Queensland Poetry Festival is excited to welcome Hinemoana Baker, the 2009 Arts Queensland Poet-in-Residence.

Hinemoana is a New Zealand writer, musician, producer and teacher of creative writing. Her Maori whakapapa traces from Taranaki and the Horowhenua in the North Island, down to the Otakou peninsula near Dunedin in the South Island. Her Pakeha (non-Maori) ancestors were from England and Bavaria.
Hinemoana's first poetry collection, matuhi | needle (2004), was co-published in New Zealand by Victoria University Press and in the US by Perceval Press, the publishing house of actor and artist Viggo Mortensen. Her first album, puawai, was a finalist in the New Zealand Music Awards and the title track was a finalist for the Maori language category of the prestigious APRA Silver Scroll awards. Hinemoana was one of 12 New Zealand recording artists chosen for the album and stage show Tuwhare, setting to music the words of renowned poet and laureate Hone Tuwhare.

Hinemoana co-edited the 2007 anthology Kaupapa: New Zealand poets, world issues and in 2008 she created the sound design for I Can See Fiji: Poetry and Sound, a recording of poems by Pacific/US poet Teresia Teaiwa. Her poems have been chosen for the 2004, 2006 and 2008 Best New Zealand Poems online magazine, and have appeared in numerous other anthologies, including Australia’s literary journal Going Down Swinging.

Hinemoana wowed audiences at the 2006 Queensland Poetry Festival: spoken in one strange word and is sure to enchant and delight the audiences she engages with during her residency. Hinemoana is set to appear at this year’s Queensland Poetry Festival and Brisbane Writers Festival, as well as spending some time in regional Queensland working with young people from Queensland's central west.
You can find out more about Hinemoana at: www.hinemoana.co.nz. If you would like more information about Hinemoana's residency please contact QWC on 07 3839 1243.

The Arts Queensland Poet in Residence is administered by Queensland Writers Centre who proudly partner with Queensland Poetry Festival, Judith Wright Centre of Contemporary Arts and Brisbane Writers Festival to deliver the program.