Marty Smith

Author photo: Florence Charvin Photography

Marty Smith (Taranaki Tūturu, Te Āti Awa) has been in racing for years; if not as a rider or an owner/breeder, then putting on a fiver here and there. She thanks the TAB for some nice dresses. She spent her teaching life at Taradale High School, loving the school family. Her poetry collection Horse with Hat won the NZSA Jessie Mackay Best First Book Award for Poetry in 2014. In 2015 she won an arts grant to take half a year’s grace to write It Gets In Your Blood (2026). Five years to work out what to do, five more to let it float, for she had a free pass into the world of horses and horse people. She thanks those generous people more than they can know.