The University of Auckland’s Dr Selina Tusitala Marsh (right, photo Michelle Hyslop) is taking part in the largest gathering of the world’s poets in history called the poetry Olympics.
She's an educated, successful, talented Pacific Islander - the first to get a doctorate in English at Auckland University. Those are just a few of the reasons Dr Selina Tusitala Marsh penned her poem, Fast Talking PI. She was sticking up for herself and all Pacific Islanders.
The impetus came from a Wellington newspaper's 2008 front-page story, headlined "Pacific migrants a drain on economy". The article created an outcry because of an academic's claims using data that was found to be outdated.
"It was taken to the Human Rights Commissioner and the complaint was upheld. It started up this whirlpool of views, horrible stereotypes," Marsh explains. "And I thought, 'I don't know one criminal, I don't know one rapist and none of my friends or family are on welfare'.
"You just hear doom and gloom about Pacific Islanders. If you are young and coming through school and that's what you see, it entrenches [that as] reality."
Fast Talking PI was also the name of her first poetry collection, released in 2009. It won the Society of Authors' Best First Book of Poetry Award in 2010.
Its musicality means it's the kind of poem you have to listen to (listen here) - and it was released on a CD with five other poems. Its approach is simple - line after line describing the types of Pacific Islander that Marsh was thinking of.
"I'm a fast-talking PI, I'm a power-walking PI ...
I'm a village is the centre of my world PI,
I'm a cross-gendered, soul-blended, mascara'd PI,
I'm a published in a peer-reviewed journal PI,
I'm a gout-inflated, incubated, case study PI."
Full piece at New Zealand Herald online.
The impetus came from a Wellington newspaper's 2008 front-page story, headlined "Pacific migrants a drain on economy". The article created an outcry because of an academic's claims using data that was found to be outdated.
"It was taken to the Human Rights Commissioner and the complaint was upheld. It started up this whirlpool of views, horrible stereotypes," Marsh explains. "And I thought, 'I don't know one criminal, I don't know one rapist and none of my friends or family are on welfare'.
"You just hear doom and gloom about Pacific Islanders. If you are young and coming through school and that's what you see, it entrenches [that as] reality."
Fast Talking PI was also the name of her first poetry collection, released in 2009. It won the Society of Authors' Best First Book of Poetry Award in 2010.
Its musicality means it's the kind of poem you have to listen to (listen here) - and it was released on a CD with five other poems. Its approach is simple - line after line describing the types of Pacific Islander that Marsh was thinking of.
"I'm a fast-talking PI, I'm a power-walking PI ...
I'm a village is the centre of my world PI,
I'm a cross-gendered, soul-blended, mascara'd PI,
I'm a published in a peer-reviewed journal PI,
I'm a gout-inflated, incubated, case study PI."
Full piece at New Zealand Herald online.
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