If We Knew How to We Would

Emma Barnes (Pākehā, they/them) studied at the University of Canterbury and lives in Aro Valley, Te Whanganui-a-Tara, Wellington. Their poetry has been published in journals including Landfall, Turbine | Kapohau, Cordite and Best New Zealand Poems (2008, 2010, 2021). They performed in Show Ponies in 2022 and 2023. They are the author of the poetry collection I Am in Bed with You (AUP, 2021) and co-editor with Chris Tse of Out Here: An Anthology of Takatāpui and LGBTQIA+ Writers from Aotearoa (AUP, 2021). They work in tech and spend a lot of time picking up heavy things and putting them back down again.

‘I’m excited by the restless curiosity and energy and linguistic do-it-yourself grab-bagging expansiveness of Barnes’s poetics. They have very energetic ears, tuning into jargon and cliché and tender private moments and everything in between, all the way from the boardroom or the IT training centre to the Tinder date or the living room. And the poems, taken together, move in ways that work as a collection.’