Rangikura

A fiery second collection of poetry from the acclaimed Indigenous New Zealand writer that U.S. Poet Laureate Joy Harjo calls, “One of the most startling and original poets of her generation.” Tayi Tibble returns on the heels of an incendiary debut with a unique new collection. With wit, humor, and a deep understanding of our social and political environment, Tibble interrogates the boundaries between desire and love, and colonization and exploitation. At once a look back at coming-of-age and a painful elegy to the traumas faced by her Maori community, Rangikura’s intimacy will move readers to laughter and tears. These poems draw on their ancestral roots to imagine the end of the world and a new day. They are both nostalgic for, and exhausted by, the pursuit of an endless summer. A profoundly original emotional vulnerability threads from each plain-spoken line. (“They saw things in me I wanted to see in myself / that’s why I let them see me that’s why I let them see me / on certain nights in certain lights when the planets / lined up like a string of pearls in the sky and the moon / was the correct hue.”) An electric, musical journey, Rangikura deftly explores popular culture, lockdowns, politics, toxic masculinity, girlhood, beauty, and loss. Through a stunning examination of her own pain and with the generational wisdom of her ancestors, this incandescent collection lays bare the darkness and hardship lurking underneath life’s ordinary surfaces.