Pepeha Portal
shining like light on water
a path for the next
generation
From ‘Intonation’
Pepeha Portal is the keenly anticipated debut poetry collection from New Zealand Arts Laureate Ariana Tikao. Rooted in Kāi Tahu identity, the collection chronicles a homecoming and offers a moving account of memory, place and connection.
Born and raised in Ōtautahi Christchurch, Tikao left the city after the devastating earthquakes of 2010 and 2011. In 2023 she was awarded the Ursula Bethell Residency at the University of Canterbury and returned to live in a place that was both deeply familiar and astonishingly new. Written largely during this period, Pepeha Portal is shaped by stories embedded in the landscape – many long erased by colonialism and only recently exposed by cultural, as much as geological, shifts.
Responding to suburban landscapes and tīpuna places, personal memory and ancestral voice, Pepeha Portal considers how language, whakapapa and whenua act as portals to belonging.
‘There’s breathtaking scope and emotional depth in this collection, so much whakapapa wisdom, and finely hued poetry. He taoka toikupu.’
– Robert Sullivan, New Zealand Poet Laureate
‘Tikao sees the world from a clear and compelling Māori perspective. Pepeha Portal is one of the most polished and forthright poetry collections I have seen for years.’
—Nicholas Reid, NZ Listener
‘The poetry offers an experience that nourishes the air I breathe, the physical ground I stand upon. Think place. Think belonging. Think aroha. Think wisdom. Think family. Think whakapapa. Think the shaping force of memory and imagination. Think rivers, hills, sea and sky. Think portals into history and the future.’
—Paula Green, NZ Poetry Shelf: Read the review and listen to Ariana Tikao read from Pepeha Portal
‘I love how places can hold so many different layers of story and human experience – that’s why I call them portals … The book is grounded in our local Māori place names and the stories attached to those places … I see it as an invitation to experience places in a new way, and to learn some of those stories through emotion.’
—Ariana Tikao speaks to Morrin Rout on Bookenz: Listen
Ariana Tikao
Ariana Tikao is a Kāi Tahu writer, musician and New Zealand Arts Laureate. Her work spans poetry, music and interdisciplinary performance, and has been published widely in Aotearoa. Her book Mokorua: My Story of Moko Kauae was published in 2022 (AUP). Pepeha Portal is her debut poetry collection.
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