Wound and Bloom: Personal sovereignty in the poetry of Hinemoana Baker and Natalie Diaz

This article focuses on the establishment of a personal sovereignty in the work of queer Indigenous poets. In the poetry of Mojave American poet Natalie Diaz, particularly in her recent collection, Postcolonial Love Poem, I observe an effective establishment of personal power independent of the dominant heteropatriarchal figure, which I locate in her unabashed presentation of queer love poetry and erotica. Hinemoana Baker’s work is equally effective in disappearing the disappearer and instituting personal sovereignty. She too addresses colonisation of body, mind, and spirit around culture, gender, and sexuality. Baker’s aesthetic reveals nuances of Māori and Pākehā culture but her underlying motivations are the same as Diaz’s: a decolonial feminist poetry, which, though it wears the garment of verse, ‘combines the politics of gender with critical race theory and an analysis of imperial power structures’ (Wagner 2021).