ransack

In ransack, essa may ranapiri addresses the difficulty of assembling and understanding a fractured, unwieldy self through an inherited language--a language whose assumptions and expectations ultimately make it inadequate for such a task. These poems seek richer, less hierarchical sets of words to describe ways of being. Punctuated by a sequence of letters to Virginia Woolf's character Orlando, this immersive collection is about discovering, articulating, and defending--to oneself and to others--what it means to exist outside of the western gender binary, as takatapui. It describes an artist in a state of becoming, moving from Te Kore, through Te Po, and into the light.