MĀORI MAID DIFFICULT

Māori Maid Difficult is my debut poetry chapbook, published by Tram Editions in January 2024. This collection twines together themes of takatāpui (queer) urban Pasifika identity, Indigenous sovereignty and language, familial obligations, and jester-like wit for the chronically online.

This poetic work will appeal to those with interests in Indigenous rights and languages, migration, and the ways we can push against expectations of gender and family roles.

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For press, event, or distribution requests, please email nikora@duck.com

Praise for Māori Maid Difficult

"This collection moves across languages, across seas, across time, across tones. You might start off in a dictionary app but end up in the soil of Papatūānuku. This pukapuka has incredible range, I think because us difficult-to-pin-down Māori have incredible range. When you open this book be prepared for a proper haerenga."
   –essa may ranapiri, author of ransack and ECHIDNA; winner of the Keri Hulme Award

"He karanga: poems that call out to those who understand and have been yearning to hear a voice meant for them. He wero: poems that call out those who get in the way. Ancestors, family, language and land are everywhere – invoked, described, present, pulsing, overlapping - in this stunning collection that speaks from, about, to, and towards Aotearoa. In so many ways Māori Maid Difficult is a first yet it brings to mind generations of Māori poets who have gone before. Smart, sharp, funny, brittle, supple. Giving and refusing. Irreverent and sensitive. Vulnerable and mysterious. Aroha and hahaha and hā. All at the same time. All in the best ways."
   –Alice Te Punga Somerville, author of Always Italicise: How to Write While Colonised; winner of the Mary and Peter Biggs Award for Poetry