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Three Pacific writers from Aotearoa discuss Indigenous languages and visual poetry
Abstract
This article draws on several months of conversations, creative workshopping, and writing sessions between Māori writers Ammon Hāwea Apiata and Marama Salsano, and Rotuman writer Mere Taito. Here, we contemplate the presence of Māori and Rotuman languages in our visual poetry. For too long, critical work about English language writing by Indigenous writers from the Pacific has been Eurocentric. Papua New Guinean writer-scholar Steven Winduo suggests the need to unwrite this “imagined Oceania,” while Māori author Keri Hulme writes disparagingly of the lower-cased ‘gods of literature’, and in her ReadNZ lecture, Sāmoan-Māori fantasy writer Lani Wendt Young describes traditional publishing as the “white castle of literature.” While white castled gods of literature have historically ignored the everyday vibrancy of Pacific voices, Indigenous writers from the Pacific continue to unapologetically write, read, experiment, critique, and play with words. Into this complexity, we acknowledge that for many Indigenous writers from the Pacific, English language Eurocentric thought and texts dominate our lives; many of us are second language learners of our languages.
Type
Chapter in Book
Type of thesis
Series
Citation
Salsano, M., Taito, M., & Apiata, A. (2024). Three Pacific writers from Aotearoa discuss Indigenous languages and visual poetry. In Felsing, L., Salsano, M., & Papachristodoulou, A. (Eds.), To feel the Earth as one's skin: An anthology of Indigenous visual poetry. Poem Atlas.
Date
2024-08-24
Publisher
Poem Atlas
Degree
Supervisors
Rights
© Copyright the authors