Bio
Gail Zing is an Aotearoa New Zealand author of three collections of poetry, including Some Bird, selected for Best NZ Books 2024 by The NZ Listener. Winner of both Caselberg and NZPS International Poetry Competitions and placed and shortlisted for many others including the 2025 Fish Poetry Prize, her work has been published in Poetry Aotearoa, Cordite Poetry Review, Poems for the Planet, Stone Circle Review, Landfall and many others. She is a creative-writing teacher and editor, and in 2025 received a residency at Robert Lord House in Dunedin. https://www.theseventhletter.nz/
Gail Zing
In the meantime Greta will summon fairy tales to save the world
because thunder still comes for the strange girls
for the snow bees for the shelled
homes for all the homes bereaved
she will dislodge the musk mirrors
in the little boy's eyes she will wash the world
fallen in a black hole
because she woke the splendid sun
because she woke
here come the starlings
these witches you fear
murmuring sweet as
ancient rhyme foaming up
from the stream