We inhabit a world
All around us
All time
Everything changing
Renewing
Things
Transforming
Transmuting
To one evolving form
Giving up essence
Literature loves translations fed by every exuberance
Every heave
Every age
Translations,
Poetry: words without borders
It is time to confront ownership of past good
Remembering darker episodes
Embrace and own that history
We are a nation
Culturally
Linguistically
Superdiverse
Ethnicities
Languages
Confronted with realities of an incongruent world?
The poem: Create dangerously.

Expanding Horizons was the theme to Te Tai Tokerau’s 2019 writer’s festival, NorthWrite.
I attended a session led by poet Piet Nieuwland called βAdventures in transmutation: A conversation about poetryβ.
We were Maori, European, Pasifika, Australian, Italian, Dutch and Chinese.
The questions proposed were: where are we heading in terms of language, and as New Zealand writers, what is our ethical responsibility in this bicultural country?
We were divided in to small groups and asked to write a poem on the topic. Our group passed the notes around and blanked out words. Once we came to a final version, I then edited this again at home by blanking out further words and playing around with line breaks, and this poem is the result.
I think it speaks aptly to answer the questions we asked π
Thanks to Stuart Rankin for the use of your pic.