So when we were talking about putting this together all the way back in 2019, at that point it was us and Ruby Solly and Sinead Overbye. It was going to be the follow up to Te Rito o te Harakeke (a collection we all put together with shocking pace in response to the LAND BACK movement at Ihumaatao) and be a small collection of maybe ten pieces by three or four writers. The idea grew a little and changed a lot in some ways. In short, life happened and we all got supremely busy. 

But sometime early last year we (Michelle and Essa) got to talking about the idea of the journal again, and making it an actual thing, and we were like where should we start? And it seemed obvious. With our valued dead, with Keri Hulme who had so recently passed. This decision gave us the steam we needed to get things rolling. 

This work sits so closely to Keri and so our kaupapa draws from this pou rangatira and beyond her, the Women’s Liberation Movement in Aotearoa that, not only supported queer writing and art through the magazine Spiral but also, published the bone people in the way Keri wanted through Spiral Collective. It feels only natural that we should honour the community that fostered the roots and environment for a Kahikatea to grow. It also feels natural to embrace the notion of the koru, ever turning, a symbol of new growth, a sacred mark of balance. Tihei Mauri Ora!

On the back of the pandemic and the loss of Keri, we decided we didn’t have the energy to go through and pick and reject open submissions (this may yet change) but for this issue we wanted to start with whaanau essentially. And a big part of who we picked came from our prior relationships,, Michelle’s connection with Cassandra and Johanna through IIML, our connection with Hana, Ruby and Sinead through Te Rito o te Harakeke, there are lines of whakapapa that draw us together, as well as lines of interpersonal relationship and connection. And we all knew that there would be some fire responses to Keri Hulme’s work because, if we’re being real, Maaori literature is living in the time of Hulme, her writing permeates all of our works stylistically, thematically, spiritually. 

What we received was a brilliant transgressive essay from Sam Te Kani, the sprawling, painful searching of Johanna Knox’s memoir work, the experimental and imaginative power of Cassandra’s poems, the direct conversation with bones embodied in different ways in both Jessica Hinerangi and Isla Huia’s poems, the dense muddy imagery of J. Wiremu Kane’s ‘Ia’, Ruby’s spiralling multi-part poem that brings us through the sand, Sinead’s cute hang outs with Keri in verse, Tāwhanga’s exploration of the self in his majestic piece ‘my body is like a shell’, the tight but with powerful ‘Trust’ from Whina Pomana, Hana Pera Aoake moving us forward step by step in their piece, Kahu Kutia’s heartbreaking young queer memories encapsulated in two short poems that draw on Hulme’s own lines, the lost but still going, the falling apart but still trying of Ngaio Simmon’s brilliantly titled ‘LGBTaniwha’, the clicking and clacking of Michelle’s dugout, the embarrassing crush of Essa’s gay poems, the playful power of Robert Sullivan’s ‘Pāua Canticle’ and the touching and deeply personal epistolary of Anne-Marie Te Whiu’s closing piece. 

So, this is the thing. The “first” journal of its kind but not a journal without whakapapa, without publications like Contemporary Maori Writing (1970), Puna Wai Kōrero, Te Whē, Tupuranga, Ora Nui, Spiral 7, Utu A Matimati, this would not exist in this shape or this form. 

And it is for you Keri Hulme.

And for all takataapui past present and future <3 

M & E