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aaknopf · 23 days

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A poem of girlhood and after by Indigenous New Zealander Tayi Tibble, whose second collection, Rangikura, comes out in America today. In the dictionary of Māori language, hōmiromiro is defined as “a white-breasted North Island tomtit…a little black-and-white bird with a large head and short tail.” It is often used to refer to someone with a tomtit’s keen vision—that is, a sharp eye for detail.

Hōmiromiro

I used to dream about a two-headed goldfish. I took it for an omen. I smashed a milk bottle open

on a boiling road and watched a three-legged dog lick it up and in the process I became not myself but a single shard of glass and thought finally

I had starved myself skinny enough to slip into the splits of the universe but once I did I realised that the universe was no place for a young thing to be and there is always a lot more starving to be had.

When I was a girl I thought

I was Daisy Buchanan. I read on the train. I made voluminous eyes.

Once I walked in front of a bus and it exploded into a million monarch butterflies then I was ecstatic!

As a girl, I could only fathom

time as rose petals falling down my oesophagus. It tickled and it frightened me. I ran around choking for attention.

I had projections of myself at 100 my neck weathered and adorned like the boards of a home being eaten by the earth.

When I was a girl I would lie

on the side of that road in the last lick of sun and wait for the rabbits to come saluting the sky of orange dust

and then I would shoot them into outer space.

For many years I watched them bouncing on the moon. But then I stopped caring and so I stopped looking.

More on this book and author:

Learn more about Rangikura by Tayi Tibble.

Browse other books by Tayi Tibble and follow her on Instagram @paniaofthekeef.

Hear Tayi Tibble and Harryette Mullen read from their new poetry collections at Beyond Baroque in Los Angeles, CA on April 10 at 8:00 PM. Tayi Tibble will be joined by Sasha LaPointe in Washington for a series of readings and conversations at Elliot Bay Book Company in Seattle on April 13 at 7:00 PM, at King's Books in Tacoma on April 14 at 1:00 PM, at Bainbridge Island Museum of Art in Bainbridge on April 15 at 7:00 PM, and at Third Place Books in Seattle, Lake Forest Park, on April 16 at 7:00 PM. Tayi and Sasha will also be at Broadway Books in Portland, OR, on April 17 at 6:00 PM. Tayi will be at the LA Times Book Festival signing books at the ALTA booth (Booth 111) on April 20 at 11:00 AM.

Visit our Tumblr to peruse poems, audio recordings, and broadsides in the Knopf poem-a-day series.

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#TibbleAudio #poetry #knopf #poem-a-day #knopf poetry #national poetry month #poetry month #knopfpoetry #poem #tayi tibble #rangikura #homirmiro

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aaknopf · 1 year

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On an early spring night in Manhattan last year, the Texan-born comedian, poet, and actor Catherine Cohen attended a party where the Māori poet Tayi Tibble was in attendance, visiting all the way from New Zealand. After hearing Tayi read a piece from her book Poūkahangatus, Catherine suggested she come share her work at Club Cumming downtown, where Cat was hosting a weekly, eclectic “Cabernet Caberet.” Though they’d only just met, these two poets from opposite sides of the globe had been in dialogue on the page all along.

wtn boys by Tayi Tibble

soft wellington boys in six hundred dollar leather want to send me their poetry & tie me to their beds so I tell them I like their fathers instead & listen to their aluminium skulls crack like coke cans and thunder.

road trip poem #17 by Catherine Cohen

I’m jealous of everyone and wouldn’t change a thing every time we have sex I tell you it’s one for the record books and you say something can’t be special if everything is. boys love drumming on stuff boys love taking their shirt off with one hand oh my god experience whatever pleasure you can in this life for example I’m at mcdonald’s right now

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