Black Marks on the White Page Read online

  You love having your excesses recorded! he called

  Poor shrivelled taulaaitu you can’t raise

  it any more She replied Power most demanding of

  aphrodisiacs has buggered you to slackness

  Ungrateful girl he muttered tears like dew

  drops in his cataractous eyes

  You must never fall in love with Her he warned me

  His was a hopeless love as deep as

  his aiga’s history and Her taulaaitu

  before him with power as their fatal aphrodisiac

  And without Her they would lose that

  They could not exist without each other

  NOTES

  TUSIATA AVIA is a poet, children’s book writer and performer of Samoan/Palagi descent. Her latest books include Wild Dogs Under My Skirt (VUP, 2004), Bloodclot (VUP, 2009) and Fale Aitu/Spirit House (VUP, 2016), longlisted for the Ockham New Zealand Book Awards 2016. In 2016 she also released The New Adventures of Nafanua (IPSI). She has written a radio drama, You Say Hawaii (2002), and her acclaimed solo show ‘Wild Dogs Under My Skirt’ premiered at the 2002 Dunedin Festival. She has also published two books for children: Mele and the FoFo and The Song (Learning Media, 2002). Tusiata has an MA from the International Institute of Modern Letters, Victoria University of Wellington. She received the MacMillan Brown Centre for Pacific Studies Artist in Residency 2005, the Fulbright-Creative New Zealand Pacific Writer’s Residency 2005, the Ursula Bethell Trust Writer in Residency 2010 and the Janet Frame Literary Trust Award 2013. She teaches Creative Writing at the Manukau Institute of Technology.

  SERIE BARFORD was born in Aotearoa New Zealand to a migrant German-Samoan mother and a Palagi father. She lives in West Auckland and has published three collections of poetry, as well as Entangled Islands (Anahera Press, 2015), a collection that combines poetry with prose. Serie’s work has appeared in many literary journals and anthologies, in print and online, most recently in Essential New Zealand Poems, Whispers and Vanities: Samoan Indigenous Knowledge and Religion, Cordite Poetry Review, Jacket2, Best New Zealand Poems, the School Journal and the Phantom Poetry Project. Serie performs poetry at public events, and was awarded the Seresin Landfall Residency in 2011. Some of Serie’s short stories for children and adults have played on Radio New Zealand.

  CASSANDRA BARNETT is a writer and art theorist raised in Auckland but with roots in the Waikato (Raukawa ki Wharepūhunga). She writes ficto-poetry, ficto-criticism and scholarly essays about contemporary art from Aotearoa and beyond, exploring questions of indigeneity, belonging, whakapapa, diaspora, cultural multiplicity and the endless flux of identity. In keeping with this flux, Cassandra’s work weaves together Māori cosmologies, fictive practices, and molecular, rhizomatic and decolonising Western philosophies. She holds an MA (Continental Philosophy, Warwick) and a PhD (Media, Film and Television, Auckland), and is a Lecturer in the School of Art at Massey University, Wellington.

  Note:

  ‘Pitter Patter, Papatūānuku: Monologues of 3 Gods’, a kind of ficto-criticism, is written from the points of view of three gods speaking from Pukeonaki (Mount Taranaki), Te Tai-o-Rēhua (Tasman Sea), Taranaki, Ohakea (Manawatu), and Te Tau Ihu-o-Te Waka, Wairau, Waiautoa, Manirauhea and Okuku (South Island). Barnett writes:

  I was compelled, after viewing artist Alex Monteith’s perception-splintering multi-channel video artworks (which feature roving sheep, surfers, jeeps, planes and helicopters), to ask the question: How might Papatūānuku, Tangaroa, Ranginui look back and speak back to us contemporary humans/posthumans through these ancient environments? If they ground us, what grounds them?

  To voice such Māori atua tapu in English smacked of neo-colonialism. Seeking some form of restriction to shift the power relations in the text, I have adopted a literary constraint of using only the (approximate) consonant sounds of te reo Māori. The only Māori words included are proper nouns (and bird names!). The constraint is loose, the approximation of an impossibility: to speak Māori without speaking Māori, to hear Papatūānuku’s voice in an English medium.

  I have pieced my narrative together where possible from Ngāti Raukawa stories of the ancient environments of the text: stories of Tainui waka; a Raukawa (as well as Ngāi Tahu) telling of the creation story, in which Papatūānuku is intimate with Tangaroa the sea before she (more famously) couples with Ranginui to produce the atua of te taiao, the natural world, and ultimately all the generations down to us – a love triangle to mirror that of Taranaki, Tongariro and Pīhanga.

  Because relationships are never simple binaries, multiple perspectives have been taken, points of view coiled within points of view – artist, protagonists, landscapes, viewers, writer, Māori, Pākehā, Raukawa, Taranaki, tupuna and atua. It is so impossible for me to inhabit one single position or whakapapa … beyond the bare fact that we are all descended from Papatūānuku.

  GINA COLE is of Fijian, Scottish and Welsh descent. She lives in Tāmaki Makaurau, Aotearoa. She is a lawyer and writer of short fiction and poetry. Her story ‘Glacier’ was published in takahē 70 in 2010 and her creative non-fiction piece ‘Na Noqu Bubu’ was published in SPAN 64: Kaumatua, Journal of the South Pacific Association for Commonwealth Language and Literary Studies in 2011. In 2013 she completed a Masters of Creative Writing at the University of Auckland. She won the Alternative Bindings Auckland Pride Festival creative writing competition in 2014 for her poem ‘Airport Aubade’, which was published in Express magazine. In 2015 her story ‘Black Ice’ was published in JAAM 33. Her debut book of short stories, Black Ice Matter, was published in September 2016 with Huia Publishers.

  SIA FIGIEL is a tandem parent to two sons. She is also a diabetes advocate, an artist, a performance-poet and a writer. Sia’s poetry won the 1994 Polynesian Literary Competition. Her first novel, where we once belonged, won the 1997 Commonwealth Writers’ Prize for fiction for the South East Asia/South Pacific Region. She has also written three other novels, The Girl in the Moon Circle, They Who Do Not Grieve and Freelove, and a collection of prose-poetry, To a Young Artist in Contemplation. Sia’s work has been translated into Spanish, Danish, German, Portuguese, Catalan, French and Turkish. She has held writers’ residencies in Europe, the United States and the Pacific, and has travelled extensively as a representative of Samoan and Pacific literature. Sia has performed her work at universities, high schools, halfway houses, bars, women’s prisons, streets, theatres and under trees.

  DAVID GEARY is from the Taranaki iwi and Ngāti Pākehā. His writing for theatre has earned both the Bruce Mason and Adam Foundation awards. His plays include Lovelock’s Dream Run, Pack of Girls and The Learner’s Stand. David also works in film and television, and currently teaches at Capilano University in Vancouver, Canada, in the documentary and indigenous film programs. Geary’s book of interlinked short stories, A Man of the People, was published by Victoria University Press in 2003. His short story ‘Gary Manawatu [1964-2008]: Death of a Fence-post Modernist’ appears in The Penguin Book of Contemporary New Zealand Short Stories (2009). An occasional poet, David writes haiku on Twitter: @gearsgeary.

  ANAHERA GILDEA (Ngāti Raukawa-ki-te-Tonga, Ngāi-Te-Rangi, Ngāti Toa Rangatira, Te Āti Awa, Kāi Tahu) is a writer and ‘artivist’. Her first book Poroporoākī: Weaving the Via Dolorosa was published by Seraph Press in 2016. She holds a Bachelor of Arts in Art Theory, Graduate Diplomas in Psychology, Teaching and Performing Arts, and a Masters Degree in Creative Writing from Victoria University. Her poems and short stories have been published in a variety of journals and she has won both the takahē Short Story Competition and the Huia Best Novel Extract in English. She has worked as a drama teacher, a visual artist, a florist, a stilt walker and a journalist. She currently lives and works in Wellington with her partner and 12-year-old son, and is completing her first novel.

  DÉWÉ GORODÉ is a leading political and literary figure of Kanaky/New Caledonia. The longest standing government minister since 1999 (holding numerous portfolios, including Culture and Women�
�s Affairs), this ex-teacher of French language and literature published several collections of poetry and short stories before writing L’épave, the first Kanak novel. From an early age, Déwé’s father inspired a highly eclectic love of literature: ‘My father used to tell us stories in Paicî: jèmââ or oral histories; fairytales like Tom Thumb and stories from Victor Hugo’s Les Miserables.’ Among the first contingent of Kanak university students, Déwé began to write seriously as an undergraduate literature student in post-May 1968 France. Entering politics on her return as a founding member of Kanak independence party Palika, she was jailed several times for her activism. Untiring in her deep attachment to her cultural roots yet always open to otherness, Gorodé’s life and literary oeuvre speak of her country’s journey towards emancipation.

  PATRICIA GRACE is one of New Zealand’s most prominent and celebrated Māori fiction authors and a figurehead of modern New Zealand literature. She garnered initial acclaim in the 1970s with her collection of short stories entitled Waiariki (1975) — the first published book by a Māori woman in New Zealand. She has published six novels and seven short story collections, as well as a number of books for children and a work of non-fiction. She won the New Zealand Book Award for Fiction for Potiki in 1987, and was longlisted for the Man Booker Prize in 2001 with Dogside Story, which also won the 2001 Kiriyama Pacific Rim Fiction Prize. Her children’s story The Kuia and the Spider won the New Zealand Picture Book of the Year in 1982. Her latest novel, Chappy, was a finalist in the Ockham New Zealand Awards for fiction and winner of Ngā Kupu Ora Award 2016. Patricia received the Prime Minister’s Award for Literary Achievement in 2006 and was the recipient of the Neustadt International Prize for Literature, sponsored by the University of Oklahoma, in 2008. She was a recipient of the Distinguished Companion of the New Zealand Order of Merit (DCNZM) in 2007. She has received Honorary Doctorates for Literature from Victoria University of Wellington in 1989 and the World Indigenous Nations University in 2016.

  SHANE HANSEN is an artist, designer, husband and Dad. Born in New Zealand in the 1970s, he is of Māori (Tainui, Ngāti Mahanga, Ngāti Hine), Chinese, Danish and Scottish descent. Shane is the benefactor of a life lived long and well in Aotearoa. His work uses bold colours, Māori motifs, optimism and clarity inspired by his multi-cultural heritage and pop-art, strong graphics and profound appreciation of the landscapes that surround him. He was selected to create Māori designs for Rugby World Cup 2011 and commissioned to create a bike to be presented to HRH Prince George in 2014. His work includes projects for BMW NZ, Air New Zealand, Te Wānanga o Aotearoa and the New Zealand Olympic Committee. shanehansen.co.nz

  Note: ‘I Am Mixed Media’ represents Shane’s mixed heritage. The gold ‘good fortune’ symbols are a ‘mixed heritage’ symbol combining Chinese & Māori elements.

  JIONE HAVEA is a Methodist pastor from Tonga who is Research Fellow in Religious Studies at Trinity Methodist Theological College (Aotearoa New Zealand), and Honorary Research Fellow with the Public and Contextual Theology Research Centre of Charles Sturt University (Australia) and with the University of Divinity (Australia). Havea is the author of Elusions of Control: Biblical Law on the Words Of Women (Society of Biblical Literature) and editor of, among others, Out of Place: Doing Theology on the Crosscultural Brink (Routledge), Indigenous Australia and the Unfinished Business of Theology (Palgrave), Postcolonial Voices from Downunder: Indigenous matters, Confronting readings (Pickwick, forthcoming) and Sea of Readings: The Bible in the South Pacific (SBL, forthcoming).

  WITI IHIMAERA was the first Māori to publish both a book of short stories and a novel, and since then he has published many notable novels and collections of short stories; he began a parallel career as an anthologist in 1984 and Black Marks on the White Page is the eleventh initiated by him to chart the continuing development of Māori and Pasifika writing in New Zealand and the Pacific. Ihimaera’s last book of fiction was White Lies (2013), which won the Ngā Kupu Ora Aotearoa Māori Book Award for Fiction, and his memoir Māori Boy (2015) won the non-fiction category of the Ockham New Zealand Book Awards. His next book, Sleeps Standing, about the Battle of Orakau, will be published in 2017. Four of his works have been adapted to the screen: Whale Rider, Nights in the Gardens of Spain, White Lies and Bulibasha. He has recently revised his play All Our Sons for production in Auckland in 2018 and is currently working on Native Son, the second volume of his memoir.

  ROBERT JAHNKE (Ngāi Taharora, Te Whānau a Iritekura, Te Whānau a Rakairoa o Ngāti Porou) was born in Waipiro Bay and lives in Palmerston North. His practice straddles design, illustration, animation and sculpture. His work possesses a creative vitality, often with a political edge, and focuses on differing perceptions of reality according to historical facts and circumstance. Jahnke’s practice questions and challenges the established Eurocentric narration of New Zealand’s history, promoting and championing the Māori experience within his considered contemporary metaphor. A leading Māori academic and a pioneer in contemporary Māori art, Jahnke is the former Head of the School of Māori Art, Knowledge and Education at Massey University in Palmerston North. He is currently the Professor of Māori Visual Arts for the Toioho ki Apiti Māori Visual Arts programme in Whiti o Rehua, the School of Art. Major public works include window and door designs for the Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa, wall reliefs for the High Court Building and Bowen House in Wellington; a pou for the ASB Waterfront Theatre in Auckland and a stainless feather arch for the Square in Palmerston North.

  KELLY JOSEPH (Ngāti Maniapoto) is a writer and artist currently living in Westland with her family. She has previously had stories published in Huia Short Stories 5, 7, 8 and 10 and in Hue and Cry, takahē and JAAM, and broadcast on National Radio. She has been runner-up twice in the Best Short Story in English section of the Pikihuia Awards. In 2009 Kelly spent eight weeks on Kapiti Island as the Tau mai e Kapiti Māori Writer in Residence. She has an MA in creative writing from Victoria University and a Master of Fine Arts from the Rhode Island School of Design, USA. White Elephant is dedicated to her daughters, Opal and Ursula, small muses who love stories and see magic everywhere.

  BRYAN KAMAOLI KUWADA is a Hawaiian-language translator and PhD candidate in English at the University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa, focusing on translation theory. He is also part of the blogging collective Ke Ka‘upu Hehi ‘Ale, which writes about Hawaiian and Pacific issues at hehiale.wordpress.com.

  YUKI KIHARA (Shigeyuki Kihara) is of Samoan and Japanese descent. Her photograph, entitled ‘Roman Catholic Church, Apia’ (2015), is part of a photographic series entitled ‘Where do we come from? What are we? Where are we going?’ (2015) featuring the artist in the guise of a ‘Salome’ — a Samoan woman dressed in a Victorian mourning dress — viewing various historical sites of her postcolonial homeland in the Island of Upolu, Independent State of Samoa. In this photograph, we see Salome reflecting upon the history of Christianity first introduced to Samoa by LMS missionaries in 1836. The photograph was taken in January 2015 when the construction of the church was halted due to the lack of financial support. The construction site, however, exposes the interior structures of the church which resonates with Renaissance and byzantine architecture often not associated with the picturesque image of ‘paradise’ in Samoa.

  NIC LOW is a writer of European and Ngāi Tahu descent with a love of satire and apocalypse. His first book is Arms Race (Text Publishing, 2014), a collection of mischievous, polemical stories about technology and tino rangatiratanga, Facebook and drone warfare, that was shortlisted for the Queensland Literary Awards and the Readings Prize, and was a Listener and Australian Book Review book of the year. He’s just spent 18 months in the Southern Alps researching his second book, a history and philosophy of Māori in the mountains told through walking journeys.

  TINA MAKERETI writes essays, novels and short fiction. ‘Black Milk’, inspired by Fiona Pardington’s ‘A Beautiful Hesitation’ exhibition, won the 2016 Commonwealth Short Story Prize for the Pacific Region
. Her novel Where the Rēkohu Bone Sings (Vintage, 2014) was longlisted for the Dublin Literary Award 2016 and won the 2014 Ngā Kupu Ora Aotearoa Māori Book Award for Fiction, also won by her short story collection, Once Upon a Time in Aotearoa (Huia Publishers) in 2011. In 2009 she was the recipient of the Royal Society of New Zealand Manhire Prize for Creative Science Writing (non-fiction), and in the same year received the Pikihuia Award for Best Short Story Written in English. Makereti teaches creative writing at Massey University. She is of Ngāti Tūwharetoa, Te Āti Awa, Ngāti Rangatahi, Pākehā, and according to family stories, Moriori descent. www.tinamakereti.com

  SELINA TUSITALA MARSH is a Pasifika poet-scholar of Samoan, Tuvaluan, English and French descent. As the 2016 Commonwealth Poet, Selina recently returned from Westminster Abbey where she performed her commissioned poem ‘Unity’ for the Queen. Her award-winning poetry collection Fast Talking PI (Auckland University Press, 2009) won the New Zealand Book Jesse Mackay Best First Book Award and its titular poem took on cult status in schools and community groups. Her second poetry collection, Dark Sparring, was published in 2013 (Auckland University Press) to critical acclaim. Selina is a Senior Lecturer in the English Department at the University of Auckland and teaches New Zealand and Pacific Literature, convenes its largest undergraduate course in Creative Writing, and supervises poets in the Masters of Creative Writing Programme. The sequence of poems in this anthology will appear in her third collection, Tightrope, in 2017.

  COURTNEY SINA MEREDITH is a poet, playwright, fiction writer and musician. Her play Rushing Dolls (2010) won Best Female Playwright and Runner-Up for Best Play in the Adam New Zealand Play Awards and was published by Playmarket in 2012. She launched her first book of poetry, Brown Girls in Bright Red Lipstick (Beatnik, 2012), at the 2012 Frankfurt Book Fair, and has since published a short story collection, Tail of the Taniwha (Beatnik, 2016) to critical acclaim. She was selected for the prestigious International Writing Program Fall Residency at the University of Iowa and she was also the Writer in Residence for the Island Institute in Sitka, Alaska, in 2016.