Out south, poets don’t sit around begging the establishment to publish them. They make their own shows on their own stages with their own style – and this has got some Pacific publishers panting for more.

Michael Botur finds out how poets from Penrose to Papakura are spreading the South Auckland stamp from New South Wales to New York.

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Four of our best-known poets were sent to London as poetic ambassadors for the Cultural Olympiad of 2012.  Tusiata Avia (Samoa), Selina Tusitala Marsh (Tuvalu), Karlo Mila (Tonga) and Teresia Teaiwa (Kiribati) all represented Niu Sila after a decade of effort. They’ve set the scene for several NZ poets who wouldn't be in print at all were it not for Pacific publishers, leaving old fashioned scribes behind. 

The South Shall Rise Again

The South Auckland Poets Collective (SAPC) was founded in 2008 by Daren Kamali (Wallis and Futuna / Fiji) and Grace Taylor (England / Samoa.) The couple now run Niu Navigations, which builds upon Kamali’s success as a Fulbright scholar, Creative NZ Pacific Writer in Residence, and NZ rep at Solomon Islands and Palau festivals. He has published books with Hawaii’s Ala Press. Taylor, too, found her first publication where America meets Polynesia: in Hawaii.

At a February 13 fundraiser for typhoon-traumatised Tonga, Maryanne Pale told me how South Auckland poetry – frequently performed by first generation Kiwis – stands out from central Auckland’s stalwart Poetry Live. South Auckland poets typically memorise all of their work, incorporate song and dance, and paint YouTube with videod workshops, performances, and lectures. Pale runs CreativeTalanoa.com, which is the definitive forum for Pasifika poetry profiles; Taylor and South Auckland Poets Collective (SAPC) performed a TEDx talk last year; Doug Poole (Samoa / Europe) runs a website frequently publishing cross-cultural poetry, and he organised the POLYNATION performance poetry show in Queensland – and that’s just the tip of the iceberg.

South Styles

South Auckland poetry is distinguished by a concern for sister nations, an obsession with ethnicity and otherness, and a non-threatening puritanism which may be attributable to Grace Taylor’s influence (she has youth work experience). It could also come down to the significant role of the church in the lives of most Pacific Islanders.

Rewa Worley co-founded Waxed Poetic Revival and Nova Riche.

“Out south, there is a lot more poetry that involves god and prayer, purely because it’s Pacific.

“I would love to build up a new poetry scene on the North Shore, but it’s difficult, partly due to demographics. SUP isn’t perfect, but it’s continually encouraging, and the people there feel you, encourage you, and look like you: they’re young brown kids.”

American Nesian

Stand Up Poetry (SUP) typically features poets emulating Def Poetry Jam performers, whether they realise it or not. The February SUP reading I attended was a sea of backwards caps in a well-lit café serving non-alcoholic drinks. Many poets read off iPads and cellphones, a DJ played hip hop interludes, poets rapped in American accents, their words dwelled on their skin colour while people in the audience clicked their fingers like jazzy beatniks.

“At Poetry Live, there’s a demographic who have different social norms,” Worley says. “I feel some of Poetry Live isn’t accessible. In the South Auckland context there are some things that can’t be talked about. Out west, I saw one poet whose whole poem was about her pussy. It was awkward. I don’t understand why someone would share that.”

He’d be more shocked if he knew that many Palagi poets look up to fascists (Ezra Pound), junkies (Jim Carroll) and hoboes (James K Baxter.) Alcohol is embedded in almost any poetry event in Auckland – except out south, where the poets get high on life.

As Pale puts it, “I’ve never associated poetry with drink and drugs. A typical SAPC hangout period is exercise, coffee and going for walks.”

Pacific publication aside, the stage seems more important than the page. Worley, Pale and Taylor seem to believe that YouTube defines poetry.

“Getting published is a goal, but the urge to take to the stage and propagate spoken poetry is what I’m more driven towards,” Worley says. “I don’t look up written poetry on websites.”

None of the influential poets Worley and Pale list are long-dead British blokes; instead, most influence comes from digital age people on the South Auckland circuit who can be viewed on YouTube.

English minus the English

The SAPC was right at home when it made a 2012 pilgrimage to the legendary Nuyorican Poets Café, which had influenced Def Poetry, which had itself ripped off Gil Scott-Heron and the Last Poets, all of who helped hip hop emerge as a distinct genre.

Few SAPC poems utilise stanza, metre or stress. Gushing torrents of unstructured personal commentary full of I, me and myself are commonplace, punctuated by dramatic pauses and breaks for laughter. MIT’s creative writing teachers may well be inventing their own rules for poetry; then again, the internet seems to be the predominant teacher of creative writing out south.  

Instead of lending me a book, Pale shows me YouTube vids. Her biggest influences all work in English, but none of them are English. There’s Luka Lesson (Greek Australian rapping poet), Lemon Andersen (American ex-con playwright) and Pacific Tongues (Hawaiian youths concerned about the marginalisation of Polynesian culture in Hawaii.)

Mentoring

Dr Karlo Mila (Tonga) was one of the first Pacific Island writers in New Zealand. Her antecedents spent decades in solitude before a wave of Pacific writing emerged around 2000.

“Albert Wendt was on his own for a very long time. Pasifika poetry is still quite strongly characterised by women. There were Pacific women poets who were around before me, like Konai Helu, Momoe Von Reiche and novelist Sia Figiel. Then Tusiata Avia (Samoa) and Selina Tusitala Marsh (Tuvalu) were published around the same time as me in a wave of us mentored by Albert. He was our matua.”

She says Maori publisher Huia “deliberately hunted” Pacific work around 2000. Before Huia’s efforts, Pacific material had been considered too exotic.

“Editors publish what they deem to be familiar to themselves. Selina once talked to the Auckland University Press publisher who didn’t understand Konai Helu Thaman’s poetry. There were different metaphors and ideas in it.”

Today Polynesians are nothing unusual in the written world. “It’s easier for a publisher to relate to our poetry now as it is grounded in an NZ experience.”  

While the latest wave of Pacific poets have had help from Mila as a copyeditor, she says the SAPC isn’t just some inevitable cultural phenomenon spawned by her –  “It’s largely because of the work Grace has done.”

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