Dark Sparring: Poems

Of Samoan, Tuvaluan, English and French descent, Selina Tusitala Marsh was the first Pacific Islander to graduate with a PhD in English from the University of Auckland and is now a lecturer in the English Department, specialising in Pasifika literature. Her first collection, the bestselling Fast Talking PI, won the NZSA Jessie Mackay Award for Best First Book of Poetry in 2010. She represented Tuvalu at the London Olympics Poetry Parnassus event in 2012. Marsh's work has been translated into Ukrainian and Spanish and has appeared in numerous forms in schools, museums, parks, billboards, print and online literary journals.

I had never danced the fatele before. Then, five days after mother died, our Tuvalu relatives came to the house, rolled up the mats on the floor, and started drumming. We moved around the coffin, feet stamping an escalating rhythm while hands and heads swayed, tilting right then left. Voices filled the lounge as mother’s body was carried out the front door.'