< Back to Contents

Ella Borrie

Enderby Island


If I can’t be your mainland girl
I’ll be lonely
in the Subantarctic.
Ex-girlfriend adjacent;
my heart rattling round
the incises
of wind-twisted trunks.
Rata blooming red
and bleeding flares
into the Southern Ocean.


Ella Borrie’s favourite part of any museum is the stuffed bird dioramas. Thanks to Enderby Trust and Heritage Expeditions she was able to see an abundance of living birds in New Zealand’s Subantarctic Islands. Her work is published in Starling, Mimicry and Turbine|Kapohau.