Rise in silent kettles, soft & round. Whispering within wai, stirring steam underneath pōhutukawa sky, where the boil-up billowing the slow rhythms of watercresslaces stories of tūpuna. Now fractured bysmog and lights, urban-gentry marshmallowhands reach for sweetness—froth-churneddreams sold with roasted syrup topping coffeecup lids of ivory tower minds. Dough buoys likethem rose by…
I trade in burner emails to try and fleece the advertisersthe lint trap comes off the dryer and microplastics fly unhingedthey told me the glitter was biodegradableanything is ephemeral if you wait long enoughI’m actually pretty busy worrying if I’m hot, anywaysat least some things are enduringbut each year the fucks slough off like skin…
I can live where a girl I was a sparrowmake room!appear but not for much longer, I think It was all ‘coloured glass, crushed into the skin / on her legs / and on the concrete before thatas she fell asleep / shining’ Orwas it ‘better to see a webthe world as it is and to tryshow upto arrive’? That…
I was working in my aunt’s wool shop for a season when a woman came in wanting unusual yarn for a wall hanging. Nothing I could show her tickled her fancy. Then I remembered my sister’s first wool. She had been learning to spin and several hanks of her beginner efforts were kicking around— crazy knots looping back onto themselves, then…
His first gift for them both a pair of bicycles. She watches while he pushes up the street: posture, forearms. A beatto recognise each other’s bright and golden eye, then they’re pedallingand off. Cycle clips at his achilles, her skirts above her knees. The city is a macadam grid. The city is a weft of…
Phone sex! Are you fucking kidding?How would we get off on sound?I’m not free to splurt your biddingAll my family are aroundGod knows where these words are headingEarth is small and mean and round I’m not free to splurt your biddingAll my family are aroundNow an old in-joke is spreadingNow another drink is downedGod knows…
The Book of Guilt by Catherine Chidgey. THWUP (2025). RRP: $38. PB, 400pp. ISBN: 9781776922246. Reviewed by Erica Stretton. Catherine Chidgey’s ninth novel, The Book of Guilt, was released in May and has already received strong reviews both in Aotearoa and abroad. Adding to the discourse around one of our most acclaimed authors—twice winner of…
Slowing the Sun by Nadine Hura. Bridget Williams Books (2025). RRP: $40. PB, 240 pp. ISBN: 978199130169. Reviewed by Māia Te Whetū. Nadine Hura’s Slowing the Sun is the kind of book you have to put down for a few days once you realise you’re nearing its end, when the pinch of pages between the…
Overseas Experience by Nicola Andrews. Āporo Press (2025). RRP: $30. PB, 92 pp. ISBN: 9780473745677. Reviewed by Melissa Oliver. It can sometimes be hard, when a work of art holds a light up to your deep insecurities, to look at it objectively. But in Overseas Experience, Nicola Andrews takes your hand and doesn’t let go…
Oceans Between Us: Pacific Peoples and Racism in Aotearoa edited by Sereana Naepi. AUP (2025). RRP: $40. PB, 272pp. ISBN 9781776711253. Reviewed by Tracey Sharp. We know the statistics. Pacific peoples in Aotearoa consistently rank lower than non-Pacific populations across nearly every measure—health, wealth, home ownership, longevity, educational attainment, and wellbeing—and higher in incarceration rates.…