I first encountered Alice Te Punga Somerville in Tātai Whetū: Seven Māori Women Poets in Translation, which I read from cover to cover in the Women’s Bookshop one afternoon. It was her poem Rākau which stayed with me:
We know that carvers coax something or someone Who’s already there in the wood They remove small pieces of timber, one by one, until it’s ready.
We both know a language is waiting inside my tongue.
Alice is a widely published scholar, and her debut poetry collection, , travels across the
