The poet who's in it for the money

Liam Jacobson and Isla Huia are releasing new collections. One of them is focused on the cash.

Liam Jacobson (Kāi Tahu) and Isla Huia (Te Āti Haunui a-Pāpārangi, Uenuku) are clubbing together to launch their new poetry collections at events across the country. 

They are not only doing a double launch, but mirroring each other in other ways too. The new books are the second collection for both poets, and they each published their debuts in 2023.

Tahu’s collection, New Book, focuses on movements across Aotearoa, and he’s illustrated the book himself. Huia says her collection, Āta, is slower and more deliberate than her debut, Talia.

Here we bring you a poem from each book, one revealing the immense riches poetry brings.

i hate poetry i’m in it for the money

$2.50 samosa from the Grey Lynn dairy
(the one that sells lotto)

free drinks n nibbles at the art opening

i found a hop card on the road with $15 on it

everything’s an onion
at the self-service checkout

i like listening to Lightnin’ Hopkins on the bus

cos he makes being broke feel like devotion
instead of compulsion or failure

i always heard the lyrics as:

a rich man aint got a chance to go to heaven
and a poor man got a heart waiting to go

– Liam Jacobson

if i were a car, i’d probably still want to be a bird

since u been gone
i’ve been nowhere

which is in the manawatū
in the ass end of a suzuki swift /

i’ve been a star unescorted
holding up the sky’s traffic

i think i saw my manaakitanga
in the bin
it shines on through the shit /

i’ve been getting fat thru solar
eating feijoa primitive
at the kitchen sink

taking the piss
taking an autism test /

i’ve been saying
matariki is when the dead
alight their waka and go offgrid &

it helps if you witchhazel
after showering &

it helps if you don’t shower
at all, gives the minerals time

to make themselves at home /

i’ve been in the ice plunge
while an italian woman sings
pōkarekare ana into the well /

i’ve been to the māori gardens
to see myself fertilised and big
like hard data made of muslin

i’ve been saying
show me a seed that isn’t sick
show me where the steroids are /

i’ve been asking for a light
that goes hard techno thru the punga

and a dream that lands before the siren
before i remember i know the lyrics /

i’ve been to the beach voted best
in these whole islands and i’ve
said

toitū te rā e whiti ana
toitū each sandfly i kill

live on /

i’ve been looking at the hometown
i’m not grateful for, except that
it gave me something to outgrow /

i’ve been so inhospitable they
put me in hospital, where i was saying aunty
please tell me a story

the one about the taniwha that set upon
the foreshore and seabed activists
but just the pākehā ones

how they went swimming in
the wāhi tapu with their ikura

how they started digging holes in the garden
trying to find the darkest place

and in the end they got better
and wrote phds
and went to aoraki

which is all any of us can do
really, take it to the mountains /

i’ve been really getting in the spirit
like shaving my pits at the red light
outside eastgate where there’s a man down /

i’ve been walking in cashmere
in the sky there is a wildfire the size
of dreaming in somebody else’s native language

a man slows down his cherry sports car
and i’ve been running, holding my tit
with one hand and

a bag of dog shit
in the other /

i’ve been to methven thinking
new years eve ain’t no tau hou
but those mountains are
coming to get me &

i think rihanna will
live on forever /

i’ve been at the yacht club
saying skux boy come vape wit me /

i’ve been at the supermarket
buying kiwifruit shots /

i’ve been watching the
next generation of us
eating pancetta and
going to idaho /

i’ve been everywhere
so much that when i walk backwards
into the future, i can say

those years were a fog
i’m lifting the tarpaulin now

there was that dealer
whose name was mum

there was me
yogic breathing through
a heart attack

wondering
what did the gas station take me for /

i’ve been paying my respects
which was exactly ninety bucks

i’ve been offering up
pics of me pissing with a drip tube

in the cubicle
i’ve been on the dark grass
asking and asking again

i’ve been holding on
for dear life

i’ve been scared
all the way to dead /

i’ve been walking mystic
by the light of the moon

saying
last refuge, still king
start more, divine purpose

take me there
where the sky fell

go lyrically

i’ve been saying

i’ve buried you again in every place i’ve been
i’ve buried you again in every place i’ve been.

– Isla Huia

New Book and Āta are published by Dead Book Birds. All are welcome at the shared launch events:

Tāmaki: Open, 6pm, October 15

Ōtautahi: Lyttelton Coffee Company, 6pm, October 16

Akaroa: The Common, 4pm, October 17