Overseas Experience

by Nicola Andrews

In her full-length poetry debut, Overseas Experience, Nicola Andrews (Ngāti Paoa, Pākehā) finds herself on two sides of the Pacific Ocean, writing to and from Tāmaki Makaurau and San Francisco.

From Overseas, billionaires, the digital realm, Dr. Ropata and a rogue pōhutukawa collide. It’s a world beyond the long white cloud, examined through its eccentricities and familiarities.

The Experience is all-encompassing—full of being Māori, being a hōhā, being a nerd and being fully crack up. The in-between is a transitory existence of liminal spaces, aeroplane meals and customs fatigue that muddles the direction of ‘home’.

Deeply referential and rewardingly funny, Overseas Experience is a collection resonant with anyone who’s made a new home across the sea.

so sip your water, smile at your gated community
make your last declarations, pounamu in hand
before your throat dries out like a myna
warbling in the springtime, broadcasting

here i am here i am here i am

Purchase

  • RRP: $30

  • ISBN 9780473745677

  • 96 pages, paperback

  • 165 x 210mm, portrait

  • Released June 2025

“Overseas Experience reminds us that our lives as modern Māori can be defined by our ancestral skills of navigation . . . it is in our blood to travel, to explore and when possible, to return home.”

— Kōtuku Titihuia Nuttall

Nicola Andrews (Ngāti Paoa, Pākehā) is a poet, librarian and educator who grew up in Waitākere and currently works as a librarian in San Francisco. Their poetry has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize, Best of the Net, and Best New Poets anthologies, and they are the grateful winner of the 2023 AAALS Indigenous Writers’ Prize in Poetry. Most of their poems were written in the company of a very spoilt Siamese cat, with Overseas Experience being their first full-length poetry collection.

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