10 Poems That Capture The Spirit of New Zealand

Let’s start off here, with a poem from one of New Zealand‘s all-time great poets, James K. Baxter. This poem is titled New Zealand and weaves us a picture of a New Zealand from an older time. A New Zealand that has just been discovered, perhaps. A wild place that is shrouded in beautiful mystery. Here is the opening stanza.
These unshaped islands, on the sawyer’s bench,
Wait for the chisel of the mind,
Green canyons to the south, immense and passive,
Penetrated rarely, seeded only
By the deer-culler’s shot, or else in the north
Tribes of the shark and the octopus,
Mangroves, black hair on a boxer’s hand.

I am orchids / fruit trees / I can bear more than you think / I am a river stone / and I choose a ring made of pounamu / to remind me
This short poem is specifically about a New Zealand icon, and a lovely mineral – pounamu. This stone is otherwise known as greenstone and is of great importance to the Maori culture. A poem about pounamu? Well, it doesn’t get a lot more Kiwi than that.

Airini Beautrais’s poem really paints a picture not just of New Zealand as a geographical place, but as a nation with its own unique identity.
The years move on, and time expands
the distance, but the tale persists:
they formed a circle, holding hands,
around this smallest of small lands.
The poem was written after Whanganui iwi occupied Pākaitore/Moutoa Gardens for 79 days. The occupation sought to restore mana over the site, a former pā and trading place, and to highlight treaty claims and tino rangatiratanga. When police came to break the gathering up, a group of supporters of the protest organised an action, holding hands around the park to obstruct police entry.

sand tickles through your hands, the egg timer’s trickle of
instant infiltrating towels, toes, feet, sheets, carpet, mat,
crotches, watches, bikinis and togs. Sand cannot build
a house for the Lord, thank heavens, or castles, but it can
stand for oases, deserts, burnt-out campsites, caravans.
Sand grows shellfish and succulents such as aloe that heal.
Focused on Briar Wood’s return to Northland places where her Te Hikutū ki Hokianga, Ngāpuhi Nui whakapapa resonates with ecological concerns, this poem perfectly captures the rugged beauty of the coast.

There are few things that unite people and cultures like food. Kemp views traditional food sources through various lenses, including science, history, farming, hunting, preparation and eating, then weaves elements of each viewpoint together to build for the reader a minimalist yet mystical picture. Here is an excerpt from his short poem about the much-loved kumera – or sweet potato.
Rekamaroa,
a bed of hot river stones,
under the earthen blanket,
steam rises, the buttery smell of pork belly.
Houhere,
creamy fingers to open mouth,
mīere, mīere, oh mīere
upon a honeyed tongue, spirited tīpuna sing.

“Mana” is an Oceanic word found in 29 living languages.
when you flow through my body / I know / I am caught in the current of a river / larger than the length of my own lifetime
it bends where we have all been before / same rapids / other waters / our veins / my blood
I know / I am in the flow / of something greater than my own self
In her poem, Karlo Mila recognises and reflects on how words indigenous to the region are often not readily translatable in English. As a Pacific nation, reading this poem gives the reader a look into the Maori culture and the words in it that aren’t easily translatable to English. It’s an interesting juxtaposition between the two cultures that most recognisably make up New Zealand’s identity.

Albert Wendt is considered internationally as one of New Zealand’s and the Pacific’s major novelists and poets. His work has been translated into many languages and published and taught around the world.
Young fit acclimatised he now lived
comfortably with the cold weather and being away from home
But every morning when he walked in Taranaki’s compass to breakfast
the mountain signalled not all was well with the path
This poem is a fine story of a young man moving from Samoa to Taranaki and dealing with the change in climate. As he gets older he adapts, but one sort of cold is replaced with another when he learns about the taking of land in New Zealand’s turbulent past.

Talking about her poem, Hitch, Angela Trolove says: “‘Hitch’ was my experience on a road trip from Barcelona to Dijon three years ago. I was offered a lift with a couple who I didn’t realise had just broken up, but still had to get their vehicle home to Berlin. I had not even a thin itinerary; at this stage I’d given myself only the brief to encounter many places in Europe and to do so without air travel. The arbitrariness of my direction unnerved me.
“One afternoon worn out with this lack of agenda, out of the blue a huge sense of peace came over me, a sense of familiarity with my surroundings. This sense of relief is what I expect the poem to convey, the sense that the world around me has been and always will be made of . . .”
Grass, stones, and wood,
and the greatest of these is grass.
I am a perceiver and you are a perceiver and from there we are believers in who knows what. Enchanted, pleased to meet with you.
This poem feels a lot like the perfect road trip in New Zealand should make you feel. It is infused with a sense of adventure and the idea of giving yourself up to the universe and the future.

‘Why She Quit Queen at Night’ is from Smeaton’s first book, Tales of the Waihorotiu. It tells of the stream running beneath Auckland’s main street, Queen Street. It was bricked up and shut away from the daylight in the 19th century and Smeaton explores the idea of a secret world beyond the one we know through this medium.
she lay dazed on the concrete next to lee wit her ear to the
pavement knowin she could hear the water of the waihorotiu
flowin to swellin under the sewer below in a direction only
she could calculate wit her inbuilt compass her north star
Carin Smeaton’s poetry and prose has also been published in Brief, Cordite Poetry Review, Atlanta Review, Turbine | Kapohau, The Spinoff, NZ Poetry Shelf, Manifesto Aotearoa, and Phantom Billstickers Cafe Reader.