Carrying the Past Forward

Part of VERB Readers and Writers Festival 2026

Looking to the past to better understand the present, three authors explore how colonisation and environmental change reverberate across generations binding the past, present and future.

Hana Buchanan’s (Ngāti Haumia ki Te Aro, Taranaki, Te Ātiawa) poetry collection, Kupu Whenua, weaves resilience, resistance and life on her heavily urbanised ancestral lands; the encroaching forces of empire echo through the characters in The Other Catherine by Lauren Keenan (Te Ātiawa ki Taranaki and Te Ātiawa o te Waka o Māui); and Terri Te Tau’s (Rangitāne, Ngāti Kahungunu ki Wairarapa) The Valley of Unlikely Acquaintances spans 1800s to 2048 following three Māori wāhine scientists restoring their ancestral forest.

In conversation with Matariki Williams (Ngāi Tūhoe, Ngāti Hauiti, Ngāti Whakaue, Taranaki, Te Ātihaunui-a-Pāpārangi) they discuss the connections between whakapapa, whenua and history, and the ways these relationships continue to shape the present.

11:30am Saturday 26 September 2026

See Ticketing T&Cs.