What do I wish for in 2024? Tusiata Avia’s new poem for a new year

Poet Tusiata Avia: "we'd wrap ourselves in Te Tiriti." Photo / Supplied

Poet, performer, writer, and teacher Tusiata Avia MNZM has won numerous awards, including a 2023 Prime Minister’s Award for Literary Achievement, and performed around the world.

What do I wish for New Zealand in 2024?

For a start

we’d all stand up, outside Starbucks and Maccas and Burger King and Pizza Hut and Dominoes

and all those other companies

we’d rain down on them like bombs out of the sky

we’d shred them like shrapnel that shears the little limbs off the babies in Gaza.

And then

we’d wrap ourselves in Te Tiriti

we’d tattoo ourselves with the word our government is taking away.

Principles.

we’d all walk around with

principles on our faces

principles on our chests

principles on our backs

principles on our arms

principles on our legs

all 5 million of us, so that word could not be taken away.

And then

we’d all write poems about racism

we’d write songs or jokes or graffiti or comic strips or shopping lists about racism

and someone would make them into earrings or hoodies or bike helmets or umbrellas

we’d wear those words for everyone to read

and we’d get in trouble for telling the truth about racism

all 5 million of us.

And then

our government could release 5 million press releases

and 5 million Official Information Acts

on 5 million people

for making art.

This is the final in the Listener online’s Hearts and Minds series in which we asked prominent NZers about their aspirations for the country in 2024.