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.

Selina Tusitala Marsh

Dr Selina Tusitala Marsh is of Samoan, Tuvaluan, English and French descent. She 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. Marsh represented Tuvalu at the London Olympics Poetry Parnassus event in 2012; her work has been translated into Ukrainian and Spanish and has appeared in numerous forms live in schools, museums, parks, billboards, print and online literary journals. As Commonwealth Poet (2016), she composed and performed for the Queen at Westminster Abbey. She became New Zealand's Poet Laureate in 2017.