jerks,
photo-shopped all ripped veins and vascular,
as bigged-up as Josef Stalin's Collected Works.
What Pootin doesn't know isn't knowledge,
because Pootin went to KGB Spy College.
He's a rabid mole who has swallowed a wasp;
a death guru with a cobra's cross-eyed stare,
who flicks his forked tongue out to test the air.
A total mass murderer as Mister Anonymous,
a radioactive creature from a toxic lagoon.
Sputnik space-case they should have sent to the moon;
makes like he's in a North Korean restaurant: dog eat dog.
Expressionless face of a long-term drunk,
he's a breezeblock Brezhnev, a pisspot Lenin;
he's in a rusted suit made of the Iron Curtain;
he's the skull and crossbones on a bottle of poison.
Everything he touches turns to smashed-up melamine;
he wears a fake tan like his pal Trumpentine.
He's an old-shoe Communist, placed as People's Tzar,
in an oligarchical Formula One racing car:
leads the pack with World Domination blah blah blah.
Pootin be like the psycho comrade in wolf's clothing,
he's the very dead soul of serfdom resurrected,
another well-known germophobe, always well-protected.
A barren rock, a cement mixer mixing a dunce's lies;
a minuscule human blob with rage-filled eyes;
a villainous Marvel figurine: Incandescent Vlad Puteen.

— David Eggleton

Ode to the Cycleway

Too much smashed glass on asphalt,
swerving in and out of the bike lane,
you got skaters, scooters, vapers,
someone taking selfies with boozers.
Everyone is insane after dark,
by the locked park gates;
and where do you park so no-one
can pancake the car roof off a balcony?
Someone's playing housie with a trust fund,
someone's put the rent up on white fragility,
someone's hurled cookie dough on the pavement.
Fang it, prang it, walk away totalled,
who's got the price tag of that?
Shuffle to the muffler, raise the wheels,
or tow it away from the harbour,
after raising it out of the water.
Seepage, salvage, knock-down heritage;
raise up flower power in gardens.
Let the chips fall where they may,
on airwaves, sheathed in hagfish glue,
or stuck to the highway back
when yesterday was some place to be.
Asphalt shades of greyscale
unscroll a doomslayer's papyrus,
its dried-up syrups of blood, lead, nitrate.
Gaps are bridged by sighs, years by stars
that might scratch your eyes out.
The fevered rain is not enough to wreathe a sinkhole.
Cram cranberries in your gob by the handful,
and click through dross after dross on ways
to improve the biosphere from inside your silo.
The checkout counter, like your personal biomass,
counts somewhere, maybe.
And you were born and raised in a coffin,
and now you're an astronaut on a mission,
your ashes are launched from a circus cannon,
towards a trampoline you preordered,
from your parked-up car above Lover's Leap.
Peeps are posting pics of themselves planking,
or leaning away from the goalposts,
looking down on a mass grave called Planet Earth.
Ashes drilled into the skin with a needle are blue.

— David Eggleton

State of Emergency

In None and Son of None we see
the dazzle of Him Who walked
upon the Lake of Galilee.
Israel has done much and little
of which to be proud.
Gaza, torn in two, bleeds trauma
beneath a bomb-raised cloud.
Praise or blame are much the same
on the battleground of Palestine,
and Israel answers raised hands
and bloody nails
with the iron flails
of Christ's Roman centurion.

— David Eggleton

Protest

Jolts and ruckus
lambast swarms
and hives;
ant trails wave
placards
of fear and anger
at whatever's out
there that doesn't
care but looks on
with the languor
of big cats lifting
a paw — the smears
are human tears.

— David Eggleton

Wonder: Poets Laureate at the National Library, an event held in association with the exhibition Mīharo Wonder: 100 Years of the Alexander Turnbull Library on August 6th 2021

A flock? A laurel wreath? A vine? A stanza? A chapter? A library? What collective noun might best define an assembly of Poets Laureate? Such national figureheads of the art of poesy-making are generally considered rugged individualists to be prized for their distinctive poetic voices, for their various 'ways of saying', rather than their harmonious concord.

New Zealand has had twelve poet laureates since the Laureateship was established by prime mover John Buck of Te Mata Estate Vineyard in Hawke's Bay in 1996. The badge of office for each of Aotearoa's Poets Laureate is their own tokotoko. The matua tokotoko or 'parent' orator's talking stick is held at the National Library Te Puna Mātauranga o Aotearoa, which became kaitiaki or guardian of the Laureateship in 2007, with Peter Ireland acting as facilitator.

The attending Poets Laureate and friends in front of Cliff Whiting's 'Te Wehenga' mural. Back row L to R: Brian Turner, (Wendy Buck), Bill Manhire, Selina Tusitala Marsh, (Peter Ireland of the National Library), Jenny Bornholdt, (Jacob Scott), David Eggleton,  Front row L to R: (John Buck), Cilla McQueen, Ian Wedde, Elizabeth Smither, Vincent O’Sullivan. Photo Mark by Beatty.

All the tokotoko thus far have been carved and fashioned by master carver and artist Jacob Scott (Ngāti Raukawa, Te Arawa, Ngāti Kahungunu), in consultation with the poet. Each Laureate receives their tokotoko at Matahiwi marae near Havelock North in Hawke's Bay. In a way, then, these customised wooden talismans might serve to suggest a single 'poet-tree' growing out of the land.

The large audience being welcomed to the Poets Laureate event by Rachel Esson, the National Librarian Te Pouhuaki.
Photo by Mark Beatty.

And so a tree of singing birds, a lorikeet-like flurry of laureates convened at the National Library in Wellington on Friday August 6th to mark 25 years by raising their tokotoko in the air and shaking them together in unison, while reciting Hone Tuwhare's poem 'Reign rain' — or almost. Michele Leggott and C.K. Stead couldn't be there, but Selina Tusitala Marsh, Vincent O'Sullivan, Ian Wedde, Cilla McQueen, Brian Turner, Elizabeth Smither, Jenny Bornholdt and Bill Manhire, along with myself, took part in the evening's celebrations, which included poetry readings expertly conducted by Master of Ceremonies Gregory O'Brien in the acoustically-resonant auditorium.

The occasion was also distinguished by the launch of a poetry chapbook in a limited edition of 100, hand-crafted by master printer Brendan O'Brien of Fernbank Studio in Wellington. Throw net: Upena ho'olei — a suite of poems from Hawai'i consists of nine poems drafted by me in various notebooks when I held the Fulbright-Creative New Zealand Pacific Writer's Residency at the University of Hawai'i in Honolulu towards the end of 2018. These recently completed texts are accompanied by woodblock prints produced by my brother Tonu Shane, an artist who formerly lived in Hawai'i and taught at Windward Community College in Honolulu, and who now lives near Mendocino on the coast of Northern California.

Cover of Throw net: Upena ho'olei — a suite of poems from Hawai'i

I am extremely gratefully to Brendan and his helpers for all his hard work and the time involved in putting this exquisite publication together, from the actual letter-press printing, to the hand-sewn binding, to the choices of ink colours and textures, to the careful sourcing of high-quality papers from various places. And I would like to thank the National Library for enabling this project to happen. Images are below.

All in all a lambent occasion, highlighting contemporary New Zealand poetry, and ending with libations of fine wine and a raise-your-glasses toast to the history and the future of the Laureateship, proposed and delivered with a Falstaffian flourish by wine-maker and legend John Buck.

Throw net: Upena ho'olei — a suite of poems from Hawai'i

Below are images of the poem Throw Net and the woodblock that accompanies it in the book Throw net: Upena ho'olei — a suite of poems from Hawai'i  hand-crafted by master printer Brendan O'Brien of Fernbank Studio in Wellington.

Image of the poem Throw Net printed by Brendan O'Brien.

Woodblock print that accompanies the poem Throw Net, produced by my brother Tonu Shane.

Poet Laureate’s Choice, August 2021 | Anne Kennedy

Poet Laureate’s choice, August 2021

The Poet Laureate's Choice, August 2021 is a portfolio sequence of new poems from poets chosen by the Poet Laureate. Today two new poems from Anne Kennedy.

Sea-glass

Oh and once he cut his finger doing handstands
in the sand at Waimānalo. Some arsehole’s bottle,

still raw. I wasn’t there. Swim `ohana delivered him
to the door, his young blood pumping into a towel.

Next we’re all at ER in a delegation. Anaesthetic
doesn’t work. Because redhead, they say, and stitch him

anyway, and try distract - Ah you ginga! Later a surgeon,
calm as the Buddha, sews his nerve, the width of a hair.

A year of therapy, a brace, a box of tumbling wheat
teaching the finger not to curl, and no over-extend either.

At the very end he says, When I first did it, Mum, it was
so sore! My heart still thumps at his pain on the beach. 

Now down in Auckland working in a bar, he makes
cocktails so so fast, like a blur, in a frosted glass.

— Anne Kennedy

Big in the Landscape

First you were small. Small was an adorable stage.
Your little body and the little space it took up.

But the bones and skin grew bigger.
Bones and skin expanded until they were big.
The blood and muscle, the sinews.

You got big in the landscape.

We are big in the landscape.

*

Then our memories got bigger.
They started off small like our bodies.
That was actually an adorable stage.

But memories of where we had been, what we had done,
they gathered and swelled and attached
and kept gathering and swelling and attaching.
They grew bigger than our bodies.

Memories are us. They are enormous.
They are big in the landscape.

We are big in the landscape.

*

You remember the school.
You got so big that the primary school looked wee. We are so big the primary school looks
wee. We say to each other, Oh my, the school has shrunk!

We are big in the playground.

We are big in the landscape.

*

You remember a holiday.

The motorway exploded behind us. We were big in the back of the car. We walked on a
glacier. It was big and we were dots on the landscape. Now the glacier looks wee. We say to
each other, The glacier has shrunk.

We were big on the motorway, we were big in the car, we were big on the glacier.

We are big in the landscape.

*

You moved from the place your little body had been, and from the place where your little
memories had been. You went on a plane and exhaust blasted into the sky. You were
plastered against your seat. You saw new things. You went back and forth and back and forth
from the new place to the old place.

You were big in the sky, you were big in your seat, you were big in the new place, you were
big going back and forth and back and forth from the new place to the old place.

We are big in the landscape.

*

There were trips to the mall. You drove to the mall. You bought things at the mall. T-shirts, children’s plastic shoes, synthetic duvet inners. You say, Look what I bought.

You were big in the mall, you were big in the car, you were big in the T-shirt, the children
were big in their plastic shoes, we were big under our duvets.

We are big in the landscape.

                                    *

There were work trips. You went on a plane and exhaust blasted into the sky. You were
plastered against your seat. You flew up and down and up and down. You thought about new
ideas. You say, Look what I thought.

You were big on the plane, you were big in your seat, you were big flying up and down and
up and down, you were big thinking about new ideas.

We are big in the landscape.

*

There was a move to another country. We went on a plane and exhaust blasted into the sky.
We were plastered against our seat. We saw new things. We met new people. We went back
and forth and back and forth from the new place to the old place. We said, The new place!

We were big in the sky, we were big in our seat, we were big seeing new things, we were big
meeting new people, we were big going back and forth and back and forth from the new
place to the old place.

We are big in the landscape.

*

You put out the wheelie bin of recycling. The plastics, the cans, the cardboard and the glass,
they jostle like Christmas. You are full of joy.

You are big with the wheelie bin, you are big with the plastics, the cans, the cardboard and
the glass, the way they jostle like Christmas, you are big with joy.

We are big in the landscape.

*

There are books about climate change that you read sitting on the couch. You quote bits from
the books to your loved ones. You are so interested in books about climate change.

You are big reading books about climate change, you are big quoting bits from books on
climate change to your loved ones, you are big feeling so interested in books about climate
change.

We are big in the landscape.

*

There were the hurricanes on the other side of the world. We were an audience to the
hurricanes. There was the orange sky from Australian bush fires that January day. We were
entertained by the hurricanes. We watched the marvel of the orange sky. We said to each
other, Oh my, look at the sky!

We were big on the internet, we were big on the radio, we were big on the TV, we were big
hearing about the hurricanes on the other side of the world, we were big looking at the orange
sky in January, we were big talking to each other about the orange sky.

We are big in the landscape.

*

We love our bodies. We love our memories. Our memories are enormous. Memories are us.

*

But the thing is the thing.

We think we are big in the landscape and so we are big in the landscape.

You know why the glacier is wee. Because it has melted.
You are not big you are small.
Our memories are not big they are invisible.

We are at an adorable stage.

— Anne Kennedy

Anne Kennedy biography

Anne Kennedy is an Auckland poet, fiction writer, screenplay editor and teacher. Recent books are the poetry collection Moth Hour (AUP) and the novel The Ice Shelf (VUP). Awards and fellowships include the NZ Post Book Award for Poetry and the IIML Writers' Residency. Her new poetry collection The Sea Walks into a Wall is forthcoming from Auckland University Press in October. 

Anne Kennedy. Image by Robert Cross.