Short / Poto - keeping it brief!

The big book of small stories. Iti te kupu, nui te korero.

Short/Poto is a bilingual anthology of 100 flash fiction pieces by many of Aotearoa’s finest writers, presented in both English and te reo Māori. An ambitious, timely and beautifully realised concept. The brainchild of editor Michelle Elvy, lovingly brought to fruition with her editing partner Kiri Piahana-Wong.

Michelle can also take a large measure of the credit for Aotearoa’s National Flash Fiction Day competition. She is passionate about a kind of ‘meta’ flash genre. In a recent interview on the Bookenz podcast she describes the creative focus and freedom that a 300 word limit imposes; “using language deliberately and with craft, so that few words create maximum impact…With lines blurred across prose poetry, flash and creative non-fiction.”

One part of her vision for this anthology was a book that would be a celebration of both the narrative and lyrical scope of Flash, and of the diversity and talent of NZ writers/kaituhi. It achieves both things. Many well known, highly acclaimed writers feature, along with pieces submitted by new and emerging voices. There is ethnic diversity reflecting contemporary Aotearoa and the writing is every bit as stylistically diverse and rich. The brevity makes each piece a meditation.

Elevating this purpose further, to achieve a second ambition, the book is produced with each piece in english and te reo side by side, kanohi ki te kanohi. Creating an invaluable resource for Maori language learners (and one that equally could support immersion te reo study of creative writing).

A few pieces were authored in te reo, and then translated, but the majority were submitted in English. When asked if, as editors, they were aware of any apparent shared cultural identify in the pieces authored in either language, editor Piahana-Wong is captivating. “No. What we were aware of, and aiming for, was the diversity. I think that our national cultural identity is revealed as a collective of voices.”

That insight, and the much greater number of submissions authored in English, guided a decision to present all pieces in the same way - English first, te reo facing. And simply, but unconventionally, ordered alphabetically by the first name of the kaituhi.

I ask about the process of translation; observing that using my beginner’s te reo even the book’s subtitle seems subtly different in each language. “Iti te kupu. Nui te korero” to me reads like, “Few words, big stories.” Not quite the same as the English “The big book of small stories.” Somehow that difference, sharing a sense but framing it so differently, feels like the promise that proper recognition of both languages might offer Aotearoa.

Piahana offers two delicate examples to illustrate the care taken to achieve that subtlety.

“Working with Hone (Hone Morris, a leader among the 10 translators used in the process) I was amazed by how his attention was frequently at the level of each word. Not a whole sentence. Not the story. But each word. Like in “Pounamu kei roto I te awe” by Ruby Solly where she talks about how a sound “blooms.. across the river”. And he thought it might be a typo. Did she mean blooms? He had read it, at first as “booms”. What does she mean by “Blooms”? So we talked about how a sound might open up like a flower, and how that concept is delicate, the opposite of Booms in fact.”

The other example she shares is of how, in a beautiful piece titled Carnal by Cadence Chung, the Chinese term Ye Ye means grandfather. And how in translating it, a deliberate decision is made not to translate to koroua, or poua, because in the English version the words Ye Ye, lets the reader know that this is a specifically Chinese family context. And that knowledge is, of course, just as relevant for readers of te reo Maori.

The end product of all that vision, care and attention is a taonga for learners of language, and exactly the education I needed to fall in love with Flash.

Listen to my interview with Short/Poto editors and hear selected kaituhi/authors read their flash pieces in english with te reo translations on BOOKENZ - available from 10 June 2025.