Their Ockham Longlisted first book of poetry available for purchase here.
u blow on my fingers
and i feel ur breath in the
soft gaps
that i am trying to live in
In ransack, essa may ranapiri addresses the difficulty of assembling and understanding a fractured, unwieldy self through an inherited language – a language whose assumptions and expectations ultimately make it inadequate for such a task. These poems seek richer, less hierarchical sets of words to describe ways of being. Punctuated by a sequence of letters to Virginia Woolf’s character Orlando, this immersive collection is about discovering, articulating, and defending – to oneself and to others – what it means to exist outside of the western gender binary, as takatāpui. It describes an artist in a state of becoming, moving from Te Kore through Te Pō and into the light.
Reading of Glass Breaking Poem from ransack
Praise for ransack:
‘This is a significant body of work by a seriously talented writer. It’s moving, sometimes startling, and a pleasure to read. And, for many of us – but especially for those of us whose experience reflects ransack’s larger themes – it’s a book in which those of us who have rarely done so can also manage to see ourselves.’
— Stephanie Burt
‘This is a work that speaks personally and powerfully about universal issues: gender, the limitations of human expression and language, colonial violence both present and historical, the white-washing of indigenous experiences and histories, and how to reconcile all these alienating experiences in one meatmade cage.’ — Eliana Gray for #enbylife
‘The strands of gender, Māoridom and language weave together to create a new kete o te wānanga, full of the knowledge we need to survive during this current period of history.’ — Jackson Nieuwland for Pantograph Punch
‘essa places body and experience at its white hot core – a gift in its sharpness, its broken cutting lines and its sweet fluencies as the writer navigates how to be, how to be body, how to be bodymindheart in the world.’ — Paula Green for Poetry Shelf
‘Ransack is like a petri dish. When you read it you feel like you are examining a living thing through a microscope.’ — Gem Wilder for Book Sellers Blog
essa may ranapiri 