I met Carlos Soto-Román in Santiago this January not long after Ugly Duckling Presse’s publication of the English translation of his book 11. Drawing from archival state documents and other found materials, 11 is an experimental work of documentary poetics addressing the dictatorship and its aftermath in Chile starting from the military coup on September 11, 1973.
Ngā Kaituhi Wāhine Māori — Māori Women Writers
Kia ora tātou katoa. [Let us all be well.]
He mihi tino mahana ki a katoa hoki. [A warm greeting to all also.]
Ko he korero tēnei mo ngā kaituhi wāhine Māori kei konei: ngā wāhine tino mōhio me ki te timata o te tuhi te taima katoa. Te tuhi o ngā mōteatea, ngā waiata, ngā ruri, ngā whiti te mea te mea te mea. [This is a commentary about Māori women writers: very intelligent women always at the creation of writing. Writing song-poetry, songs, love poems, verse and so on.]
Ka huri ahau ki te reo Ingarahi ināianei mo ngā tangata i kāore mohio taku reo tuatahi. [I will now turn to the English language for the people who don't know my first language.]
Māori women, then, are often the inaugrators, the initiators of poetry. Here it is stressed yet again that for Māori everything is connected holistically, that it is all rather arbitrary to sub-divide songs as separate from poetry and so on, that such are pākehā striates only.