Iona Winter

Category: Aotearoa

  • Blackbird

    Posting a link, to a reading of ‘Blackbird’ https://fb.watch/eTYV5IhZm-/ as published this month in takahē Magazine Vol.105 https://www.takahe.org.nz They’ve made this issue accessible for all, so you can also read the poem there, plus check out loads of other wonderful literary delights too. Massive thanks to takahē Magazine for selecting…

  • An epic poem and audio…

    Last month I was invited to write a creative response to Songs of Rupture by David Green, an incredible exhibition/installation held at Anteroom Project Art Space in Koputai, Port Chalmers. Below is the link for my epic poem Heartbeat (with audio), as published with Vernacular. I’d encourage you to listen,…

  • 2022 NZPS International Poetry Competition

    So, this happened today. I’m feeling absolutely blessed that ‘Heavy-limbed tree after rain’ placed 2nd, and ‘Ara Toi’ was commended, in the 2022 NZ Poetry Society’s International Poetry Competition. Massive thanks to NZ Poetry Society judge Nicola Easthope for selecting my poems, and for not shying away from the subject…

  • Rejections and openings

    I’ve come to loathe the 17th each month, being the counter of moons that I am these days. 21 months last week since Reuben took his life, and despite meandering through the day fully aware of it, it wasn’t until I checked messages from him, in the weeks before he…

  • Medical misogyny

    First, do no harm. Isn’t that what medicine dictates? Twelve years ago, I had a TVT-O (transvaginal tape through the obturator region) implanted to assist my bladder, after decades of gynaecological surgeries. Last year the mesh took many hours to be removed by two specialist surgeons.  After a decade of…

  • Birthing and grieving

    28 years ago I’d already been in labour for a day, then another before my tama ātaahua arrived. In the old days, we both would’ve died in the process. It was arduous to say the least. Yet this miraculous pēpē I was told I couldn’t have (because of cancer) still…

  • Art galleries as inspiration

    Last month I was invited to attend a workshop and respond to the Paemanu: Tauraka Toi – A Landing Place, exhibition at the Dunedin Public Art Gallery. Visiting art galleries a fantastic way to gain inspiration, through looking at artworks I’ve not seen before, and because, more often than not,…

  • Liminal States

    Reading and reviewing Kurangaituku ~ by Whiti Hereaka was a privilege. Review is up on Landfall Review Online, for anyone who’d like a read…and then take yourselves off to the bookshop and purchase this phenomenal book, or pick up a copy at your local library! “Hereaka shows us that the…

  • Pacifist

    My annual ANZAC Day toikupu ~ remembering the ancestors, since time began, who fought and died in wars. With Reuben gone, to a different kind of war, I have a sense of what mothers must’ve felt when their babies didn’t return.

  • Rage and Earth Bones

    I’ve been reflecting on my rage, its potency, and the things it contains. And I’ve realised that I’m exhausted from hiding invisible pain, in the forms of grief, disability, and discrimination. Exhausted from being ‘strong and resilient’. And exhausted from trying to figure out who I am, now that my…