Poukahangatus

Starred review from September 19, 2022
In Tibble’s seismic debut, the young poet’s rollicking, indignant, and invigorating narratives contend with history and navigate what it means to be millennial, female, and of Māori descent. Tibble stares unblinkingly at bigotry, her ferocity consuming the male, white, evangelical gaze she encounters. With influence as a prominent motif, she evaluates role models, among them Medusa, “a master carver, engraving her existence in bone/ forever.” (Tibble also cheekily asserts that “it must be difficult not to sprout a head of/ snakes in a society that constantly hisses at you.”) A love poem to an implicit white American male exemplifies the collection’s satirical edge and Tibble’s irreverent humor: “Shoot me quick Cupid! I’m a dangerous native! u drive me deep/ into the wild. I feel... dislocated! in ur eyes the colour of money/ or... a forest on fire. Ur just so classically handsome! Like... a red/ American Mustang & I’m your tiny dashboard dancer... keeping/ your eyes off the road.” Tibble’s kinetic use of language makes this an exciting and memorable debut.

Starred review from August 1, 2022
Gen Z New Zealander Tibble's luscious, widely praised debut poetry collection finally arrives stateside. Channeling her Māori heritage and the zeitgeist of her childhood (what she calls "the red fog of memory"), Tibble transforms tales of mundanity into spellbinding, melodious encounters. Boys embroiled in a rugby scrum become gritty and vicious ("The music / of bones in their noses all smashed / and spitty like pop rock candy"). A game of Cowboys and Indians is incidentally wounding ("a stone thrown by slingshot / puckers the russet of a tiny cheekbone") but also depicted as a sharp indictment of the White Savior Complex, "Susan loves the sun / since returning from / a summer Samaritan / trip to India." A dead body is discovered floating between crimson pōhutukawa trees and empty beer cans, "Nobody goes near the lake anymore because it stains like shame in the thick skin of the city." Tibble's running prose poems bubble over with lush imagery and serve as canny time capsules, like a vintage shop packed with "old Vogues, ugly 80s handbags and broken discmans." Like the stylistic lovechild of Rupi Kaur and Teresia Teaiwa, Tibble is a poet of effervescent verve and great promise.

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