A poetic response to the Mana Wāhine workshop run by Savannah Kerekere and Michael-Lydia Winiana for Dunedin Fringe Festival 2024.
On Sunday afternoon space parts chuckling
because according to Tamatea ā- āio we should be
at home resting but it’s Girls Out Late here
holding a hui between textures
between ~ between ~ between
we search and are given blank canvases
cloth we can wipe our findings on and
never come clean we are happy to
make our mark to add to the ~
~ waves of whakapapa that
have always battered against us
see ~ sawing ~ caress ~ crashing ~ some
violent times ~ loving ~ tragi ~ tangi ~ rom ~ com times
we hold solid still in the brace of that tide over ~
~ and ~ over met with the foam and salt
the rubbing rock and sweeping surf ~
beaches cascade off our backs
but we never disappear there is ~
always more so we scoop our sands up to
sprinkle over our canvas and carve ~
scores of sparkling stories with
fingers made of sea glass we ~
~ giggle paint swirls and careful patterns
bravely sweeping into something new ~
we see trash and we make toi
we see truths and recite loudly
share them till they’re heard ~
~ clay wahine sneezing under a hard moon
you couldn’t fill a million beaches
with the sands we hold ~
you couldn’t coat a million canvases
with the stories we know ~ ~ ~
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Featured image courtesy of Kerekere Studios.
