Poi E: meaning, translation and the Pātea story

“Poi E” means, roughly, “O poi”: it is a song sung to a poi ‘a light ball on a string, swung to a song’, calling on it to fly, swing and spin like a fantail and then to come close, hold on and bind up the love of the two of them. NZ Folk Song, whose English version reads the poi as the singer’s own feelings, records that the lyricist Ngoi Pēwhairangi likened the darting poi to young Māori finding their way through the city. She wrote the words in 1982 to music by Dalvanius Prime, and the Pātea Māori Club’s recording, made after the town’s freezing works closed, was number one in New Zealand in 1984. Below: what the title means, what each part of the song says, with the key words from Te Aka Māori Dictionary, and the story of the song.

Updated 23 October 2026 · 9 min read

Tap 🔊 to hear an example. Māori examples play Papa Reo, the te reo Māori voice made by Te Hiku Media from recordings of native speakers.

Why the full lyrics are not printed here. Poi E is still in copyright: in New Zealand a song’s words and music are protected for 50 years after the end of the year their author died, and Ngoi Pēwhairangi died in 1985 and Dalvanius Prime in 2002. A full English translation would reproduce the song too. So this page explains it in its own words and quotes only a word or three at a time. The full words, with an English version, are on NZ Folk Song, reprinted there by arrangement with Prime’s label, Maui Music; Te Ara prints the closing section beside a clip of the video.

What does “poi e” mean?

Poi is the ball itself. Te Aka Māori Dictionary defines it as “a light ball on a string of varying length which is swung or twirled rhythmically to sung accompaniment”, traditionally made of raupō ‘bulrush’ leaves; the same word is the poi dance and, as a verb, to swing the poi. Poi E is that kind of song: NZ Folk Song’s notes on the arrangement even mark an instrumental break usually filled with poi percussion.

The e is the harder half, and the sources give three ways to hear it:

A call. Te Aka’s particle e is “used … with terms of address”, as in E hine ‘Girl!’. NZ Folk Song’s English renders the chorus as an address, “Oh poi”, which is how most people translate the title. In Te Aka’s examples the particle comes before the name; in the song it follows the word.
A song ending. Te Aka also lists ē, “used to conclude a line or the end of a traditional song with no apparent meaning”. Lines of the song that end taku poi ‘my poi’ and then e sit naturally in that tradition.
Spelling. The title is printed Poi E by NZ History and NZ On Screen, Poi-E by NZ Folk Song and Poi e by Te Ara. They are the same title; none of them marks the e long.

So the plainest honest translation of the title is “O poi”, or “Poi!”, a song speaking to the poi in the singer’s hands.

What the song says, part by part

This follows the layout NZ Folk Song prints: a call from the leader, a verse, a chorus, the whole repeated, and a closing chant. Each part is summarised, not translated line for line.

The opening call

A woman leading the group, the kaea ‘leader’, as NZ Folk Song names her (Te Aka: to lead a haka), calls the poi in: patua ‘be struck’ is the passive of patu ‘to strike, hit, beat’, and the call is to strike the poi, all together. It is the count-in for the dance.

The verse: the poi flies like a fantail

The verse is a run of movement words, one after another, for what the poi does on its string: it flies out, sways from side to side, rolls and spins back towards the singer, ducks aside, shakes, swoops down, wriggles and climbs high, and the verse ends on taku poi ‘my poi’. In the middle sits the one picture: the poi is just like the tīwaiwaka ‘fantail’, the little bird that flits and turns in the bush. NZ Folk Song’s English reads every one of these lines as the singer’s own “feelings” and “emotions” as well as the ball, and its note calls the poi a symbol of a young woman’s affections, volatile but, with training, kept safe.

The chorus: come close and stay

Each chorus line begins “Poi E” and asks something of it: to come near, not to be different or stray, to stick close to the singer, to embrace, to wrap round, and finally to bind together ō tāua aroha ‘the love of us two’. The movement words of the verse give way to words of holding on. Tāua is the we of exactly two people, you and me, which is why NZ Folk Song renders it “our love”.

The closing chant

At the end, NZ Folk Song notes, the line “Poi, my poi” is sung four times and everyone chants a last couplet sending the poi flying off, swaying, up and down, whakarunga ‘upwards’ and whakararo ‘downwards’.

The key words, from Te Aka

Each word is given as Te Aka Māori Dictionary defines it; the right-hand column says where it comes in the song.

Māori	Te Aka’s meaning	In Poi E
rere	to fly, flow, leap, rush (any gliding movement)	the verse’s first movement, and the closing chant’s
porotiti	to revolve, spin, rotate, twirl	the spinning poi, in the verse
tītahataha	to sway from side to side, roll from side to side	the verse, and the closing chant
hurihuri	to turn round and round, roll, spin, twirl	the verse
tīwaiwaka	fantail	the verse’s one simile; the bird is also pīwakawaka
pīoioi	to shake, brandish, wave, sway	the verse
korikori	to move, get going	the verse
whakatata	to approach, go close to	the first chorus line
kaua … rerekē	do not … be different, changed	the second
piri	to stick, adhere, cling, keep close	the third
awhi	to embrace, hug, cuddle, cherish	the fourth
tāpeka	to pass a garment around the limbs or body; a sash	the fifth, as the passive tāpekatia
aroha	to love, feel concern, feel compassion	the sixth
paihere	to bind together in a bundle	the last chorus line

Most of these are ordinary words a learner meets early: rere, piri, awhi and aroha are all in the course’s vocabulary. Our own free te reo Māori course teaches them one lesson a day, with Papa Reo’s recordings.

What Poi E is about

On the surface it is a poi song, and a lively one. Underneath, the sources name three purposes, which sit happily together:

Pride for young Māori. NZ History says the song was “a way to encourage young Māori to be proud of being Māori – in a format that young people were comfortable with”. NZ Folk Song says Pēwhairangi had asked Prime how he would teach the younger generation to be proud of being Māori and Kiwi, and he answered: through their language and culture, in the medium they liked.
The fantail in the city. NZ Folk Song reports Pēwhairangi likening the poi, flitting like a fantail through the forest, to Māori youth finding their way among the skyscrapers of the Pākehā world while still searching for identity.
Selling the language. Prime saw it, in NZ History’s words, as a way to market Māori language and culture, and told AudioCulture he would not compromise with an English version: “If the beat doesn’t sell it, nothing will.”

Pēwhairangi was well placed to write it. The Dictionary of New Zealand Biography describes her as a Ngāti Porou performer, teacher and songwriter of Tokomaru Bay, who co-developed the Te Ataarangi method of teaching te reo and worked in the Tū Tangata programme for alienated urban Māori youth; she also wrote E Ipo for Prince Tui Teka. More of her songs, and others New Zealanders sing, are in Māori songs everyone knows.

The Pātea story

Pātea is a small town on the South Taranaki coast, on State Highway 3 between Hāwera and Whanganui. Te Ara says its meat-freezing works, established in 1883, were the economic basis of the town for a century, employing over 800 workers, and closed in 1982, when they faced substantial upgrading to meet European Economic Community requirements; a dire future was predicted for the town. NZ Folk Song describes young Māori leaving their close-knit marae for the cities to find work.

Dalvanius Prime was a Pātea boy: born there on 16 January 1948, a freezing worker’s son, he spent the 1970s singing soul in Australia with Dalvanius and the Fascinations, AudioCulture records, before coming home to produce records. In 1982 he visited Pēwhairangi at Tokomaru Bay, and NZ History says the two wrote Poi E and two other songs in a single day. “I could hum a tune and she could write Māori words and phrases which were exactly the same as the tune,” Prime recalled.

The singers were the Pātea Māori Club, previously the South Taranaki Cultural Club (Te Ara). Record companies were not interested, so Prime started his own label, Maui Records, and recorded the song in late 1983, with the club’s vocals over bass, Linn drums and a synthesiser (NZ History). The video, NZ On Screen says, follows the club, with the breakdancer Joe Moana, round the local marae, Wellington’s Manners Mall and Pātea’s main street, past the town’s memorial to the Aotea canoe.

Number one

Commercial radio barely played it, NZ History says, but a television news story gave it publicity. AudioCulture records that it entered the chart on 10 February 1984, reached number one and stayed there four weeks, and spent 22 weeks in the chart; NZ On Screen calls it 1984’s highest-selling single, and the Dictionary of New Zealand Biography says it earned a platinum record for 15,000 copies. In Britain the music paper NME made it single of the week, and in 1984 the club toured the United Kingdom, playing the London Palladium and the Edinburgh Festival and giving a Royal Command Performance (NZ History). Te Ara says the hit drew nationwide attention to Pātea. The songs were later expanded into Poi E: The Musical, telling how the works’ closure affected the town; AudioCulture dates its premiere to 28 October 1994 at the New Plymouth Opera House.

Boy, and the documentary

In 2010 Taika Waititi used the song in his film Boy; AudioCulture describes a scene of the director parodying a Michael Jackson video to it. With a remake of the video made with the film’s actors, NZ History says, the song went back into the charts, and Stuff reported it peaking at number 19, 26 years after its first run. More films with te reo in them are in Māori movies.

In 2016 Tearepa Kahi’s documentary Poi E: The Story of Our Song told the story with Pātea locals and fans including Taika Waititi and Stan Walker; NZ On Screen says it was applauded at the opening of the 2016 Auckland film festival. AudioCulture adds that in 2016 the album Poi E reached number 8 in the album chart. Neither writer lived to see it: Prime died of cancer on 3 October 2002, aged 54, and Pēwhairangi had died at Tokomaru Bay on 29 January 1985.

Where the accounts differ

Sources disagree on the year attached to the song, mostly because it was written, recorded and a hit in three different years:

Source	What it says
NZ History	written in 1982; recorded late 1983; number one in March 1984
NZ Folk Song	written in 1982; 22 weeks in the chart in 1984, four at number one
AudioCulture	entered the chart 10 February 1984; four weeks at number one
Te Ara, “Māori composers”	a hit for the Pātea Māori Club in 1982
Te Ara, kapa haka	a huge hit in 1983
Te Ara, Pātea	the club’s 1984 hit
Stuff (2010)	written in 1983

This page follows the chart record: written in 1982, recorded at the end of 1983, number one in 1984.

What is a poi?

A poi is a light ball on a string, swung and tapped in time to a song, usually by women; Te Ara’s history of Māori instruments calls it the most common rhythmic Māori instrument. Its history, from training the wrists to the canoe poi, and how a poi item fits into a performance with haka and action songs, are in Kapa haka explained. The poi’s place among the other traditional instruments is in taonga puoro.