Ariana Tikao is a writer and musician of Kāi Tahu descent. She writes waiata, poetry, and creative non-fiction exploring themes relating to her Kāi Tahu identity and mana wahine, often drawing upon historical kōrero from her ancestors. She has an MA in Creative Writing from the International Institute of Modern Letters (2022) and has had poetry and creative nonfiction published in Turbine | Kapohau, Landfall, SWAMP, Awa Wahine, takahē, West Trestle Review, and Tupuranga. Her book Mokorua was published by Auckland University Press in 2022 (co-authored with photographer Matt Calman), and her book Te Rā: The Māori Sail was published by the Christchurch Art Gallery in 2023 (illustrated by Mat Tait). She was an Ursula Bethell Writer in Residence at the University of Canterbury in 2023, where she worked on her first collection of poetry Pepeha Portal, which is due to be published by Otago University Press in April 2026.
Tikao comments: 'Hikaiti was my ancestor whose husband decided to marry her sister, even though she objected. She dressed in her finest kākahu, perfumed herself, and leapt off a cliff near the Akaroa Heads. The italicised text is from a traditional mōteatea.'
Links
Ariana Tikao's New Zealand Society of Authors page
Photographer credit: Ebony Lamb