WHAI: A Q & A with writer Nicole Titihuia Hawkins
Whai is a collection of poetry by Nicole Titihuia Hawkins and published this year (2021) by We Are Babies. We asked Nicole a few questions about her stunning first collection, which has already been reprinted. Get your copy here. Follow Nicole on Instagram here.
Tell us about the journey of Whai: how did the poetry become a collection and what was the process of selecting which poems would be included, and in what order?
I started writing poetry about ten years ago and some of those first poems (not too many!) stuck around and are included in Whai. Over the past 5 years I have been working on a manuscript, but it has taken so many shapes and forms in that time. I have been so fortunate to have a number of writing Aunties to help wānanga the structure of the collection as well as to help cut, cull and cultivate new material. At one point the collection was called 'Heartfake' and the poems were ordered accordingly. The feedback I got from that manuscript was that it was a little too much heartfake to take all in one hit. After the Te Hā ki te Ūpoko National Māori Writer's Hui in 2019, I really got thinking about how artistic expression is celebrated in the mainstream lit world and how it is in many ways so different to how Māori express creativity. Anahera Gildea and Patricia Grace have an incredible kōrero on this featured in Sport 47. Deciding to structure Whai as a Kapa Haka bracket allowed me a creative freedom I don't think I'd otherwise be allowed in the mainstream Lit world. Using this structure allowed me to make space for Haka poems and Poi poems and of course Waiata Tawhito poems, which all depend on their own kawa to ensure they fulfil their purposes or are powerful in their own ways.
Can you tell us about the collection's title, Whai?
The kupu Whai has a variety of different meanings if translated into English but I am reluctant to pin one down and say this is what it means. I'd much prefer people who are keen read the pukapuka and decide for themselves what Whai means to them. For some the connotations of following, chasing, searching, wooing and pursuing will ring true. For others Whai could mean a karakia to cure wounds. Others might think of a stingray. One of my hopes for Whai is that it shares a message that we aren't ever just one thing. We are as expansive as Te Moana Nui a Kiwa and beyond.
The cover image is so striking, bold, textural and beautiful - can you tell us about the image and how you arrived to it?Fairly late in the the process I connected with a whanaunga who shared with me some precious kōrero about my Whaea Tipuna, Titihuia. I was really taken by the image of a rainbow piupiu that she is said to have created. This kōrero was the basis for the poem Rainbow Piupiu. Anyone who knows anything about weaving (of which I know nothing) will explain the complexities of such a project, especially given we had a short time frame. I was so fortunate to speak with many weavers and Kuia who gave me advice on how one could potentially be created. In the end one Nanny told me that Piupiu are a contemporary art form so I shouldn't be afraid to seek out a contemporary solution to honour Titihuia and the Rainbow Piupiu. Rita at Flaxworx had already created an incredibly huge and beautiful art piece out of left overs from Piupiu she had made for Kapa Haka rōpu, and dyed them synthetically which gives the bold, vibrant colours.
What was your publishing journey? So many of your readers have encountered your work via digital platforms or in-person readings, what is it like to now have your words in print form?
I much prefer to be read on the page than to read out loud. I find myself to be painfully awkward at reading my own work and I don't love it. I'd much rather be welcoming others to the mic and refiling cups of tea and plates of cake! In saying that, those opportunities have really helped me feel like a part of a community and I have had so much support from online platforms and through Poetry with Brownies - for which I am very thankful for.
We Are Babies is a new publisher, can you tell us more about how you came together and how the decision to publish came about?
I had met Caro and Jackson at a poetry event at Pātaka for Matariki one year and they had heard me read. I had put up a post on FB one day about how even though I felt like my manuscript might never be published, I felt a real urge to complete it. Caro reached out to me and told me their plan for We Are Babies and that they would love to read my manuscript. I am so grateful for the whole We Are Babies team. Whai has been such a collaborative effort and I feel like I have been able to retain more rangatiratanga over my work than I would have perhaps elsewhere. We Are Babies mega vibe is to give a home to work that might not find one elsewhere and that was certainly true for me. Early iterations of my manuscript had been turned down by all of the big boy publishers. Although that process can feel pretty disheartening I am so glad that it happened, because it gave me time, and people and more knowledge and a team of awesome humans to work on Whai in a way that felt personal and unique.
Your poetry has such a breadth of thought and heart in its ability to express the complexities of being wāhine Māori in a colonised place, could you tell us how you came to write poetry what writing means to you at this particular moment in our history?
I feel like the obvious here for anyone who has experienced racism is that I simply became increasingly pissed off with Karen's and Colin's and white systems. The rage and hurt some experience on the daily is very real. In DMs all over the motu there will be hundreds and thousands of scenarios that could be poems in Haka sections of countless collections. Earlier in my teaching career, writing about my experiences as a wahine Māori helped me to not angry cry in the staffroom toilets at work most days. I wrote into my journey of discovering what it meant for me to be Māori, but certainly not just in colonised spaces, in Māori spaces too. I am Māori and I am also white-passing and have a lot of privilege's in my adult life and some of these poems have for me been a way of processing how to acknowledge those privileges, whilst un/re/learning how to be me and someone my tīpuna and mokopuna can be proud of. I also really just want my students to be able to pick up the book and see, hear and feel themselves in the work.
How does it feel to have your book out there and already needing a reprint?
It feels tino weird. I think I was so focused on getting through each stage of the publishing process whilst teaching full time and that also coincided with lockdown and my first trimester of pregnancy, so I never really had energy to stop and consider what it would be like for Whai to be out in the world doing her thing. I am very lucky that I have a network of lovely, generous people who have supported Whai. Now that the book is out there and being re-printed I honestly really don't know how to feel. It's wild, but also the measure of success for me isn't really in the numbers it's more about adding to a landscape of kōrero that is already so rich and in some ways beginning to be diverse and being able to say maybe Whai will help to tautoko those ideas that we as wāhine Māori already acknowledge and validate.
You are one of the creators of Poetry with Brownies, can you tell us more about that kaupapa?
Poetry with Brownies started out as an after party to a very white-washed National Poetry Day in Wellington. Alice Te Punga Somerville and many others were complaining in a thread online about how male, pale and stale the whole thing was. (It always surprises me when event hosts say: oh we asked the Māori poet we know and they're already busy. There are so many cool BIPOC writers in Wellington who would rock your reading!). Alice and I decided to host an after party where only Brownies could take the mic, but anyone was welcome to come and listen. We've done a few in person events over the years and sometimes weekly online sessions during lockdowns. The kaupapa is always to create a space where it's safe for BIPOC to share poetry to an audience who will meet the work, and feel it. It has been such a source of joy and a real blessing to hear incredible experienced poets read alongside people just as incredible who have never read at an event before. We also make sure decent Chocolate Brownies and snacks are abundantly on offer, because what even is a Brown event without kai? I once read somewhere that if a hui didn't have kai, it should have been an email!
You are a secondary school teacher, too - how does your mahi influence your creative writing?
My mahi influences my writing perhaps more than anything else. Probably because it is an intersect of so many facets of my life. Rangatahi are just the best humans to be around and the work can be so rewarding. It can also be hard work, painful and heavy at times. Luckily, they are also hilarious and forgiving, so when you stuff things up they'll laugh at you and then bounce back and move on without a second thought. My students are the best tuakana to me, especially in regards to Māoritanga. I am so in awe of them and they way in which they move through this world so authentically. I look at some of the wāhine I teach and it blows me away how well they know themselves and how much they understand about the world. They have mastered things now as rangatahi that grown women I know, myself included, are just starting to figure out now. I try to be mindful when writing about my mahi that I am not sharing their stories without them and that they are happy to be along for the ride.
