28 / poppy, white lily, dill blossom

To quote a dear friend: YOU DID IT! YOU MOVED! YOU CLEANED! YOU TRAVELLED!

Jun 04, 2025

Hey there!

Not much work-wise or promotionally to report, but for those with ties to Aotearoa: submissions on the Regulatory Standards Bill are open until 23 June. This bill gives cause for concern on a variety of fronts, including its very serious potential environmental, democratic, and social equity impacts, as well as the lack of consultation with Māori, an unheeded urge for pause by the Waitangi Tribunal, and its fundamental non-acknowledgement of te Tiriti o Waitangi.

Tania Waikato, the Toitū Te Tiriti whānau, and various other organisers are doing great mahi to explain the bill and the hows and whys of submitting—so if you click any links on your read today, I’d encourage them to be these ones up top. It’s a shorter submission period than usual, too; let’s make the time sooner rather than later x

On Sunday morning, 20 minutes ahead of schedule, my flight touched down in Naarm. It was a journey of minor stresses—a fitful night of sleep ahead of the 4:45am wake-up; a bag drop both busier and more time sensitive than expected for the early hour; and primarily: I was hours-fresh off the move I mentioned last newsletter. But the unexpected successes were various, too: I was offered a black cherry breakfast bowl;1 made my way through a very moving Wicked: Part One re-watch;2 managed a perfect arrival run from picking up my suitcase to topping up my myki to getting on the SkyBus into town.

With a few different work deadlines at the top of the week, as well as some brilliant, involved presentation days, and with The Move hinging on an even harder line, I-will-be-out-of-the-country endpoint, I hadn’t had much opportunity to engage with the impending holiday beyond a baseline academic excitement. I would be returning to a city wherein I had been undeniably happy. There would be friends; there would be shows; there would be exhibitions. There would be cafés; there would be gardens; there would be restaurants. There would be thorough walkability(!).3

But first, of course: I had to move. I picked up the keys on a sunny morning with a snatch of time between sessions at work. The whole thing felt (and I suppose probably still feels) like an exercise in delayed gratification. Less like a thrill than a mission. There were aspects of it—large, packed suitcases; stray boxes reused from former meal subscriptions; one particularly useful crossbody athletics bag—that I could take care of myself, but then, of course, there was furniture. There was everything that required manoeuvring; transporting; more than one set of hands at either end.4 And I did have several people coming to help me, thankfully, but until we’d successfully relocated that last two-seater, I couldn’t help the underlying nag of in the event something changes, it would be nigh on impossible to push through this alone.5 Blessedly, it never came to that.

Through comedic levels of rain and wind, friends put in their shifts, ferrying boxes and plants and trolley-loads over slanted street bends and cobblestones. A few images tucked away for posterity: V’s hood flying back repeatedly in the bluster, me reaching over with the free hand between us to right it; Isabella packed into the lift with my sage green armchair only to find herself seemingly unable to reach the Ground button in the opposite corner; the door closing, then, and only hearing her fierce laugh; driving out to Avondale on Saturday morning with K, launching old wood waste onto mountains of it already collected in the open air—something cyclical, as K said, and yet giddy, relieving, and new.

It felt right that it was K who helped me through the last of it. They didn’t have to; I wouldn’t have begrudged them donating a few hours of time and then returning to their weekend—but having first lived in that place with them, sharing it before it later became just mine, the fact they stuck around until we stepped out of the place and slid the last key under the locked door together put a beautiful rest on the moment. This was both, without a doubt, for the work they did in the cleanup—putting up with my don’t let me forgets, and exercising their own great fastidiousness—and because it was soothing to have another person there who knew the place so well. Who could promise me it was time; that the job was done. That we, and I, were more than ready, and had been in many ways for months.

Before we left, the pair of us went through a list: our favourite memories of the apartment; our worst ones; the ones that stood out: the mundane, the fantastic, the ridiculous. I had been having similar conversations with other friends as the move loomed—thinking about the ways life has changed since this apartment first became a background for it. C said it was, for all intents and purposes, where we became ‘big girls’—relationships ending, new ones beginning (and some of those, we hope, to last); people’s various further study; so, so much work. I got the solicitation email for the manuscript that became Short Films in that apartment; I finished the final draft there; I got ready for, and came home from, the launch. Many a Starling Zoom, and production meetings for various projects with H & Isabella. Lots of lovely friends to stay, and family.

I’m conscious, of course, that life unfolds anywhere you let it—that’s the basic and fundamental nature of time. In some ways, these walls had very little to do with what transpired outside of them in my life and those of others, but also: they are where many days of several years started and ended. The bedroom into which first the Deloitte and then the BNZ signs blared like the most corporate nightly Eckleburgs through a gap in the fitted blinds. The kitchen that overheard all goings on in Freyberg Square, and the laundry that overlooked it. The lounge with its heritage windows that let in gorgeous, unobstructed light, sometimes to the detriment of houseplants, which ended up with their own vague patina. The bench that housed the coffee machine. This place, where I built rituals.

Perhaps the marker itself is significant—yes, the home as the archive of living. But to a greater degree what struck me about the move was the people who helped me to do it. My grandmother, who came to stay a few weeks beforehand; V, who immediately and generously said yes; Isabella, who took to it like a calling; K, who meant to say goodbye and then provided so much more than that. Other kind friends offered—as, we found, did strangers on the street: once with the aforementioned armchair and once with a shelving unit.6 In this respect, a thread of a city at its best—feeling like a village.

I was told it said a lot about the quality of my relationships, that loved ones were willing to give their time in this way.7 And, if I can get away with saying this with only the appropriate degree of indulgence, I do agree; I think, as I hope everyone does when regarding their own life, I have been remarkably lucky with the people in it. Kind, canny people; open to finding, or creating, adventure, in even the most pedestrian circumstances. It shouldn’t bowl me over slightly every time the hands are extended—and yet I don’t think I can deny that it does. But perhaps it’s not a bad thing to retain gratitude when people show up for you. Not out of the default belief they won’t, but rather so you don’t take their care, and their effort, for granted.

This week, as I mentioned, I’m in Naarm. Due to some crossover of dates with one of my best friends, it’s ended up one of those rare shared trips that actually come to fruition. The first few days have been expansive, easeful, and much needed—I’m happily reminded just how much you can fit into a day even when none of it is obligation; when you are unrushed; when all you have to do is enjoy yourself.8 I’ve been catching up on new exhibitions, old favourite cafés, new favourite restaurants, and delighting in the true, Ephronian autumn. I’ll be diving into RISING shortly, too, among other happinesses. This beautiful, incidental sorbet of a week; a corridor between chapters.

It’s a different home I’ll return to—but perhaps it always is. Either way, lots to love. And lots of it, in the meantime. I hope you’re finding the same.

The elderflower spritz at Coco’s9
Auckland Writers Festival Waituhi o Tāmaki
Beloved friends having the most beautiful elopement in the world covered in Ensemble Weddings 💝💝💝💝💝10
- Actually, a wee shoutout as an extension of the above to the seasonal cocktail menu Basement’s bar team were running at the time of the after-party—the ‘brat spring’ was garnished with a sour apple lolly ring and it ab! solute! ly rocked! 🍏
Being tenacious about the things we want and always staying kind
OMG by Suki Waterhouse
My incredible Italian-made olive green leather jacket, recently purchased from ON HAND
The concept of the play Born With Teeth; the decision by the RSC to programme it; the casting of Ncuti Gatwa as Christopher Marlowe and Edward Bluemel as William Shakespeare;11 the design of the promotional campaign—and, while we’re here, I’ll tell you for free what’s not a HIT: the fact it is happening on the other side of the planet <3 in London at the Wyndham’s <3 for a strictly limited run from 13 Aug to 1 Nov <3 and I am not going to get to be in the room to see it <3 UK-based or -adjacent honeys, go for me!!!! and somebody, for the love of all that is good, arrange a pro-shot!!!!!!
Nice To Each Other by Olivia Dean (song and music video!)
Walking into That’s Amore and having an immediate Ratatouille-like sense memory of the warmth and smell of iconic former Tauranga restaurant Bella Mia12
Sorry, not to be that person again, but: my friends 🩵🩵🩵🩵
Loux Sour Cherry Drink
‘Psychique’ (Heidi Yardley, 2021)
Elio’s Place
Hadestown at Her Majesty’s Theatre13

And there we are—let’s go, June!!!

I’m also on Instagram, if that’s your thing; and I have a website (including exactly one [1] Succession Easter egg, if you can find it).

My poetry collection, Short Films, is available directly from Tender Press and in bookstores across Aotearoa. You can also read Starling, full of wonderful work from New Zealand writers under 25, right here.

🔮 T

Florilegium

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