Author: Alice Te Punga Somerville
Bio: **Alice Te Punga Somerville** (Te Āti Awa, Taranaki) is a poet, scholar and irredentist. Dr Te Punga Somerville is the author of *Once were Pacific: Māori connections to Oceania* which provides the first critical analysis of the disconnections and connections between 'Māori' and 'Pacific'. Her research work delves into texts by Māori, Pacific and Indigenous peoples that tell Indigenous stories in order to go beyond the constraints of the limited stories told about them. In 2023 she won New Zealand's top award for poetry, the Mary and Peter Biggs Award for Poetry, for her collection *Always Italicise: How to Write While Colonised.* (Wikipedia, 2024)