Baker, Hinemoana

IN BRIEF

Hinemoana Baker 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. Baker studied Māori as an adult and her love for Te Reo comes through in her poetry. The poems unite observations and experiences of childhood, family, emerging sexuality, politics and culture. Baker performs regularly as both a poet and a singer-songwriter.

Photo Credit: © Gregory Crow

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Baker, Hinemoana (1968 – ) is a poet and musician.

Baker was born in Christchurch and grew up in Whakatane and Nelson. She has tribal connections ranging from Otakou Peninsula to the Horowhenua and Maunga Taranaki. She has worked as a Māori language and ESOL educator, a sales representative, a radio journalist and producer, and has toured extensively through New Zealand as a musician/performer.

Hinemoana Baker’s poems and stories have been published in literary journal Sport, creative writing anthology Mutes and Earthquakes and online literary journal Turbine. Her poems ‘A walk with your father’ and 'One' were selected for ‘Best New Zealand Poems' 2004 and 2006 respectively.

In 2002, Baker completed an MA in Creative Writing at Victoria University. The manuscript she wrote during the course formed the basis of her first collection of poetry, mātuhi | needle, published by Victoria University Press and Perceval Press in 2004. Like many New Zealanders, Baker studied Māori as an adult and her love for Te Reo comes through in her poetry. The poems speak of childhood, family, emerging sexuality, politics and culture.

Reviewer David Eggleton commented in the Listener that there is 'sensuousness reflected in the verse, but in a conflicted way – undercut by a sense of smouldering emotion (resentment perhaps), as though an earlier vulnerability has left the poet bruised by experience. There’s a jabbing, needling quality, too, as if responding to the ripeness of things has left the poet feeling tainted rather than wholesome, thus the pregnant imagery in ‘Fruitpicker’: 'fat strawberries … at night//we pick them by touch/listen to the flesh/release the stem'.'

mātuhi / needle (Victoria University Press, 2004) was published jointly with Perceval Press, the California publisher owned and operated by Viggo Mortensen. It is a beautifully-designed hardback, featuring five paintings by the Ngāi Tahu artist Jenny Rendall and includes a CD featuring Hinemoana reading six of her poems, and a song excerpted from her album Puawai.

Many cultures converge and challenge each other in the poetry of Hinemoana Baker - most obviously, her parents' Māori and Pākehā ancestries. The need to belong - to the extended and nuclear family - is at odds with the equally pressing need to be an individual in the world.

In mātuhi / needle, her debut collection, there are poems of praise, love and gratitude. Words, phrases and cultural concepts in the Māori world are given a new and different life via her love and recovery of Te Reo - which can be translated as 'the voice'. Other poems are inscribed with the sordid and the badly behaved, or admit to feelings of inadequacy and avoidance. Some reflect a history of personal and political invasion and occupation. All are alive with grace, intellect and control.

In 2007, Hinemoana co-edited the anthology 'Kaupapa: New Zealand Poets, World Issues', and the following year she edited the online journal of Whitireia Community Polytechnic online literary journal, '4th Floor'. She created the sound design and production for 'I Can See Fiji: Poetry and Sound', an album featuring the poems of Pacific-American writer Teresia Teaiwa.

Baker lives in Paekākāriki on the Kapiti Coast.

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Media links and clips

• Hinemoana Baker’s website
• Hinemoana Baker’s Victoria University Press Author Page
• Hinemoana Baker’s writing featured in issues of online journal Turbine
• Hinemoana Baker's poetry in Best New Zealand Poems 2004 and Best New Zealand Poems 2006
• Details about Kaupapa: New Zealand Poets, World Issues
• Essay 'Tuwhare', in ka mate ka ora

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