New perspectives and insights: Vaughan Rapatahana and John Gallas introduce ‘Te Purere/The Exodus: The Anthology of Expatriate New Zealand Poets’

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Te Purere/The Exodus: The Anthology of Expatriate New Zealand Poets, Edited by Vaughan Rapatahana and John Gallas, Cold Hub Press, 2025, will be launched in Sydney on Saturday, 6 Dec from 3pm – 5pm at the Stanley Street Gallery, 1/52-54 Stanley St, Darlinghurst NSW 2010. This is a Poetry Sydney event. Tickets are $15 and are available from https://events.humanitix.com/sydney-launch-te-purere-the-exodus

What does it mean to be expatriate? Rapatahana and Gallas bring together a generous selection of work by poets who come and go from Aotearoa New Zealand. By calling their anthology Te Pūrere / The Exodus, Rapatahana and Gallas signal their intention to test an old proposition: you can take  he poet out of Aotearoa but perhaps not Aotearoa out of the poet.

………………………………………..––Michele Leggott, New Zealand Poet Laureate, 2008–2009.

Te Pūrere translates approximately into the English language as ‘getaway’ or ‘exodus’ and is an especially appropriate title for this anthology of New Zealand poets who continue to reside or have recently lived overseas as expatriates for lengthy periods. Their rationales are many and varied – ranging from employment, through relationships, to life-choice decisions to remain overseas – and are more fully revealed in their biographies.

We had several rationales ourselves to compile and have published what for us is an important anthology. We have listed such reasons below:

  • Because these poets are tremendously talented and, in some cases, seminal poets who deserve an even wider audience. Seminal because of their originality, especially at the time of their initial writing, and also because of their lasting influences on poetry per se, both within and without Aotearoa New Zealand. The late Fleur Adcock, for example, is just one fine example of an exemplar expatriate Kiwi poet.
  • Because they are not frequently published within Aotearoa New Zealand and New Zealand audience deserves a chance to read, appreciate and enjoy their toikupu. Indeed, several of the 53 expatriate Kiwi poets included here remain almost unknown to the wider Aotearoa New Zealand poetry reading public. How many such, for example, are aware that Grace Yee, recently won the prestigious Victorian Prize for Literature? Indeed, Robert McLean made the pertinent point in a recent introduction to the poetry of Owen Leeming, “New Zealand has never been especially kind to its literary expatriates. [ . . . ] Out-ofsight, out-of-mind has long been our default setting”. This anthology sets such a situation to rights.
  • Significantly, because of the fact that they are living beyond New Zealand waters, their perspectives will be different, in some cases refreshingly novel, which at the same time could extend the parameters of what a New Zealand poet ‘is’. As Dr Murray Edmond emphasised in a letter to us, “Poets who together create a substantial diaspora, whether they departed to escape their homeland or for work or study or for preference of somewhere else or for relationships, bring points of view that point homeward but look through lenses that are different from those who remain at home.” Similarly, as James Norcliffe, sagely points out, ‘Distance, as Brasch famously said, looks our way. But distance looks the other way as well and brings new perspectives and insights.’
  • Because some of these poets are advancing in age, and deserve more consideration at this stage of their lives, more recognition from New Zealand audiences, again due to their influence, craft, originality, overseas perspectives. A poet such as Eric Beach, as just one example, exemplifies this aspect, while Vernice Wineera was a harbinger kaitito wahine Māori. This anthology is timely. Sadly, and relatedly, since we commenced this project in 2022–2023, Fleur, Eric and Vernice have passed and we mourn them even as we include their fine toikupu in this anthology. Accordingly, this collection needs to be presented now.

In short, not only do these expatriate Kiwi poets deserve more recognition for their poetry, but Aotearoa New Zealand – and indeed global – reading audiences deserve to sight their poetry, indeed, to be able to experience, “writing coloured by a fusion of the Aotearoa background and the widely varied expatriate experience.” (James Norcliffe).

We also make a couple of other points about this anthology.

Our initial policy of inclusion, if you will, was to consider Kiwi poets who had been born in Aotearoa New Zealand or had become citizens or permanent residents of this land. We widened this kaupapa slightly by also considering poets of New Zealand parentage, who were born overseas, yet who feature in anthologies of New Zealand writers. Finally, we thought it apposite to include two poets who lived in Aotearoa for a lengthy period and established their reputation here – as to further stress the points made above. More, as also alluded to above, while most poets in this anthology continue to reside out of Aotearoa, some have recently returned to remain in this country after extensive overseas stays, poets like Michael Jackson and Sarah Quigley for example. One or two – like editor Vaughan Rapatahana – continue to move between Aoteaoa and other countries on an ongoing basis, while others travel frequently to Australia to remain there for some time, before their New Zealand ‘homecoming’; what Nicholas Birns terms ‘transtasman’ to describe a poet such as Stephen Oliver. “The term transtasman—one word, all lower case—means, in the first instance . . . a poet of both Australia and New Zealand, as the two nations are separated by the Tasman Sea.”

In any such collection pertaining to expatriateness, several poems will be thematically concerned with living away from one’s homeland, and, concomitantly, with reflections about the new experiences and vistas encountered. Yet, Te Pūrere is by no means consumed by specific suchlike, and many pieces within this collection travel across a wide range of topoi, a facet we, as editors, deliberately focussed on.

Ultimately, however, there is considerable cogency in the words of Michele Leggott when we sum up, as it were, the overall existential stance of the expatriate Kiwi poet:

Their world view is always doubled: one eye on New Zealand, the other on immediate circumstances and surroundings. One may be constantly lensed by the other or become a faint wisp of language tracking back to source. Other languages absorb the poet’s attention and enter the work which becomes a bridging between here and there, now and then, gathering and dispersal.

 – Vaughan Rapatahana and John Gallas

Vaughan Rapatahana and John Gallas are editors of Te Purere/The Exodus: The Anthology of Expatriate New Zealand Poets.

Te Purere/The Exodus: The Anthology of Expatriate New Zealand Poets is available from https://www.coldhubpress.co.nz/te-purere-the-exodus–cold-hub-press-.html

Poets Reading at the Sydney launch
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