Fast Talking PI  Selina Tusitala Marsh (AUP, 2009), 72 pp & CD. ISBN 978-1-86940-432-1 RRP$25

Jenny Clay

Selina Tusitala Marsh was the first Pacific Islander to graduate with a doctorate in English from the University of Auckland, where she is now a lecturer. She is a performance poet, as well as writing for the page, and I first heard her reading the poem ‘Fast Talking PI' at a Going West Festival in Titirangi. It is a poem with rhythm and power in the repetition of many different descriptions of being a Pacific Islander: "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", "I'm a vaka PI...a star-charting PI". Her reading of the poem is on the CD that accompanies the book, one of seven of the thirty-two poems in Fast Talking PI  with music composed and performed by Tim Page.

The poem which immediately follows it, ‘Acronym' is a response to a colleague not understanding what ‘PI' stands for in the poem. Selina gives it a twist and suggests for him many other potential meanings of PI: Pass Interference, Parallel Interface, Post Intelligence, Partner Institutions, Programme Instructions and Public Intoxication, although his ‘Protocol Interruption' had tragic consequences for the poem. ‘A Samoan Star-Chant for Matariki' is also featured on the CD, a poem of calling forth with all the rhythm of the chant.

Tusitala means writer of tales, and Fast Talking PI  contains many tales. ‘Calabash Breakers' talks about

the boundaries
always crossed
by someone
petulant

by the "unsettled", "the calabash breakers" like Hinemoa in the story of Tutanekai and Hinemoa, or the "younger brother", as in stories of Maui, the "trouble makers" who "sail the notes of our songs". The poet says,

we should know them
we now need them
to catch bigger suns

The Tusitala section has the more personal poems in the book. ‘The Sum of Mum' is about the incubation of the poet's three sons. The math calculations of the time taken for this contrast with her descriptive language:

yolk eyes staring into membrane galaxy
flicking pulse and finger
nail into red-darkness
everything adds up to four

‘Cardboard Crowns' is divided into sections of morning, afternoon, yesterday, today, and tomorrow. Marsh speaks of working with teenagers, talking about "NZ lit", "cooking with five year olds", and blowing up balloons for kindy kids. The five year olds are "Tagaloa's boat builders" and to the eighteen year olds she throws "out a life line/ but no-one's read it".

In ‘Things on Thursdays' Marsh compares all the things that John Updike managed to do and still write and wonders why she couldn't do the same. She describes her acts of juggling, trying to write while teaching, changing the baby, "moving house four times", "wipe the baby", propping up the finances, and interspersed between each activity is "and write", ending with "yeah right".

The poems take a political perspective in the second part of the book, ‘Talkback', in poems such as ‘Guys like Gauguin' who regard "the south" as an "erogenous zone", where the women "ripen like pawpaw" and

are best slightly raw
delectably firm 

In ‘Two Nudes on a Tahitian Beach, 1894' the poet goes inside the painting and becomes one of the subjects, both observed and observing, and speaks for the two nudes:

you Gauguin
piss us
off.

In ‘Nails for Sex' sailors steal iron "when the trade supply ran aground" leaving "moaning holes". ‘Realpolitik', a poem that includes lines from Captain Cook's journal about disturbing their "happy tranquillity", says,

a woman from Tahiti
could be made
wife for a few
moons, a blade or two.

Marsh plays with possibilities, usage, and interpretations in language from the first poem, ‘Googling Tusitala'. In ‘Hone Said' the discussion is around what was said, what was heard, and what was said to have been heard, the difference between ‘have' and ‘am', about interpretation and understanding. Did Hone Tuwhare say,

the only land I have
is that between my toes

or

the only land I am
is that between my toes ?

The book finishes with the poem ‘Outcast' with the instruction: "be nobody's darling". It shows the movement from "draw me a paper road I'll sign it" and "show me a mould/ I'll fit it" to "a brown woman walking", getting

beyond the line
the justified edge
that breaking page

with a map in her arms
to get her beyond the reef.

NZPS Home