Write Out Loud is a compilation of poetry written by a family with thoughts and musings from two generations. Each talented member expressing their views and pouring their heart out about love, relationships, heartbreak, social injustice and self-improvement. Individually they each have their own style, collectively their talents can't help but shine through. Come and enjoy this literary journey one entertaining, enlightening, thought provoking stop at a time.

Picture, for a minute, every artwork of colonial New Zealand you can think of. Now add a chain gang. Hard-labour men guarded by other men with guns. Men moving heavy metal. Men picking at the earth. Over and over again. This was the reality of nineteenth-century New Zealand.Forced labour haunts the streets we walk today and the spaces we take for granted. The unfree work of prisoners has shaped New Zealand's urban centres and rural landscapes, and Te Moana-nui-a-Kiwa the Pacific in profoun...

Introduced by Vincent O'MalleyHe Whakaputanga o te Rangatiratanga o Nu Tireni/The Declaration of Independence of New Zealand was signed by fifty-two rangatira from 1835 to 1839. It was a powerful assertion of mana and rangatiratanga, made after decades of Māori and European encounters that had been steadily expanding both within Aotearoa New Zealand and elsewhere on the globe as Māori travelled abroad. As rangatira reached out, they also forged new alliances. He Whakaputanga was part of th...

Introduced by Barbara BrookesIn 1893 New Zealand became the first country in the world with universal suffrage: all New Zealand women now had the right to vote. This achievement owed much to an extraordinary document: the 1893 Women’s Suffrage Petition. Over 270 metres long, with the signatures of some 24,000 women (and at least twenty men), the Suffrage Petition represents the culmination of many years of campaigning by suffragists, led by Kate Sheppard, and women throughout the country.T...

'Class lines between settlers and labourers had been drawn...What follows is a microhistory of collective revolt.'In 1843, the New Zealand Company settlement of Nelson was rocked by the revolt of its emigrant labourers. Over 70 gang-men and their wives collectively resisted their poor working conditions through petitions, strikes and, ultimately, violence. Yet this pivotal struggle went on to be obscured by stories of pioneering men and women 'made good'.The History of a Ri...

Introduced by Claudia OrangeIn 1840, over 500 Māori leaders put their names to a significant new document: Te Tiriti o Waitangi or the Treaty of Waitangi. Through their signatures, moko or marks they were making an agreement with the British Crown. At stake was the sovereignty of the country, the governance of the land. The history of this agreement is a remarkable one, told here in rich and compelling detail.The content of this short book is derived directly from the larger illustrated pu...

New Zealand’s first Anglican bishop, George Selwyn, was a towering figure in the young colony. Denounced as a ‘turbulent priest’ for speaking out against Crown practices that dispossessed Māori, he brought a vigorous approach to Episcopal leadership. His wife Sarah Selwyn supported all her husband’s activities, in a life characterised as one of ‘hardship and anxiety’. She expressed independently her sense of outrage over the Waitara dispute.Selwyn promoted participatory church gove...