Poetry
A collection of Poetry, documented throughout my research journey. A folding of present past...and becoming
Truth-telling
The truth-telling tyrants
Tell their truth
To them
Their theories
Their timeless tales
Their theologies
Their technology
Their tragedies
Their triumphs
Their trustworthy treaties
Their travelled trails
Their topologies
Their Trump
Tailoring truth
To them
Their truths tire
Their trust,
taken
Trepidation
To them
Time teaches truth
To them
Tales teach theory
To them
triumph takes tragedy
To them
the terrain teaches typologies
To them
Trails traverse thought
To them
Topography talks to Technology
To them
the tyrant takes.
Feel my reach
Daughter, hold my hand, be still, listen to me.
These hands of mine, have much to say.
They will tell you of worlds before
and of your ancestors’ past…
each wrinkle, each line,
a collective spirit etched in body and mind.
Oh, the stories that these hands can tell…
These hands are not mine alone,
I have shared my hands in sustaining life,
many years of sewing, healing, gifting, giving
and in pushing strong fists forward…
fighting for rights to be heard.
So, for you in this place, in Aotearoa belong,
to have your voice known.
Oh, the stories that these hands can tell…
Take my hand granddaughter,
Let me lead you along,
These hands of yours are young and your stories, yet to come.
Your hands are mine, and mine are yours,
Use your hands wisely in the choices you make,
Push strong fists forward,
So, generations to come will feel your reach
and know of your wisdom, of worlds before
and of your ancestors’ past.
Oh, the stories that these hands will tell…
Jacoba Matapo (2018)
To decolonise or indigenise?
To decolonise
To confront subjectivity
Subjectivity of governmentality
Constituted in global politics,
that privilege and divide
To decolonise
To de-centre self from colonising regimes,
Regimes of knowledge
that never fully escape the colonisers gaze
Or / And
Indigenize subjectivity,
the power of place, humanity and being
a shared ontology with
mountains, seas, land and cosmos
Indigenising thinking,
resistance to the discourse of discovery
and the hierarchy of human knowledge capacities;
another itulagi.
Indigenising agency,
a co-existence with time
that weaves a folding into futures past.
Indigenizing as movement,
embodied in space and expression.
Can our pasts be unstrung – from binds that constrain?
The residue remains even when unstrung,
the ties reform and evolve
The tensions shift and alter
An emerging body of collective spirit -
reforms and evolves
Affirming place, spirit, alofa, life –
The hā of our ancestors carry on.
