Artist credit: Huriana Kopeke-Te Aho
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Kia ora, Mālō e lelei and welcome to this little reading perch that I’ve put together. I have gathered bits and pieces that will link you to some of my poems and writing.
It makes sense to begin with Eating Dark Chocolate and Watching Paul Holmes’ Apology as this is the first poem of mine that was ever published. It was written in response to a racist rant made by a well-known broadcaster in Aotearoa / New Zealand. I sent this poem to my creative writing teacher Maualaivao Albert Wendt when I was a student. He emailed it out to his friends and colleagues and it went a bit ‘viral’. I heard via word of mouth, that the Editor of the Listener had asked if his magazine could publish it. I had no idea how to submit work to be published at the time. I recall cutting and pasting the poem into a feedback form on the Listener Website.
Maualaivao Albert continued to be influential in my writing career. Even though I was a new writer, he included Wednesday Afternoon in the Whetu Moana Anthology. This poem was chosen as one of the “Ōrongohau Best New Zealand Poems”. This was one of my first “big breaks”. I was a huge fan of Albert Wendt’s writing and he had a direct influence on my poetry. Acknowledging my literary whakapapa, artistic elders and writing ‘older siblings’ is a repeated practice in my books. I have been inspired by so many Pacific, Māori and writers of colour in my journey. Their voices have created space and helped enable mine, so acknowledgement and odes to elders feel important to me.
After I completed his creative writing paper, Maualaivao Albert suggested to Huia Publishers that they look at my work. They went on to publish Dream Fish Floating which won the Jessie MacKay Best First Book of Poetry Award in 2006. This changed my life forever. Again, one of the poems from that book Sacred Pulu was selected for Ōrangohau. Re-reading this poem now, it feels so true to my experience of being a young Pasifika person, living in Tāmaki Makaurau and trying to figure myself out.
This “trying to figure out” what it meant to be Pasifika in Aotearoa led to a PhD in the area. Being of Tongan heritage is very important to me and writing about Tonga, such as this Ode to Princess Ashika has been an defining part of my creative journey. My second book, "A Well Written Body” focused a lot on Tonga and the politics and poetics of place.
I have always written across multiple mediums and this included, for a while, writing an Op-Ed called ‘Pacific Current’ for the Dominion-Post. I stopped after a while, particularly after I started to receive disturbing mail at my home from racists. Occasionally, when I feel stirred, I’ll still write an Op-Ed. I have always been a political writer, and speaking unafraid into the silence has been a hallmark of my writing. However, as an antidote to Op-Eds and the ugliness of daily political life in Aotearoa, I buried myself deep in Pacific mythology and ancient archetype. This was also an antidote to writing about contemporary challenges faced by Pacific peoples and the inequalities they experience in an empirical, scholarly and sociological way. Diving deep into ancestral genius felt like one of the most empowering things I could do.
My postdoctoral research into indigenous knowledge from the Pacific took me somewhere deeply mythical, metaphorical, language-based, proverbial, poetic, and narrative-oriented. It profoundly changed me. Through this five year research process I developed Mana Moana and a framework that was and indigenous. It informs the curriculum of two leadership programmes at Leadership New Zealand.
This research changed the nature of my poetry forever. Meditating on concepts widely shared among the islands of the Pacific, such as Mana, became a full time focus. The influence of Mana Moana is also evident in my writing in essay form, as well as academic works. It is very obvious the way philosophy and understandings indigenous to the Moana have impacted upon my poetry. You can see this in the Mana Moana Meditation that I created with Michael Tuffery. To view this multidisciplinary work, enter via karanga through a portal that leads to the digital ocean, click on the blue stingray and listen. It remains one of the artworks I am most proud of.
During Covid-19, I came to write a number of meditations and this is something I have continued to do. It seemed to be a way that poetry could serve our collective wellbeing during a difficult time. I wrote personally and poetically about the impact of Covid-19. It was a time when we were all grateful for art.
Potentially my own blend of activism, belief in the value of indigenous knowledge, and willingness to speak back to power, comes together in this Poem for the Commonwealth. I read this at the Commonwealth Heads of Government Peoples’ Forum, after Bill Gates and Prime Minister of England spoke. This remains a career highlight, but the most special thing I have ever done is read a poem at Moana Jackson’s tangi. This has been my greatest honour. I continue to write poetry regularly, and some of my new poems can be found below.
I hope you enjoyed that journey through a wide variety of examples of my writing.
Ngā Mihi,
Karlo
New Works
Everyday Allegories
(For Hāora)
He asks,
where are all the love poems, love?
Light-in-light brown eyes, teasing.
Beloved,
the poet writes,
the poems
are folded carefully
in the dishcloth,
I’ve trained myself
not to leave in the sink.
The poems are gleaming
in the silver stainless shine
of the frothing wand
on the espresso machine,
that I am trying to clean,
after every use.
The poems are in the wash
with only
teatowels
and
tablecloths.
Separate.
In the remembering
of putting the keys
in the same place
each day. Regular.
The poems are in the braised
chicken, left to slow-cook
into something sumptuous,
consulting Alison Holst
as well as Annabel,
googling five star recipes,
buying dried and canned apricots both.
They are in the off-recipe
swish of white wine
that was good enough to drink,
in the last minute acidic
of apple cider vinegar,
in the contraband crumble of brown sugar,
the secret of fish sauce.
The poems are in the seven spoonfuls
of tasting, testing, adding, adjusting.
In the way I bring everything
to the table.
This is where the poems are love.
The lines are
in my everyday edits.
In the crossing out,
in the keeping.
Not in the lilting, longing of long distant text
where all is dependent on the figurative,
but in the figuring out.
For this is no flash in the pan,
the love poems are to be found
in the soft stewing of apricots
mixed with meat,
falling off the bone.
In the cleaning up as I go.
Image credit: Delicia Sampero
The Distiller’s Guide to Poetry
(For G)
1.
My friend has a brain injury.
Concussed,
he sends me poetry.
My own.
It was meant for someone else,
but I drink in the words
as if I am a stranger to them.
I swill them around in my mouth,
as if I am discerning -
swirling something
familiar, fragrant,
on my tongue.
Yes,
Spirits, neat,
on the rocks
Medicinal words
quenching a strange thirst,
in the middle
of a hot pandemic.
2.
Yes,
those words wrote my knowing
when I didn’t even know
what I was talking about.
Poet.
Don’t know it.
You know how it goes.
3.
I voice record myself back to my friend,
saying:
I love that poetry can still be something whole
for you,
in the broken
of brain injury.
(TBH I said it better in these lines
than out loud in real life
and that’s one of the gifts of poetry!)
Oh poetry,
I love you so.
Wholeness
in smallness.
Best words in
Best order.
Fewest words
Greatest meaning.
You know how
clumsily
we mouth you
back to yourself.
Light.
Gift.
4.
I am a poet with a PhD,
And I am not a big fan
of dissertations.
I cannot recommend them.
Poetry, however.
Give me the key-words
that unlock
the open mouth of
a fast-talking over-dressed beast
spending all it’s time
quoting everybody else.
I want to skip the intro,
bypass the methodology section,
Take me straight
to the four original lines of this thesis.
Give me
the findings
of the findings.
Give me the abstract
of the abstract.
Whisper it to me,
like they are hot uncomfortable secrets
you spent three years seeking.
That’s poetry.
References are always best left
as mysteries.
Researcher,
give me the
elevator pitch you’d give straight to God,
if you encountered her
policy-making
somewhere small and square.
Condense it into the
concise summary
of prayer,
uplifting.
5.
No. I don’t even have time for the movie
moving frame by frame,
minute by minute:
take me straight to that moment -
one hour and 17 minutes in -
where in the silence
sitting twinned
on that bench
on that hard-to-reach beach,
you realise
you are sitting-too-close-to-each-other
and far-too-faraway
from everything else.
That moment when he pulls out his phone
to show you,
on the small cracked screen -
your location on google earth -
chewing up his precious data
his arm warm against your body.
That moment he shows you,
how you are right at the ihu
of the isthmus –
“See here – the nose” -
and you peer into
the small shattered glass
of that tiny birds-eye view
in his hand.
You look down
to look up
at the google green and earth blue.
And you know you’ve seen -
exactly what you already knew
amidst all his rapidly declining data.
You know
with satellite surety
you are
exactly where
you want to be
and no other where
could be anywhere
as lovely.
Located.
With accuracy
and precision.
Yes, just take me straight there -
to that hard-to-reach beach
off-the-track at Ihumātao.
Long before the tents came.
When you suddenly knew
exactly where you both were,
in the universe,
unfolding.
6.
I want to taste it
the day after.
All that was tip of your tongue.
All that was choked in your throat.
That growing and knowing between us,
ripening until we fell.
That forbidden fruit
we hid behind our backs.
I want to bite from its flesh:
every pip, seed, segment
taste it on my tongue.
Everything worth remembering.
Everything worth writing down.
Juiced. Pulped. Pureed. Dried.
Extracted.
Elegantly spooned
back to us
as essence.
Tonic.
Medicine.
Poetry.
7.
I want to taste it
years later.
After it has
steeped,
and been spread
on malting floors.
Ground into grist.
Mashed. Mixed.
Long after the living has fed on the sugars.
Fermenting. Yes, the violent froth.
Then it all dies down,
to come-out-in-the-wash.
I know
the shape of the pot
matters more than you’d think -
The stillness
distinctive.
Until all the vapours
condense
into liquid,
that
condensed
smooth running
syrup,
complex
full-bodied:
life’s leftovers –
prized, preserved,
thick
treacle.
Poetry demands
further distillation.
Washed. Refined.
Lying as low wines,
until only the heart of the run
remains. Pure centre cut.
This then passes
through the spirit safe,
to emerge colourless,
fiery, flammable
intoxicating
spirits.
Worthy
of life’s
last sip.
8.
Once you’ve seen the ihu
you can never unsee
the way
something that you can’t see
is inhaling everything in
all the time.
Spirits.
Can you sense the lingering
fragrance of that moment?
Through the splintered glass
of how I remember it?
Such a small screen.
With this broken birds-eye view
I offer you
my clarity:
googling earth memories,
laying them down to rest.
to steep. purify. refine.
Yes, I make them mine.
My own distinctive stills.
So still inside me.
And when I am thirsty,
I will drink.
And when you are parched,
I will offer you my glass.
I offer you my clarity.
An elixer
aged, brewed and
mixed from memories,
meaning, moments:
medicinal.
So all that is too big
can be reduced to small.
So that a lifetime can be distilled
into four original lines.
So that all that is too broken,
can return to a single rhyme,
and be enough,
be.enough.
I write these words
so that all the unspoken
can speak
like spirits.
All of it held,
in the palm of poetry’s hand,
where
all is
eventually
understood,
and
absolved.
Image credit: Raymond Sagapolutele
Travelling
(for Delicia, with reference to Rumi and his poem The Wagon)
Here we are,
in the digital age
experiencing connectivity
at the highest speeds;
isolated in ways
we have never been before.
Covid. The technology
of touch -
without touching.
We are still
hard-wired
for connection.
My finger
forever,
on the
pulsating.
I feel you
through the screen.
Our thoughts have always travelled
beyond our minds, unspoken and
angled on face –
shaped in the language of body.
Kinetic. Energetic. Frenetic.
Carried in the
tele-phone of tone:
open-mouthed, audio, radio, aural.
Our feelings have always travelled across time and space
landing in the bedrooms of beloveds,
before texts and sexts, DMs and PMs,
where they waited, open-hearted,
to receive us.
Electro-magnetic.
Morse code murmurs of heart-beat – tap-tapping
the lag, the latency -
breakthrough of throughput.
The broadening of our bandwidth -
everything we can
and can’t possibly
know.
We have always travelled through nervous systems
into our shared spaces.
Vā - the inter - of everything.
We are waves
of energy, wayfinding,
in the moving ocean of each other.
Currents, emotion, light, frequency;
all of us emitting in every interaction.
Charging each other,
long before
technology expanded us.
Still so much we don’t understand:
such as synchronies
of whale and kauri,
remembered in our underwater bones.
We recall exchanging skin.
The great forgetting.
And yet, here we are, accelerating, faster than 5G
although nobody knows where we are going.
We hope to find that place,
beyond all binaries
in the algorithm of the ancient,
a spatial field,
entirely energetic,
where virtual
merges with reality.
I will meet you there.
For when our souls lie down
in that simulated grass,
this oversubscribed dimension
becomes too over-inscribed
to even type.
All the language, logic,
predictive text -
even the idea of ‘each other’
becomes obsolete.
We will no longer be the energy of who we are.
The dancing particles in the air
transmit and receive
these secrets.
Let us awaken to the signalling.
Don’t go back to sleep.
Ask
intentionally.
Attune.
For here is where
the worlds touch.
We orbit
ceaselessly around
this unseen altar.
The portal is a circle.
Ever-open.
Don’t go back to sleep.
Here,
we dissolve
beyond separation.
Image Credit: Delicia Sampero
Master carver
(for Moana Jackson)
Audre Lorde said,
‘the master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house’
And yet, has she even seen
what a metal blade
could do
when it dug its determined
chiselled teeth into the heart of kauri?
And emerged - ka puta - transformed,
as the face, the open arms, the belly of an ancestor?
Did she ever walk into one of those carved meeting houses - and gasp -
at what can be done with pākehā tools,
when they are wielded in indigenous hands?
There is such a softness to your decisive blade, Moana.
Using the Master’s tools where necessary,
but never quite how they expected.
Finest chisel expertly tap-tapping
away at unwanted residue:
slicing, dicing, decisively cutting -
castrating occasionally –
with sharp wit,
one bullet point at a time.
A young woman
- like I once was -
could touch the true curve
of a recognisable face,
after you’d taken your scalpel
to savage distortions -
distasteful projections -
disgraceful impressions -
from inferior surface of skin
to unseen gene within.
The way they
created a beast
that needed,
inevitably,
to be caged.
Oh the soft blade of your tongue, Moana,
carves a kūaha
unlocking
another vision entirely.
You make for us
a meeting house
using the tools of the master -
no longer weaponised against us -
no longer wounding us
or those we love.
And oh, the pou tokomanawa
formed out of heartwood logic:
solid, sturdy argument,
squat, sure angles.
Warriors waiting in crouch
to snare the next dumb idea
that comes out of their mouth.
Each notch knows its own whakapapa.
Even a blind man can feel the relief.
Fingers following etched lines on brow
akin to swirling neural pathways
in full flow. This pou
holds up a house of dreams -
and those matapihi!
A whole generation now see themselves
through your kind eyes,
double visioned, a critical lens,
stereoscopic –
what we see,
and what we could see -
if we were to dream with clarity.
This whare wānanga!
Tāhuhu with the straightest spine,
kōwhaiwhai gleaming on every whale boned rib
bursting to hold us all -
housing a meeting place
where people actually
meet -
with ideas and each other
the past and the future –
their purpose and their path -
a congruency
a fluency,
a coherency
so rare, that we find our feet.
You will forever be
standing on this paepae
with your singing words,
as we reference you endlessly,
ushering in the next wave of knowing.
The Tekoteko who stands above this whare,
his paua eyes glimmer
with petrified waves of the past:
resinous tides, the slow leaking
shell-fished gleam of salt watered skies.
Fifty shades of blue – reminding us of
our ocean pathways to each other.
Whanaunga.
After centuries of migration,
movement, flight,
we find ourselves regathering
at another foundational site -
not Nukuleka this time -
where Lapita pottery shards
speak of common origins among shattered shell –
not Hawaaiki nui, Hawaiki roa, nor pamamao,
not Taputapuātea nor Rangiātea,
but Tāmaki Makaurau.
Tāmaki Herenga Waka,
where we gather again - our vaka –
in peak hour – bound and tied,
upon joint rivers of mokopuna,
bloodlines - bound and tied.
We meet too,
in you Moana,
in your generosity of spirit,
expansive enough
to include us in your visions.
O le mavaega nai le tai e fetaia'i i i'u a gafa.
The farewell at the seashore,
with the promise to meet again in the children.
Here we are.
All of that promise.
We shelter under your roof, Moana,
place of refuge, respite,
for the tired, angry,
disheartened, depressed,
exhausted and the sick.
The sanctuary of a
master carver.
Breathing space.
We will chip away together
at the old block. Tap-tapping.
Making our own marks.
Carving in your tradition.
Sharp as knives.
Old points wielded well
with fresh bite -
adzes and axes grinding,
same battles, new styles
of combat, but:
ka whawhai tonu mātou
ka whawhai tonu tatou.
Whanaunga.
Creating a future
we can bear to be in.
Something worth fighting for.
We gather here, armed,
assembled, weapons in hand.
A taua wielding words and logic,
clauses and references,
and reasoning.
Uhi! Wero!
None of us afraid
of the sound of our own voice.
For you’ve carved
open neural pathways:
illuminated runways
lit with ancient fires
for flying waka
out of the mouths-of-babes -
this nek-generation
speaking revolution,
revising constitution,
ancient intentions
ancestral inventions.
Haramai te toki!
(k)new shapes and form
a continuous essence -
we use your words to
shelter, shield and centre us,
as we carve our piece of the path,
that circles us back
into our future.
Haumī e!
Hui e! Tāiki e!