Fast Talking PI

by Selina Tusitala Marsh

Winner, 2010 NZSA Jessie Mackay Award for Best First Book of Poetry

The judging panel found Marsh’s collection exhilarating: "The poems are sensuous but strong, using lush imagery and clear rhythms and repetitions to power them forward."
 
Touching on the poet’s community, ancestry, influences, and history, this debut collection of poetry lives up to the meaning behind the artist’s name—“writer of tales.” The featured verse is sensuous but strong, using lush imagery, clear rhythms, and repetitions to power it forward. With a unique Pacific lyricism, this compendium is structured in three sections that showcase different strengths, from personal poems and political and historical verse to those already destined to become classics. Fighting against historical injustices and exploring the ideas of identity and story—especially those associated with the afakasi or half-caste experience in a postcolonial world—this compilation will gratify fans of poetry everywhere.

Genres: Poetry, College

72 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2009

About the author

Dr Selina Tusitala Marsh is of Samoan, Tuvaluan, English, Scottish and French descent. She was the first Pacific Islander to graduate with a PhD in English from The University of Auckland and is now Associate Professor 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 has published two additional collections, Dark Sparring (2013) and Tightrope (2017). Marsh represented Tuvalu at the London Olympics Poetry Parnassus event in 2012; her work has been translated into multiple languages 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 and in 2019 was appointed as an Officer of the New Zealand Order of Merit for services to poetry, literature and the Pacific community.

Reviews

[Edwina]

First time I've ever read a collection of prose and I have to say I absolutely loved it! Selina Tusitala Marsh creates a mesmerising and captivating feeling throughout this collection. I especially loved the last pages at the end labelled "Talkback" that oppose the ideologies, preconceived notions of Pacific culture, indigenous populations especially strong Pacific women when colonisation was at full force. Absolutely loved it! Four stars!

[Chelsea Berry]

I do not read poetry very often but as someone who knows very little about the art and how to decipher meaning from poems, I enjoyed this collection. The poems seemed powerful and at times angry at the way Pacific Islanders were historically, and still are are, treated and portrayed in media and art.

I read the e-book version, but I see there is a CD with the book. I will refrain from rating as yet, as I would like to listen to the book and reread the poems to try and understand them better. For my first read through I did not want to interrupt myself and disrupt the flow of the poems to look up words - however the translations at the back helped my understanding in retrospect.

My favourite poem was The Sum of Mum - probably because I am a Mum, so I could relate to that poem, whereas I am a Pakeha, so can not fully understand the emotion and lived and historical experiences from which the author has created much of this work.

Possible prompts:

PopSugar
#15 - Pacific Island Author
#24 - Can be read in one sitting (which I did, but I will go back and take more time over each poem.)
#42 - Features two languages

52 Book Club
#4 - Title Starting with F
#11 - Less than 2022 Goodreads ratings
#15 - 5-Syllable Title
#28 - Award winning Book from my country
#43 - Author is published in more than one genre

[Nancy]

Finished: 20.11.2019
Genre: poetry
Rating: A++++
#TBR list 2019
Conclusion:

Looking for some good books by talented authors?
...Look towards New Zealand!
Poet Laureate Selina Tusitala Marsh has
given us 32 excellent poems!
#Stunning

My Thoughts

[Blair]

I saw Marsh, the recent NZ poet laureate, talking recently at the Melbourne Writers Festival and was very impressed so had to get this book (and get it signed!). There's something very rhythmically compelling about the long title poem, which she suggested worked well in schools and I think she's right. There is an impressively diverse range of poems here, most with Pasifika subject matter and themes. She's an important voice and well worth reading.

[Sonya]

A huge 4 1/2 stars. Just amazing depth within these poems - I truly believe these poems could provide excellent conversation starters especially in secondary school classrooms. The poems based around historical events from NZ & the Pacific are so impactful - excellent female interpretation of what has been ignored in many history books.

[Nathaniel]

“o le tala i tufuga o le vaa o Tagaloa

they stop-sing, pull
fell and gnaw with their teeth in the dark
till they see the dawn

they know when to hide
they’ve all read the story”

(from “Cardboard Crowns”)

[Noreen Miller]

Fast Talking PI is a fun collection of poems from a fresh perspective. As another reviewer commented her poetry is a challenging new fusion. The challenge is worth it. I enjoyed diving into notes for many poems to better understand unfamiliar cultural references and terms. I think it is about time a white woman stretch her understanding of another person's culture rather than expect the rest of the world to confirm to hers.

[Jo]

Amazing poems that are evocative and challenging, and full of the energy of life in the Pacific and in New Zealand

[Arabella]

Selina Tusitala Marsh is SO iconic

[Alma Diamond]

This was my first dive into the writing of a Pacific Islander. It's been an amazing experience and I can't wait to discover more literature from this part of the world

[Sarah]

I liked the poem "Spare the Rod".

[Ross Brighton]

http://ignoretheventriloquists.blogsp...

This review first appeared in the Christchurch Press Saturday 30 May 2009.

Selena Tusitala Marsh's debut collection reads like something spoken, rather than written. This cements her a place in the longstanding tradition of volumes published by performance poets in New Zealand. Notable precedents include David Mitchell, Apirana Taylor and of course Tusiata Avia. The central position of the poem as spoken work is further emphasised by the CD included with the book.
Marsh demonstrates a strong understanding of how the poem's placement on the page, its punctuation and use of repetition can inform the way it is read, evident in the impetus and speed of "Googling Tusitalia", "Not Another Nafanua Poem" and "Has the Whole Tribe Come Out From England?", contrasting with the slow meditation of "Langston's Mother" and "Contact 101".
Also at work is an astute knowledge of precedent and tradition, through which Marsh demonstrates an acute awareness of the history of both New Zealand and the Pacific. The legend of Himemoa and Tutanekai is invoked alongside the Samoan goddess Nafanua (Familliar from Avia's book Bloodclot) and the Hawaiian volcano deity Pele-'ai'honua; Gauguin makes an appearance, as does Bligh with his fellow mutineers from the Bounty. In "Realpolitik" Captain James Cook's Journals are pillaged in a more politically overt echo of Alan Loney's similar treatment in his A Great Antiskorbutick. The eponymous poem of the collection is dedicated to Anne Waldman, to whose Fast Speaking Woman the poem's title does homage. Also present is the ghost of the Oxacan Shamaness-seer María Sabina, whose trance-like chants permeate both Marsh and Waldman’s texts.
Having said all this there are several qualifications that I would like to make, though these are generally on matters of taste rather than objective issues of quality. Certain poems seem weak when compared to other, stronger poems in the collection, and some that are technically strong are let down by their underlying concepts or subject matter, or vice versa. An example of this is “Two Nudes on a Tahitian Beach, 1894”, where the subject matter, the sexual objectification of Pasifika Women in Gauguin’s painting of the same name, and the associated rage, are let down by predictable treatment. Compared with the real emotional impact that a persona poem can manifest as demonstrated in “Mutiny on Pitcairn”, and the stronger treatment of the same theme in “Guys Like Gauguin”, the former poem seems lacking.
In spite of this the collection is a very strong debut, and “Le Amataga”, “Afakasi”, “Cirlce of Stones” and the two Hawai’i poems are reason enough to continue rereading this book time and time again.

[K's Bognoter]

Selina Tusitala Marsh' Fast Talking PI er noget så overraskende som tuvaluansk Power Poetry.
Læs hele anmeldelsen her: http://bognoter.dk/2016/09/10/selina-...