|
Hinemoana Baker (c) Leonardo Carta
|
Hinemoana Baker (born in Christchurch, New Zealand, in 1968) has Maori and Pakeha parents and is a singer-songwriter and poet between Spoken Word and classical form. In her collections of poems kōiwikōiwi | bonebone and waha | mouth she artfully and blatantly mixes autobiography with text fragments from dictionaries and medical brochures. Baker writes about internal family language games with absent fathers, about the black and white rings around the eyes of a curlew, the rings in the skulls of eels and the profound wisdom contained in fortune cookies.
As a musician, Hinemoana Baker has released solo albums and, as Taniwha together with Christine White, the album Snap Happy. She is currently living in Germany as Creative New Zealand’s Berlin Writer in Residence.
Publications (selection):
waha | mouth. Victoria University Press 2014
kōiwikōiwi | bone bone. Victoria University Press 2010
mātuhi | needle.Victoria University Press/Perceval Press 2004