Birdspeak

In Arihia Latham’s debut collection of poems, birdcall resounds through poetry that is both personal and political, as fierce as it is tender. Arihia (Kai Tahu, Kati Mamoe, Waitaha) is a writer, rongoa practitioner and cultural advisor. Her work has been widely published and anthologised. “A call to and from the wild. It is a call for peace and a call to fight. Latham writes from the mud and moonlight; the caves, craters, and lakes of te taiao. Like the digging bird she uses her pen to claw memories out of the earth—the mundane, the joyful, the worried, the violent, the aching memories—before rinsing them in the awa and holding them up, to make us wonder whose they are; hers or ours.” —Becky Manawatu