Whaea Blue

Polly and Wiki and all the other kuia ride on the roof of Kerry's Toyota Corona with its navy blistered bonnet . . . They do this for all the moko; they are everywhere and roam inside us as they keep weaving the net and it's no small thing that only a few slip through. Time and whakapapa slowly unravel as Talia Marshall weaves her way across Aotearoa in a roster of decaying European cars. Along the way she will meet her father, pick up a ghost, transform into a wharenui, and make cocktail hour with Ans Westra. Men will come ? Roman, Ben, Isaac ? and some go. Others linger. And it is these men ? her father, Paul, and grandfathers Mugwi Macdonald and Jim; her tipuna Nicola Sciascia, tohunga Kipa Hemi Whiro, Kupe himself ? who she observes as she moves backwards into the future. With her ancestor Tutepourangi she relives Te Rauparaha's bloody legacy, and attempts and fails to write her great historical novel. But it is her wahine, past and present, who carry her, even as the ground behind her smoulders.

Tempestuous and haunting, Whaea Blue is a tribute to collective memory, the elasticity of self, and the women we travel through. It is a karanga to and from the abyss. It is a journey to peace. 'This is a wild road trip, frightening and funny. You can taste all the food, see Talia Marshall (Ngati Kuia, Rangitane o Wairau, Ngati Rarua, Ngati Takihiku) is a Dunedin-based writer. She has had work published in Poetry magazine, Landfall, Sport, North & South, Mana, Canvas, The Spinoff, Newsroom, Pantograph Punch and with City Gallery. In 2020 she was the inaugural Emerging Maori Writer in Residence at the IIML at Te Herenga Waka?Victoria University of Wellington, and in 2021 she won the Newsroom Surrey Hotel Writers Residency.