Category: social issues
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Speaking to suicide bereavement – A Counter of Moons at Lifting the Lid Festival (audio)
Heartfelt thanks and my deepest respect to the 2025 Lifting the Lid Festival last weekend. Thank you for providing such a generous and inclusive space to discuss all things death and dying. Thanks to Dr Annetta Mallon for having a fearless conversation with me, about suicide bereavement and my creative…
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Lifting the Lid Festival 2025
I’m delighted to share that I’ll be presenting at the Lifting the Lid International Festival of Death and Dying again this year. The 5th annual festival lifts the lid on everything death and dying, through conversations, interactive events, workshops, art and craft sessions, live music, poetry and performance from around the…
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‘Keep the kōrero open’ book interview
Recently, I had the privilege to speak with friend and writerly colleague Michelle Elvy at Flash Frontier, about A Counter of Moons (interview link below). https://flashfrontier.com/keep-the-korero-open-iona-winter-talks-with-michelle-elvy-about-her-new-book-a-counter-of-moons-artwork-by-kirstie-mckinnon/ Responding to interviews about this book, while welcomed, hasn’t been easy. A Counter of Moons is the most vulnerable kind of writing I’ve done,…
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Weed shorts
A new stream of consciousness poem from my uncensored self; about Reuben’s weed shorts and our recent elections. I thought about adding a PARENTAL ADVISORY stamp to this, which would make Reuben laugh, citing drug references and profanity. Weed Shorts the last time I voted you’d just died, and I…
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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…
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Inhabit
This post may be seen as contentious, or a myriad of other labelling things. So if you’re someone who thinks that oppression, separatism and exclusion are okay, please feel free to unfollow me. What has become clear is that I can no longer remain quiet, in response to what I…
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November…the month of surprises
October was exceptionally difficult, with the ending of a relationship I had given myself fully to, health issues that resurfaced requiring serious management, and on top of that a tonne of preparation for the Te Hau Kāika exhibition. ‘Bring on freaking November,’ I said (in a surreptitious manner under my…
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Ode to You
I remember when you were young so full of tenderness and wonder a deep chuckle far beyond your years you knew things that we’d forgotten but now an enraged beast resides hacking away beneath the surface of your beautiful skin religiously I bargain with gods grateful when my outstretched hands…
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keen
i walk the mist swathed whenua into light captured spiderwebs lakeside swans poke their arses in the air to remind me of what has been stripped bare homeless people sleep near the bubbling springs at night but come morning are moved on—make way for the tourists, this is not your home …
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kāinga
up here the city is like a war zone sirens-helicopters-violence with indigenous forms commodified on buildings and some of my friends will say they’re immune i’m impatient for harakeke wind-song old gnarled scented-blossom trees and familiar paths out to the pā kāinga-home beckons me up here people live under concrete bridges amidst the steady hum of traffic to lull them to sleep while governments refuse to tackle poverty…
Iona Winter 