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	Mohrbooks Literary Agency Maren Wiederhold
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Poetry

METTLE

Anne-Marie, Te Whiu

The poetic visions of Mettle echo through past and present lives memories are recorded and futures imagined. Te Whiu draws on stories from her childhood and a lifetime of listening and learning about her whakapapa (M?ori lineage).

This exceptional collection resounds with strength a mettle that ripples not just through Te Whiu's own life but that of her ancestral family. Her moving, graceful poems are a lens through which to look 'now' straight in the face, without shame or fear, and to acknowledge that while trauma is transmitted generationally, so too are the gifts of resilience and fortitude. Anne-Marie Te Whiu (Te Rarawa) is a poet, editor, cultural producer and weaver based on unceded Gadigal lands in Australia. She is dedicated to platforming the creative output of Indigenous peoples around the world and has edited works such as Solid Air: Australia and New Zealand Spoken Word (UQP) and Woven (Magabala). She was previously the co-director of the Queensland Poetry Festival and a recipient of a Next Chapter Fellowship through The Wheeler Centre. Her writing has appeared in books, journals and magazines including Another Australia, Australian Poetry Anthology, Te Wh? ki Tukorehe, Cordite, Rabbit and Ora Nui.

Available products
Book Published 2025-04-29 by UQP University of Queensland Press - St Lucia (AUS)

Comments

A stunning debut, threading land, ocean and heart together in an expansive M?ori tapestry that speaks to our present, shared moment. Mettle is alive with ancient knowing, breathing possibilities into every line. An outstanding read.

I always wonder how we get through it, it being this settler colonial existence, and I think the answer is: play. This book plays with words in such a way that you can see through all the bullshit straight into the heart of our Indigenous futures. One where we fuck and grieve and love and joke and talk shit and howl for the world that has hurt us. Let us play, very seriously, very revolutionarily, very queerly, very M?ori, let us play.

"Mettle" suggests the ingrained capacity to meet difficulty with fortitude and resilience. Te Whiu's poems generously weave this capacity into brilliantly understated pieces with seared edges. Her kupu, an ingrained rope pulled taut for us to walk upon, to feel the fear, the strain, and have the courage to continue forward. A simple resounding reminder of how to live this life

Poems born from that painful place between death and rebirth, telling their truth "slant", allowing reader and writer to understand how resiliency arrives gradually.

It is rare to observe in print the diverse realities that construct the contemporary M?ori diaspora. Anne-Marie's nuanced poems masterfully weave the losses, longings and joys of being M?ori in Australia with the karanga (the spiritual call) that binds us to our ancestral homelands, the Hokianga in Far North Aotearoa, New Zealand.

Mettle: of courage and grit, of pluck and resolve. This is sitting around the kitchen table, two hands smoothing out the 'good' or 'day to day' tablecloth with instinct and deliberation. This stunning debut is straight out nana-talk, poetic memoir, and weaving all the tiny-big things, all longing and heart and of the earth.

Te Whiu's poetic voice is bright, and new. As well as vividly poetic storytelling the humour here is mordant . in the best spirit of a bustling diverse indigenous poetics, it excels