Dark Sparring

Overview

Where Selina Marsh’s first collection, Fast Talking PI, boldly, insightfully, and lyrically wrestled with the realities of being an individual of Pacific descent in a primarily European world, her latest offering fiercely combats the loss of a loved one with all of the techniques of poetry and the Thai kickboxing she practices at her disposal. The compendium brims with a fluid, humming list of poems, literary shout outs, and personal elegies, as Marsh takes readers through her mother’s cancer diagnosis and the long journey as her illness played itself out. Along the way, the poet offers glimpses of other parts of her world as well: scenes from Matiatia to Orapiu to Apia; classroom politics; the importance of leadership; and the reasons she feels New Zealand is a “lucky” country. The affecting, rhythmic verses in the book are given a literal, and appealing, voice in the accompanying audio CD, on which Marsh reads aloud a selection of the poems.

Reviews

"The best contemporary Pacific art and writing is characterised by a toughness alongside a joyousness . . . and also a briskness and a freshness—all qualities very much in evidence in Selina Tusitala Marsh’s first collection of poems."  —Metro magazine, on Fast Talking PI

"Her poems are united by a nimble rhythm that lays an undercurrent of heartbeat, of drumbeat, and of the beat of the sea. The words pulsate and sizzle, allegro and andante, and the old idea that poetry belongs in the ear as much as it resonates on the page, is once again new. . . . A fine debut."  —NZ Herald, on Fast Talking PI

"All in all, Fast Talking PI is a poetic amalgam: bookish and hilarious; ancestral and parental; informed by high and low culture. If it expands the contribution made by Pacific Island verse-makers to contemporary poetry, it also broadens our understanding of what it is to belong to twenty-first century New Zealand."  —Siobhan Harvey, author, Landfall, on Fast Talking PI

Author Biography

Selina Tusitala Marsh is a lecturer in the English department at the University of Auckland. She is the author of the poetry collection Fast Talking PI, which was awarded the NZSA Jessie Mackay Award for Best Book of Poetry. Her work has also been featured in Niu Voices: Contemporary Pacific Fiction 1 and the Montana New Zealand Book Award–winning anthology, Whetu Moana: Contemporary Polynesian Poetry in English.