'The intersections between poetry and music': Rachel O'Neill

Author image credit: Tash Helasdottir-Cole Rachel O’Neill is a writer, filmmaker and artist living and working between Te Whanganui-a-Tara and Kāpiti Coast. They recently published their third collection of poetry, Symphony of Queer Errands (Tender Press, 2025), a book-length narrative poem completed during their tenure as the 2023 Randell Cottage Writing Fellow. Following a charming but awkward composer as they strive to create the titular symphony, we meet a strange and compelling ensemble cast of musicians and instruments who come together to bring the work to life. O’Neill is the author of two previous collections of prose poems, One Human in Height (Hue and Cry Press, 2013) and Requiem for a Fruit (Tender Press, 2021).

What’s been the best part of writing and releasing Symphony of Queer Errands? As the book explores the intersections between poetry and music, a real highlight has been collaborating with local musicians, composers and artists. In May last year, friend and musician Andy Hummel invited me to open at his gig, prompting me to hold a listening party. Over the last few years I’ve been recording sounds in my immediate environment and then making sound design works that go on to seed various forms of poetry. Writing through sound enables me to unlock potent emotions and memories alongside the usual balance I aim to strike between matter-of-fact tone and surreal situations. At the gig I shared sound works and poems inspired by the process, including a ‘Prelude’ from the new book. It’s also been a privilege working with composer Lucky Pollock. They premiered a piece at the book launch inspired by an invented instrument in Symphony of Queer Errands called The Hard Soft Revolt, a piano forte made of parts in revolution, the strings guillotined rather than plucked or hammered. Lucky, a classically trained pianist, reprogrammed a keyboard with synths and metallic samples. They played Chopin’s Étude Op. 10, No. 3, in E major. It was beautifully bombastic! It was also special to have a collective artwork on the cover called ‘Let’s just say it was a hot night in Double Innuendo (heavy on suggestion)’, 2012 by All the Cunning Stunts, a collaboration I’m part of with Liz Allan, Clare Noonan and Marnie Slater. The cover was designed by the multi-talented Ya-Wen Ho at Tender Press. Can you tell us more about your stay at Randall Cottage? Living and working for six months at Randell Cottage was a wonderfully productive time. I completed Symphony of Queer Errands and began work on my fourth book. I also developed a ‘listening practice’ that energised my writing projects. As mentioned, I sourced local ‘found instruments’ and sounds to explore their auditory possibilities, in turn sparking ‘audial images’ that generated various forms of poetry. These audial experiments became a sensory portal for me, granting me more direct access to emotional experience, even if then leaning surreal. For example, a poem called ‘The Lantern of Fear sausage sizzle’ recently published in Landfall 248 reimagines a fundraiser I ‘tuned’ into near the Wellington Cable Car as phantasmagoria, a form of horror theatre popular in the 19th Century. Another poem published on NZ Poetry Shelf focuses on a woman grieving the loss of her children who comes to believe they have become eagle rays and devotes herself to learning how to communicate with them. I also wrote a longer narrative poem ‘Soul to Body’, inspired by the public sculpture ‘Body to Soul’ by Mary-Louise Browne in the Wellington Botanic Gardens. ‘Soul to Body’ features a series of ‘shape poems’, where the visual layout of words on the page contributes to the meaning of the work. I wanted to create a playful experience for the reader in terms of movement and rhythm, expanding the imaginative scope of a poem that celebrates intergenerational healing and humorously explores the tension between identity and transformation. Who is your ideal reader for this book? Who needs to read it? While I wanted to write a book that resonates with LGBTQIA+ readers and anyone who enjoys collaborating, whether artistic or otherwise, I always aim to be as open and invitational toward readers who connect, for whatever reason, with the book. I try to be transparent in the writing itself regarding how I’m engaging with meaning-making, ideas, emotions and concerns. I want the reader to bring their own values, beliefs, experiences and relational ways of being to the table. Ideally, the energy flows back and forth, potentially in a participatory way. Tell us what inspires you? An author, a book, a place, or whatever you like… Recently in a Q&A on Paula Green’s NZ Poetry Shelf I spoke about local musicians and composers who inspire me. In terms of international composers, I’ve been really inspired by the work and processes of Julius Eastman and Tōru Takemitsu of late. For Classical on Cuba in 2024, Elliot Vaughan programmed Eastman’s piece for ten cellos, The Holy Presence of Joan d’Arc. The work inspires me to think of a note that is so resilient it can travel 500 years through time and still ‘speak boldly’. I enjoy the way Tōru Takemitsu transposes the metaphor and reality of a garden onto that of a working orchestra, where collaborative energies sort of dissolve individuation and hierarchies of worth and something like harmonic/sonic equity emerges. What Aotearoa New Zealand book do you wish you’d written?

There are too many books to name. I feel if every generation works to ensure more books are written and published for underserved readers, we are all winning. What’s been your best read this year so far? Again, hard to narrow it down! Two books that continue to resonate in my marrow are Amma by Saraid de Silva (2025 Randell Cottage Writing Fellow) and All That We Know by Shilo Kino. Both books explore the intimacies of cross-generational relationships and healing in distinctive ways. They are also profoundly courageous books that ask how we can build capacity to push through fear, repair through love and in turn challenge historically-rooted oppression and dysfunction. And last, but definitely not least, what are you writing next? This year I’m teaching full time and right now I’m taking the opportunity to pause and consider what I want to pour my energy into next. I have outlines for a young adult novel and TV series that I’m excited about and in terms of work underway, I have an advanced feature film script to carry on with and, as mentioned, my next poetry book. I prefer to work on one thing at a time and not rush things. In fact, I’m just now remembering that I’m planning to direct my next short film later in the year! So, I’ll just say for now—ideally something fun and collaborative! Symphony of Queer Errands (Tender Press, 2025) is available now. See below for a poem from the collection, published with thanks and permission from Rachel and Tender Press. The Hard Soft Revolt Now, this is a kind of pianoforte made of revolting parts. The more sentimental the music performed on it, the more riotous the componentry becomes until it eventually explodes into a volatile mass of citizenry capable of anything. What do you think, are the strings plucked or hammered? Wrong! Guillotined! There’s a shadow side to every instrument. Patriotic compositions rouse it to such a fervour of intoxicated bellowing that the whole thing starts to sway and eventually sinks into a drunken stupor, occasionally draping itself over an unsuspecting guest. It’s time to lift the lid so you can see what I mean about the strings. Just be prepared to step back. We’ll speak quietly for a minute. As you can see there is an isolated revolution taking place in the far left corner. That repeating chime is indeed the sound of blades severing, and in the background is the fountain of blades fed by a spring of blades that flows beneath that velvet firmament, itself atop a reservoir of blades accrued over centuries and yet to be exhausted by all this refreshing favouritism toward new systems.