Fast Talking PI

Description

Fast Talking PI is the first 'singular, confident and musical' collection of poetry by Auckland writer Selina Tusitala Marsh. 'Tusitala' means writer of tales in Samoan, and Marsh here lives up to her name with stories of her life, her family, community, ancestry, and history. Her poetry is sensuous and strong, using lush imagery, clear rhythms and repetitions to power it forward. The list poem is a favourite style, but she also writes with a Pacific lyricism entirely her own. Fast Talking PI is structured in three sections, 'Tusitala (personal), 'Talkback' (political and historical) and 'Fast Talking PI' (already a classic). In poems like 'Guys Like Gauguin' she writes as a 'calabash breaker', fighting back against historic injustices; but in other poems she explores the idea of the calabash as the honoured vessel for identity and story. Ultimately, though, Marsh exhorts herself to 'be nobody's darling', as a writer she is a self-proclaimed 'darling in the margins', and Fast...