Debut collection full of brilliant moments

NIGHT SWIMMING<br><b>Kiri Piahana-Wong</b><br><i>Anahera Press</i>
NIGHT SWIMMING<br><b>Kiri Piahana-Wong</b><br><i>Anahera Press</i>
Kiri Piahana-Wong is a young woman whose poem Of books and bookcases appeared in the excellent collection Dear Heart: 150 New Zealand Love Poems (Godwit, 2012), edited by Paula Green.

Her debut collection of poems is called night swimming.

All these poems are easy to digest. Piahana-Wong avoids being sentimental and cynical.

Seasons, relationships and the sea mean a lot to this new young talent.

Matariki concludes:

I walk as if my passing matters
I walk as a witness
I let my tears fall
spiral down my arms
fall from the ends of my fingers
Anoint the earth with the salt of the sky
And I think of the words of my tupuna -
Tukua mai he kapu ng?
oneone ki a au hai tangi
Send me a handful of earth
that I may weep over it

night swimming is full of brilliant moments that give a new sense of understanding.

A reader will find the gold very easily in this little collection in which she gives voice to her Maori, Chinese and English ancestry.

- Hamesh Wyatt lives in Bluff. He reads and writes poetry. 

 

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