I work with individuals, practitioners, and learning communities who are seeking creative, ethical, and embodied ways of working with complexity.
I’m drawn to the places where creativity becomes care,
where making becomes a way of
l i s t e n i n g,
where land becomes TEACHER,
where story becomes medicine,
and where mischief stirs something honest
awake.
My work lives at these intersections: poetic, relational, embodied, and a little wild. I support people who long for depth, spaciousness, and creative ways of knowing themselves.
Whether I’m working with a poem, a client, a classroom, or a practitioner, I’m listening for the moment
when something shifts,
and a new possibility opens.
My Approach
My practice is relational, rooted in presence, mutuality, and the tiny attentive shifts that make transformation possible.
I work with movement, image, symbol, story, metaphor, writing, and somatic awareness, not as art assignments, but as ways of thinking, feeling, and making sense of experience.
My Work Is:
Kia ora, I’m Rata Gordon (they/she).
I’m a poet, creative arts therapist, educator, and mentor.
I’ve always learned through sensing, making, and close attention. I trust process over prescription, and this orientation shapes everything I offer.
My work is informed by a long engagement with community development, education, environmental learning, and the arts. Early on, I was drawn to questions of justice, land, and how people learn and change together. Alongside this, writing became an essential practice for me. It is a way of thinking, listening, and staying close to what matters.
Over time, my attention moved increasingly toward the body through mindful, somatic approaches to trauma healing, movement-based practice, and eventually creative arts therapy. These strands now sit together: land, body, story, creativity, and care. Each shapes the others.
I’ve spent the past decade working with creatives, practitioners, students, and community spaces, including LGBTQ+ and neurodivergent people. I support people to make meaning, find grounding, and reconnect with what feels true and alive for them.
I’m also a parent. This has deeply shaped how I understand care, limits, repair, and the intelligence of the nervous system. It keeps my work practical, relational, and real.
As a writer, I explore transformation, belonging, grief, ecological intimacy, queer becoming, and the ways land moves through us. My first poetry collection, Second Person (Victoria University Press, 2020), sits alongside essays and ongoing creative experiments at my Substack, Making Mischief.
+ trauma-informed
+ queer-affirming and ENM-respectful
+ culturally reflective and Tangata Tiriti-aligned
+ non-pathologising and process-oriented
+ spacious, creative, and grounded
+ guided by curiosity rather than hierarchy
People often tell me that working together feels grounding and imaginative.
Positionality
I am Pākehā and Tangata Tiriti, living in Whāingaroa/Raglan, Aotearoa, New Zealand.
My practice is shaped by ongoing unlearning, relational accountability, and deep respect for Māori knowledge, sovereignty, and place-based ways of knowing. I understand therapy and creative work as inherently relational, cultural, and political, shaped by land, lineage, power, and history.
I aim to meet people with integrity, cultural awareness, and a living commitment to honouring Te Tiriti o Waitangi in my relationships and in my work.
The Path That Led Me Here
My path hasn’t been linear, but it has been coherent.
I began with a background in development studies and education, followed by work in community development and environmental education, and creative practice in non-clinical arts spaces. Along the way, I trained as a writer and deepened my relationship with land and ecological systems, learning to think in cycles, interdependence, and care.
This orientation eventually led me into movement and embodied practice through Open Floor International, and into clinical training. I hold a Master’s in Clinical Arts Therapy (First Class Honours) from Whitecliffe College.
I’ve since taught postgraduate creative arts therapy students, supervised emerging practitioners, facilitated groups, and supported creative and learning communities to make, reflect, and unfold.
My life remains an ecosystem:
writing, movement, teaching, therapy, land-connection, creativity.
None of these are separate. They inform and nourish each other.
What It’s Like Working With Me
Working with me feels spacious and grounded, playful when it wants to be, and respectful of your pace.
You don’t need to be “creative.”
You don’t need to know where you’re going.
You just need to arrive as you are.
Together, we follow the threads that are asking for attention, including images, sensations, stories, longings, tensions, and questions, working collaboratively and relationally with a kind of curiosity that makes room for new worlds.
Short Bio
Rata Gordon (they/she) is a poet, creative arts therapist, educator, and mentor based in Whāingaroa / Raglan, Aotearoa. They work with individuals, practitioners, and learning communities seeking creative, ethical, and embodied ways of working with complexity. Rata holds a Master’s degree in Clinical Arts Therapy (First Class Honours) from Whitecliffe College. Their first poetry collection, Second Person, was published by Victoria University Press in 2020. They offer creative arts therapy/counselling, creative mentoring, reflective supervision, workshops, and research-informed professional development that weave together land, body, story, and expressive process.