Rangikura

Poems

By: Tayi Tibble

Narrated by: Tayi Tibble

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 her incendiary debut with a bold new follow-up. Barbed and erotic, vulnerable and searching, Rangikura asks listeners to think about our relationship to desire and exploitation. Moving between hotel lobbies and all-night clubs, these poems chronicle life spent in spaces that are stalked by transaction and reward. “I grew up tacky and hungry and dazzling,” Tibble writes. “Mum you should have tied me/to the ground./Instead I was given/to this city freely.”

Here is a poet staking out a sense of freedom on her own terms in times that very often feel like end times. Tibble’s range of forms and sounds are dazzling. Written with Māori moteatea, purakau, and karakia (chants, legends, and prayers) in mind, Rangikura explores the way the past comes back, even when she tries to turn her back on it. “I was forced to remember that,/wherever I go,/even if I go nowhere at all,/I am still a descendent of mountains.”

At once a coming-of-age and an elegy to the traumas born from colonization, especially the violence enacted against indigenous women, Rangikura interrogates not only the poets’ pain, but also that of her ancestors. The intimacy of these poems will move listeners to laughter and tears. Speaking to herself, sometimes to the audience, these poems arc away from and return to their ancestral roots to imagine the end of the world and a new day. They invite us into the swirl of nostalgia and exhaustion produced in the pursuit of an endless summer. (“My heart goes out like an abandoned swan boat/ghosting along a lake”). They are a new highpoint from a writer of endless talent.

©2024 Tayi Tibble (P)2024 Random House Audio

Critic reviews

"The fresh, funny and immensely skilled voice of a generation...'[Tayi Tibble's] poetry just has this huge, wild energy,' said Hera Lindsay Bird, a New Zealand poet...'You read her and think, this is a person who’s possibly read Edward Said, and also watches ‘The Kardashians,’ said Nicholas Wright, a lecturer in English literature at Canterbury University...[An] undercurrent of pride and defiance appears throughout [her] work...[Now,] her work, her high-octane Instagram presence and a certain sparkly star quality have made her something of an 'it girl' and style icon in New Zealand, as well as a renowned poet."—Natasha Frost, The New York Times

"When Tayi Tibble was eight, she decided she’d be a writer...Despite a slew of accomplishment at just 28—including, but not limited to, being the first Māori writer published in The New Yorker and an appearance in in Lorde’s Solar Power music video—she remains miraculously humble....Rangikura, her incendiary second collection, hits bookshelves this week in the States...[In it] Tibble nimbly zig zags from comedic lines about the Kardashians to reflections on ancestral trauma, colonization and love affairs."—Eloise King-Clements, Interview Magazine

"There’s a reason why U.S. poet laureate Joy Harjo calls Tayi Tibble 'one of the most startling and original poets of her generation.' The Māori writer’s sophomore collection of poetry [Rangikura] is nothing short of gripping and fearless. And if that wasn’t enticing enough, Tibble also counts Lorde as one of her biggest fans."—"April 2024's Must-Read Book Releases," Nylon