Hinemoana Baker

Hinemoana Baker Poems

Hinemoana Baker Biography

Hinemoana Baker was born in 1968 in Christchurch (New Zealand) and grew up in Whakatane and Nelson. She has tribal connections ranging from Otakou Peninsula to the Horowhenua and Maunga Taranaki. She is a poet, musician and playwright. Her writing has featured in anthologies and literary journals, and her first collection of poetry, mātuhi / needle, was published in 2004.)

The Best Poem Of Hinemoana Baker

Dismantling the crane

What is silver? Into this finger-space
the kotuku appears, flying once only
and far - to Holland, the vacated

apartment of your quiet friends
beaded slippers for sale
behind the silhouette

of the Moroccan woman whose feet
have been hurting her all day.
What is lost, here, where there was not

even eye contact, not even
eyes? Here a woman floated half-
miserable above land clutching

a posy - now there are growing
flowers, red with fat, sappy
green stalks and spongy leaves

and beside them the neighbourly
buttercups. Silver has become
hammer and aluminium.

The star in her firmament makes her way
over Rarotonga murmuring
hoki mai, hoki mai . . .

Meanwhile, how can this tui
be so violently black? White
petals could be made of

icing sugar, he flutters his wattle
with his two voice boxes. I sit here
wearing my bottletop, my lips

the dome above me dewy
with condensation. Outside
men in orange vests prepare

to dismantle the crane
its four ropes of chain rise
like snakes from the bed

of a dusty truck, link after link
on and on
until the morning is over.

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