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Photo by Victoria Birkinshaw.

About

Hi! I'm Rata. I love tending to communities of creative practice. I especially enjoy creating beautiful messes in the spaces between poetry, dance, visual arts and theatre.

I am a poet and my first collection of poetry titled Second Person was published in June 2020 with Victoria University Press. My poetry has also appeared in publications including Best New Zealand Poems, Landfall, Sport, and The Spinoff.

I have been practising using ‘movement as medicine’ for 12 years. I am an Open Floor dance teacher and completed my training through Open Floor International in 2018. I will be teaching regular Open Floor dance classes in Raglan throughout 2021. I am also a working member of Open Floor International and sit on the Art in Motion circle. 

My movement practice feeds and is fed by my writing practice: the art of connecting to, and amplifying our strange and wonderful 'inner voices'. I also run online movement and writing sessions called 'Writing from the Body'.

I am am an arts therapist, and I completed a Masters in Arts Therapy with First Class Honours through Whitecliffe College in 2020. My dissertation was titled ‘Dreaming with my body: Arts-based research, expressive arts therapy, and new motherhood.’ You can read excerpts of it here and here, or contact me for the full version. 

My background is in working in community development and mental health. I currently offer workshops that promote wellbeing through creative practice for schools, businesses and other organisations. Contact me for more information.

​I am currently based in Raglan, New Zealand. 

I send interesting & inspiring emails!