Ethnographer Elsdon Best records hundreds of traditional Māori karakia (incantatory chants), waerea (war curses), and oriori (lullaby genealogies) from Tūhoe elders in New Zealand's Urewera ranges. These poetic forms encode tribal history, cosmology, and pre-contact folklore, using complex metaphor (kupu whakarite) and rhythmic repetition. The collection preserves material endangered by colonization.

Best's transcriptions enabled Māori poets (Hone Tuwhare, Apirana Taylor) to reclaim indigenous oral poetics within English-language New Zealand literature, blending whakapapa (genealogy) with modern free verse. The karanga (ceremonial call) and whaikōrero (oratory) patterns influenced Pacific poetry movements, showing how transcribed folklore can fuel postcolonial poetic identity against colonial literary norms.