Tayi Tibble (Ngāti Porou/Te Whānau ā Apanui) is an award winning poet and writer who has published two poetry collections. She is a graduate from the International Institute of Modern Letters and the 2017 recipient of the Adam Foundation Prize for best manuscript. Her MA portfolio was the basis for her first book, Poūkahangatus, which won the Best First Book of Poetry Award at the 2019 Ockham New Zealand Book Awards. Her second book Rangikura was shortlisted for the 2022 Mary and Peter Biggs Award for Poetry at the Ockham New Zealand Book Awards. Tayi’s work has been published in various journals and magazines, including Granta online, Starling, The Spinoff, Sport, Pantograph Punch, The Wireless and Poetry Magazine and the anthology The Friday Poem: 100 New Zealand Poems (Luncheon Sausage Books, 2018). Her essay ‘On Being Skux’ is one of the most-read pieces on The Pantograph Punch ever.
Tayi’s first collection Poūkahangatus (VUP, 2018) challenges a dazzling array of mythologies – Greek, Māori, feminist, kiwi – peeling them apart, respinning them in modern terms. Hinemoana Baker writes that ‘Tibble speaks about beauty, activism, power and popular culture with compelling guile, a darkness, a deep understanding and sensuality.’ Many of the poems in Tayi’s second collection, Rangikura (VUP, 2021) were written during the 2020 Covid Lockdown and are based in part on her own experiences growing up as a young Māori woman. She describes the book as being more personal than her first collection, and as ‘pay[ing] tribute to modern Māori culture by using the humour, sexuality and friendship that encapsulates my generation’. Reviewer Hamesh Wyatt, writing for the Otago Daily Times, described it as a ‘fiery new work’ and an ‘immersive trip’.
Tayi previously worked at Toi Māori Aotearoa, where she was the editor of the Toi Māori blog, profiling the work of emerging Māori artists and creatives. She has been a staff writer for Pantograph Punch and currently works as a publicity assistant for Te Herenga Waka University Press and as an astrologist for Metro magazine. She has appeared in major festivals nationwide in New Zealand and also the 2022 Brisbane Writers Festival. In 2018 Tayi read her poem ‘Hoki Mai’ at an Anzac Day parade attended by 25,000 people in Wellington. Her poems were included in the show UPU presented at the Silo Theatre as part of the 2020 Auckland Arts Festival, and at the Kia Mau Festival in 2021. In 2021 she appeared in the music video for Lorde’s single Solar Power. In May 2022 Tibble headlined two events at the PEN World Voices festival on international and indigenous poetry.
Tayi lives in Pōneke, Wellington.
Te Herenga Waka University Press (formerly Victoria University Press) writer page
Stuff interview discussing Rangikura (March, 2022)
RNZ interview discussing poetry – and fashion, Porirua and music (July, 2021)
Two poems in Granta from Rangikura (June, 2021)
Newsroom feature and interview discussing Rangikura (June, 2021)
Radio NZ interview discussing Poūkahangatus (June, 2018)
Rangikura (VUP, 2021)
Poūkahangatus (VUP, 2018)
Granta online
Starling
The Spinoff
Sport
Pantograph Punch
The Wireless
Poetry Magazine
The Friday Poem: 100 New Zealand Poems ([edited by Steve Braunias] Luncheon Sausage Books, 2018)
'One of writing’s greatest magics is to allow us – to use Kiri Piahana-Wong’s phrase – to slide outside the trap of time.' - David Taylor