Mettle

by Anne-Marie Te Whiu

‘ Te Whiu’ s poetic voice is bright, and new. As well as vividly poetic storytelling the humour here is mordant … in the best spirit of a bustling diverse indigenous poetics, it excels’ — Robert Sullivan The poetic visions of Mettle echo through past and present lives – memories are recorded and futures imagined. Te Whiu draws on stories from her childhood and a lifetime of listening and learning about her whakapapa (Maori lineage). This exceptional collection resounds with strength – a mettle that ripples not just through Te Whiu’ s own life but that of her ancestral family. Her moving, graceful poems are a lens through which to look ‘ now’ straight in the face, without shame or fear, and to acknowledge that while trauma is transmitted generationally, so too are the gifts of resilience and fortitude. ‘ A stunning debut, threading land, ocean and heart together in an expansive Maori tapestry that speaks to our present, shared moment. Mettle is alive with ancient knowing, breathing possibilities into every line. An outstanding read.’ — Leanne Betasamosake Simpson

Genres: Poetry

112 pages, Paperback

Published July 29, 2025

About the author

Born and raised in Brisbane, Anne-Marie Te Whiu is a proud descendant of the Te Rarawa tribe in Northland, Aotearoa. She has primarily worked as cultural producer and curator, recently having Co-Directed the Queensland Poetry Festival from 2015-2017.

Her work within spoken word includes being Co-Producer of Woodford Folk Festival's long-running spoken word showcase WordFood and State Library of QLD's Event Coordinator for the Australian Poetry Slam.

Anne-Marie is the Co-Editor of Solid Air, Australian and New Zealand Spoken Word Anthology (University of Queensland Press) and is currently the Co-Editor of two Verity La poetry streams – the spoken word submission stream Slot Machine as well as Discoursing Diaspora. She is also an emerging poet & weaver, with writing recently being published in Cordite, Australian Poetry Journal and A Fine Line, and exhibiting her woven installation ātete as part of the Ctrl+Alt+Delete Pasifika Showcase at Outerspace Gallery in Brisbane. Earlier this year, Anne-Marie traveled to Wellington, Aotearoa with the support of Create NSW where she was selected to participate in the Māori & Pasifika Intensive Creative Writing Workshop at the IIML, Victoria University.

Reviews

[joanie · Rating 2 out of 5]

2,5/5.
I liked the poem "Land as Body" and found the first two chapters of the collection interesting. I got a bit distracted by the various formats of the poems.

[Chris Benetti · Rating 5 out of 5]

Mettle is a powerful and deeply moving collection that weaves family, identity, ancestry, and cultural memory into poems that feel both intimate and expansive. Anne-Marie Te Whiu brings remarkable warmth and resilience to the page, allowing the past and present to speak to one another through whakapapa, language, place, and lived experience. I loved the balance of tenderness and wit throughout the collection the poems can be deeply reflective while still feeling alive, playful, and wonderfully human. Mettle is a beautiful reminder that alongside inherited grief, we also inherit strength, connection, and the courage to keep becoming

[Natalia Figueroa Barroso · Rating 5 out of 5]

Poignant poetry that seizes in snippets of life the long lasting impacts of imperialism on Indigenous identities.

[lou garciadolnik · Rating 5 out of 5]

beautiful book by a beautiful friend :')

[Soaliha]

Mettle is a poignant exploration of being a Māori woman, and the responsibilities, innate spirituality, grief and joy that comes with this (her) life.

I really loved this collection — it's playful in both tone and form, both in the sense of each individual poems use of spacing and lines, but also the segmented nature of the collection too. Much like its title (say Mettle out loud to a friend, and you'll realise they'll hear it completely differently), different structures suggest multiple meanings. Though, if you aren't a poetry reader, don't be intimidated — neither am I and yet I found this accessible and meaningful!

Now, while I don't believe in picking favourite poems, there were a few that felt particularly resonant to me:

'Blood Brothers' jarringly juxtapositions the essence of what it means to be Māori, of cultural practices and innate spirituality, with the monotony and dread of capitalism and colonialism which traps us in survival mode and prevents us from reaching for more.

'Words That Feel Good In My Mouth' has the lines (to paraphrase) "Free Palestine means Always Will Be means I Love You", and the idea that to love is to resist you know is so important at a time where people feel really disillusioned and exhausted and beat down. It's a compassionate reminder that resisting is not, like, a chore — it’s an act of love, abd love is at the centre of all radical politics.

Other themes explored that left me pondering and feeling for days were the exploration of what it means to use the coloniser's tongue (“before alphabets and prisons / nouns and indifference” suggesting language as both connecting us to each other, but if you’re a person from a land that’s been colonised, language can also be an alienating force), and the idea of timelessness and existing in between lines — literally in the poems but also metaphysically in space and time, especially when Anne-Marie Te Whiu brings in the Gregorian calendar into it and how this doesn’t align with cultural practices. It reminded me of a short story in Always Will Be by Mykaela Saunders which depicts Aboriginality as existing outside of linear time. Much food for thought!

This collection will resonate with anyone who has been displaced, whose ancestors have been colonised, who feels trapped by time but also sometimes freed by it? Sometimes we have to live in contradictions, and this is especially true for marginalised folks battling colonialism. 5/5 stars.