Black Sugarcane

(Paperback)

Publishing Details

Classifications

Physical Properties

Description

A soft worrier, Im Nua-No-Myth

speaking in centipede,

with a sweet hiding

in the dark of my cheek.

Black Sugarcane is a landmark debut collection by Nafanua Purcell Kersel. 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 In Search of Tagaloa by Tui Atua Tamasese Taisi 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.

Reviews

The poems in Black Sugarcane are laced with panthers and cobras. Nafanua Purcell Kersel yields her machete-pen with ease, humour and aroha, clearing paths, riding waves, carving memory and bending time. Her poetic vision is both minuscule-microscopic and drone-distant, opening space for the v to take shape. She is writing on a branch from the same rkau as Selina Tusitala Marsh and Tusiata Avia. Anne-Marie Te Whiu

I was blown away by this book. The poems are playful and powerful, fresh and original. Airini Beautrais

Author Bio

Nafanua Purcell Kersel (Satupaitea, Falelupo, Aleipata, Tuaefu) is a writer, poet and performer who was born in Smoa 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-Mui Hawkes Bay.

Cover art: Toto maligi i le eleele by Momoe i manu ae ala ateae Tasker