The Friday Poem: ‘Kuramārōtini’ by Briar Wood.
AUCKLAND, NEW ZEALAND – JANUARY 30: Maori Warriors arrive on Waka during the Tamaki Herenga Waka Festival on January 30, 2016 in Auckland, New Zealand. The inaugural festival aims to celebrate Auckland’s Maori history, heritage and culture of the city. (Photo by Hannah Peters/Getty Images)
New verse by Northland writer Briar Wood.
Kuramārōtini
So the story goes
that trickster Kupe
cheated his friend
into diving overboard
to free the lines
then paddled rapidly away.
Some hoa.
Best to know that
legendary navigators take huge risks
and do not make the safest companions.
Ākuanei—
she asked herself—
what do I want—
home in Hawaiki
or the travelling years?
What does he want—
the waka my father gifted?
Matahourua and me?
Or maybe unhappiness
with the man she’d married
drove her to the coast.
It’s possible—
she was curious and Hoturapa wasn’t
the kind of man who liked a journey
so she chose Kupe.
Yet even an inveterate traveller
might become weary in a waka
on the open sea,
looking out for landfall.
Travelling direct to her destination—
as the future loomed towards her
she named that radiant land
on the horizon
Aotearoa.
From Rāwāhi (Anahera Press, $25), the debut collection of verse by Briar Wood, due to be published in October.
The Spinoff Review of Books is brought to you by Unity Books.
Briar Wood
Briar Wood grew up in South Auckland. Until 2012, she lived and worked as a lecturer in Britain, where she published poetry, fiction and essays. Returning to Northland places, where her Te Hikutū ki Hokianga, Ngāpuhi Nui whakapaka resonates with ecological concerns, she now combines travel, occasional lecturing and a focus on writing. Briar was born in Taumarunui in 1958.
