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We are excited to announce the Wellington launch of Black Sugarcane by Nafanua Purcell Kersel! Please join us to celebrate this landmark debut poetry collection.š Thursday 13 February, 6pm
š Unity Books Wellington
Black Sugarcane will be launched by Amber Esau.
Free event, all welcome!
For more about the book, visit: https://teherengawakapress.co.nz/black-sugarcane/
Restless in form and address, these engaging and generous poems ricochet from light to dark, quiet to loud, calm to violence. We meet a loved twin sister as she dives towards the Sacred Centre, a grandmother who knows everything by heart, a shrugging office clerk, and Nafanua herself, an enigmatic shapeshifter.
At the heart of Black Sugarcane is a sequence of erasure poems arising from the seminal essay āIn Search of Tagaloaā by Tui Atua Tamasese Taāisi Efi. From the worlds contained in the text, these poems rise as if inevitable. Another sequence responds to the devastating tsunami that stuck between the Samoan islands of Upolu and Tutuila in September 2009. Within the line, within the word and even the letter, these poems speak to creation and translation, destruction and regeneration.
Nafanua Purcell Kersel (Satupaāitea, FaleÄlupo, Aleipata, Tuaefu) is a writer, poet and performer who was born in SÄmoa and raised in Te-Whanganui-a-Tara, Aotearoa. Her poetry has been widely published. She has an MA from the IIML and won the 2022 Biggs Family Prize in Poetry for Black Sugarcane. She lives in Te Matau-a-MÄui Hawkeās Bay.
Cover art: Toto maligi i le eleāele by Momoe i manu ae ala ateaāe Tasker
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Event Venue & Nearby Stays
Unity Books Wellington, 57 Willis Street,Wellington, New Zealand
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