Fast Talking PI [Paperback]

Selina Tusitala Marsh (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 1, 2009

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.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"Selina Tusitala Marsh is doing great work here.”  —Academic Reader, Auckland University Press

"A new generation of poets has emerged in Aotearoa and the Pacific. Most of that generation are women, and Selina Marsh, in this, her first collection, shows she is one of the most gifted and influential members of that generation."  —Albert Wendt, author, Photographs

"Selina Tusitala Marsh’s knowledge as an academic, a literary critic, a mother, a daughter, shapes her vision as a poet with a deep dedication to the recognition of Pacific voices that have been historically silenced as well as giving breathe to the urban realities of the Pacific diaspora. In this regard, this daughter of Nafanua not only 'fast talks', she roars!"  —Sia Figiel, author, They Who Do Not Grieve

"Marsh’s writing mediates and wonderfully masters two language genealogies . . . Without a doubt, Selina Tusitala Marsh joins the 'calabash breakers' of the contemporary New Zealand literature scene and does not leave it as she found it."  —Karlo Mila, author, A Well Written Body

About the Author

Selina Tusitala Marsh is a lecturer in the English department at the University of Auckland. She has been featured in Niu Voices: Contemporary Pacific Fiction 1 and the Montana New Zealand Book Award–winning anthology, Whetu Moana: Contemporary Polynesian Poetry in English.

Product Details

• Paperback: 88 pages
• Publisher: Auckland University Press; Pap/Com edition (May 1, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1869404327
• ISBN-13: 978-1869404321
• Product Dimensions: 8 x 6.3 x 0.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 5.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,372,259 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Pacific Literature, April 10, 2011

By 

Alexis - See all my reviews

This review is from: Fast Talking PI (Paperback)

Selina Tusitala Marsh's book Fast Talking PI is an excellent book of poems. The book is split up into three sections of poems: Tusitala, Talkback, and Fast Talking PI. Fast Talking PI is my favorite poem in the book. She leaves what PI actually stands for to the imagination, for me I think it means Pacific Islander and in the poem she is describing every type of Pacific Islander possible. In the almost nine minute long poem she leaves almost nothing and nobody out of the poem.