Live Encounters Poetry & Writing August 2025
Departure snows, poems by Trevor M Landers.
Departure Snows
Vinod mistakes lenticular cloud for rain,
‘snow tonight’ I proffer laconically, answering an unarticulated question
‘Make sure Radhna is wrapped up warm’, skipping to 34.
This morning, the glacial plates of home lost their moorings,
adrift in a sea of connubial possibilities, boat unroped from a wharf
the mounga cream-iced fathoms deep, an auspicious farewell, Koro.
Cristina’s fire roars with primal satisfaction,
each incinerated log whistling a ecstatic sing of immolation.
At Vintage Industries, bagel, toastie, smoothie disappear to sounds of laughter,
picaresque takes of feral cattle in the Kaupokonui Sandhills,
the necessity of someone else’s rifle, Tony and Lesley guffawing,
a coterie of neighbours, including Ngāti Tu, unimpressed by regular i
incursions, cattle wilded far beyond tameable animal husbandry norms
yet owner gleefully shooting, then butchering,
friable chevrons of peripatetic neglect.
Still the mounga, luminous and wearing another chimeric face,
the same comforting constancy of Kāhui Maunga providence.
The ancient people of Mimi Maunganui and the old kainga of Karakatonga,
High in the Waiwhakaiho Valley, powdered deep like the ancient refuges
like Te Ana Tahatiti, the sacred urupā, the wellspring of Hangatahua awa,
near Ahukawakawa swamp, cascading like a promise guaranteed
over Te Rere a Tahurangi with a pirouette of time.[1] It alone shall remain.
The chill wind exalting hearts, nirvana for skiers at Manganui,
fresh frosting for slalom and moguls,
near perfect denouément, a last snatched kiss
from the metamorphosis of Pukehaupapa.
Thence Pukeonaki, renamed by tūpuna Ruataranaki,
Maruwhakatare, and Tahurangi, guided by Te Taipairu o Rauhotu
to the present spot. Here he stands magisterially,
this exultant whakatauki in my head:
Tū kē Tongariro
Motu kē a Taranaki
He riri kia Pihanga
Waiho i muri nei
Te Uri ko au ee![2]
[1] Also known as Bells’s Falls
[2] My translation: Tongariro is standing/Taranaki is an island, after a fight with Pihanga,
leave it behind, his descendents are him (Taranaki)!
Uprooting (Littoral: Kaupokonui Beach)
The anguished heart lends itself paradoxically
to uprooting, after rain, the nodes and nodules
freed from the matted imbroglio of loamy soils
Tug on me and it all comes out too easily:
ryegrass, fescue, oioi, kowhangatara, toetoe upoku-tangata
botanical specimens seem to leap out
decay in speckled brown bundled bunches
relinquishments at the slightest touch of saltine squall
this precarious fragility is a leitmotif,
so too equiponderations
we tread wearily within our constraints
serendipity, fortune and dedication play a part
longevity, imparts temperance and patience
that which heals slowly is luxated, expunged,
offered as atonement to the ingurgitive sands
or the profligate gifts of a flurry of mercurial breezes
which heals so slowly it may as well be uprooted,
salvaged as humus and mulch,
haven for huhu beetles in driftwood
wassail for opportunistic pūwereriki,
morsels for saprophytic sand scarabs
social housing for swarming māwhitiwhiti
a lone pepeke kaukiore blown inland,
propitiously: a puddle of phloem
among these casual deracinations,
our own uprootings after rain.
the promise of unwithered, verdant vigours
proliferations after the storm.
* Kowhangatara is more commonly known as Spinifex. Oioi, is jointed wire rush,
most often found around marshes and swamps, or in sand dune hollows around
the coast. Pūwereriki is a generic term for the family of mites. Māwhitiwhiti is the
common New Zealand grasshopper. Te pepeke kaukiore is the common backswimmer.
Ornamental Gorse No.2 Wharehuia
The Nature of Things: Poems from the New Zealand Landscape, Craig Potton Publishing, Nelson, (2005),p.34.
[2] Te Taru Kōwhai Ae, he tāku whakapaipai, ka hoatu ki a koe/ Ko tēnei taru kino rawa atu. He mokemoke me te pata & ka marara whãnui ki roto i ngā oneone pai/Heoi anō, hei whakapaipai i te āhua ataahua/kua kore he riri i te wā e rere ana/Ko ngā hoari koi, kanapa, ka werohia ngā papā puihi me te uma o Papatūānuku/Ko te kowhai, ka paopao pea i nga hītori kua warewarehia o te mahi, te whakawhiu, me muru raupatu/ehara ēnēi karauna tataramoa i te whakapaipai/mō ngā tangata whenua pouri, engari he para me te koha. Ki te whakahihi nui me te kore whakaaro o mua/ehara i te whakaroa, engari he tohu puta noa mo te he/Ko te raupatu kōwhai, tetahi atu tohu o te ‘kaore i kitea’, te mutunga: te pokanoa ki te whenua o Maruwharanui/Ko te kaupapa o ngā hītori ohooho, he ataahua te āhua, ka huri te kōwhai ki te koikoi/Ko te pai ka taea te kōrero; ka herea e ia ngā mata pari kua horo; He aha ēnei puke e horo ana ka hoki anō tātou ki te puna.
© Tervor M Landers
Trevor M Landers is a graduate of the renown Masters of Creative Writing at Auckland University of Technology, where he was fortunate to be tutored by Siobhan Harvey, Mike Johnson and James George. He is widely published in his native New Zealand and in 2024 worked on a major sub-regional anthology (424 pages) in his home province of Taranaki with Dr Vaughan Rapatahana and Ngauru Rawiri entitled Ngā Purehu Kapahou (The spinning turbine blades) (2024). A larger companion volume with renown Te reo Māori kairangi reo Tipene Hoskins will be released early in 2026. It is called Ngā Tāngata Tūturu: (the truly impressive people): a paean to the people and places of the rohe of Ngāti Maruwharanui (forthcoming 2026, 600+ pages). He currently lives and works in Brussels, Belgium.