This week in our culture spotlight we caught up with poet, rapper, and general legend of the scene Dominic Hoey. We’re stoked to host a showcase from his publishing company, Dead Bird Books at Twisted this year so we took the time ahead of it to find out what they’re all about. We chatted about how Dead Bird Books started, the intersection of writing and music, performing as a poet at festivals and heaps more - read on and get amongst! 

“I became a writer from rapping, I was always interested in writing in general but rapping was how I started, because I didn’t really know any writers or poets but I knew rappers, and that was a way to use words. I didn’t read until I was about 8 or 9 because I’m dyslexic. So I started rapping when I was about 12, started performing when I was 16, got a record deal when I was 19, and the whole time I was writing really bad poetry – I always wanted to write a novel but it wasn’t really until my early 30’s that I actually attempted to do that and started taking that side of writing more seriously.

I was in the hip hop community in my teens, we didn’t really consider ourselves an art scene although I guess we were, so we were doing all ages shows at community centres and stuff. At 19 or 20, when I got that record deal we did some tours that were pretty crazy, we didn’t really know what we were doing. Now everything is way more streamlined – because of social media we can see how people are doing shit in the scene whereas we were just doing shit in the dark, we didn’t really know, maybe someone had a magazine or a VHS tape and that was the only way you could see how things were.

Dead Bird Books started because I had this manuscript for my first proper poetry book that I was shopping around and no one wanted anything to do with it – I think I sent it to every publisher in Australasia and got one email back saying “no thanks” and that was it. At the time I was doing shows and there were heaps of people coming and heaps of people who liked my work so I thought I’m just going to publish it. By that point I’d already done a zine that sold hundreds of copies and I thought ‘if this is happening to me, it’s obviously happening to other people’ so I talked to my mate Sam about publishing stuff and it just took off.

Running a publishing company is like having a label, we don’t really get paid for it, so I guess it’s future is up to how much more energy we’ve got to put in, but I think we’ll just publish more awesome writers who wouldn’t get published otherwise, people that we find exciting, and see what happens.

In terms of my music, I just made a new album with my friend Kāhu so in theory that will come out at some point, we’re trying to get it mixed and mastered at the moment. Music intersects with writing for me through rapping, because that was how I learned how to write, how to construct a metaphor, how I learned how to edit my work, all of that kind of shit - if it wasn’t for rapping I wouldn’t be doing what I’m doing now.

I’ve performed a lot at music festivals as a poet. I think if you’re a good poet you should really get up anywhere - I’ve opened for Homebrew, I’ve opened for punk bands, I’ve performed in pubs full of fucking maniacs - I’m not saying it always works, but if you know what you’re doing you should be able to take it anywhere.

I think we have an incredible concentration of talent in this country with basically no support for it. Obviously there are organisations doing things in general, but I think all the government organisations and funding bodies are largely incompetent if not corrupt, and the majority of them don’t have any idea what’s going on on the ground. But it’s not all doom and gloom, we’ve got a lot of incredibly talented people, a lot of great grassroots organisations. The more I travel and do shit overseas, the more I realise that what we have in New Zealand is pretty incredible. 

In terms of the future of the arts in this country, It’s hard to say what the trajectory is especially with this government, but people will always make art – if you have that in your blood there’s no stopping you.” Have a scope below to learn a bit about some other incredible Authors that are representing Dead Bird Books at Twisted this year <3

https://twistedfrequency.nz/music/isla-huia-2025
https://twistedfrequency.nz/music/jenny-rockwell-2025 https://twistedfrequency.nz/music/liam-jacobson-2025

Big up to Dominic for being a huge inspiration to heaps of us in the crew and in Aotearoa’s creative community as a whole - be sure to give @deadbirdbooks a follow and get ready for the Dead Bird Books showcase at the Beat Bach this Twisted, we can’t wait!