Here are some examples of my published writing, if you would like to read more of my work please take a look at the links page or visit my current blog.

KEKE KEKE

In the forest of the endless beginning, there is the precise foundation of knowledge from which to build a mortal life in remembrance of the Gods.

There is the smooth brown plain of learning and the fibre of the flax weaving the taniko of every interconnected life, there are the vines creeping and yearning and the whisper denoting increase. There are the long standing trees and the creak, creak, creak of branches in the forest. Except the forest is now a rafter, around which is slung a rope.

Swinging there is the body of every woman who ever had her fathers’ hand, her uncles’ lips, and her brothers’ penis in places on her body where they shouldn’t even have laid their eyes. She is swollen with the bitterness of self-loathing and long hours of neglect.

She has run through the forest of the night to escape him and found him everywhere. As often as she denies his existence, he multiplies and increases. He is like fingers of mangrove, his hands on her body, creeping over wet mud poking up everywhere. Or vines creeping and strangling he is sucking her life away and begging her to forgive him.

She despises herself for being frozen to the earth, he creeps all over her.
She reaches into the night long past and wraps her fingers around a tuft of hair from the topknot of Hine Nui te Po.
It opens her to another level.
There she is no body, no body at all.
She can look down on this pitiful scene and wait like she is waiting for a bus.
Hine Nui te Po holds her there like a kite.
She is floating over time and space.

She remembers when she was the light that shimmered in the first breath of day, when she was the innocence of a new born baby and the utter miracle of birth. ......
......To read the full story please click here.

ANGKOR : FROM DREAM TO MEMORY

All civilisations rise and fall but at Angkor the remains of the great days of the ancient Khmer civilisation slumbered deep in the heart of the jungles of North Western Cambodia like a sleeping beauty waiting to be discovered for centuries.

Abandoned finally by the Khmer after being sacked by the Thai in 1431, Angkor slipped into a dream of history. The jungle breathed in and Angkor breathed out, silence hung from the trees like vines linking back to the beginning of time.

Temple walls retreated into lush green jungle, camouflaged themselves with thick vines and vegetation. Bats flitted in dark sanctums where entry was once barred to all but the high priests, trees wrapped their roots around crumbling buildings, gently prying the stones apart and children splashed and played in the sandstone lined Royal Swimming Pool of the God King.

Angkor is the sacramental creation of the oldest civilisation in SE Asia, carved from this dark forest, inhabited by the Khmer.

Initially an upland people, the Khmer lived in the forest and worshipped the animal deities of nature - the NEAK TA or ancestor spirits who are still worshipped to this day along with KRONG PEALI, the serpent deity, owner of the land and controller of all forms of water. Even today the spirit of Krong Peali will be worshipped before any new building or endeavor is begun, small houses are built as offerings to Krong Peali beside waterfalls and other sources of water. ......
......To read the full story please click here.

PORTRAIT OF AN ARTIST IN ACTION

When does three sacks of dirt constitute a work of art? Or a row of burning cars? Or even a submission written on an old blanket?

Maybe the former Minister of Maori Affairs, Doug Graham, can answer that question since the blanket now hangs framed in the Treaty Settlement Offices in Wellington.

“I keep sending them a bill for it,” says Tame Iti of the Tuhoe Nation. “Ten thousand dollars for the original work of art with interest accruing at twenty percent annually.”
A quick calculation brings us to the realisation that, since it was presented in Opotiki at the 1996 Fiscal Envelope round of consultation Hui, the work has doubled in value.
“A bit like the land,” I venture.
He nods, “Like the land.”

The burning cars?
“That was for the opening of Te Urupatu, an exhibition in Tuhoe. We arranged these cars along the road leading into town so they represented the foot soldiers, we set the cars alight to remind people of the Scorched Earth policy.”
Iti was sent a bill from the district council when they removed the wrecks; the then Mayor Colin Hammond eventually paid the bill for Iti and accepted a painting from the artist in kind.

With rolled up sheets of building paper under his arm and a paintbrush in his ear, Tame Iti believes in art that is as mobile and adaptable as the artist himself. He currently paints on building paper because “It’s easy to move around with.” ......
......To read the full story please click here.