Dark Sparring: Poems

(Paperback)

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Description

In Dark Sparring, poet Selina Tusitala Marsh combats family loss with all the techniques of poetry and Thai kickboxing at her disposal. The book brims with fluid, humming list poems, literary shoutouts and personal elegies, as Marsh takes us through her mother's diagnosis with cancer and the long journey out the other side of her illness. Along the way, Marsh shows us other parts of her world: scenes from Matiatia to Orapiu to Apia; classroom politics; the importance of leadership; and the reasons New Zealand is also a 'lucky' country. Dark Sparring has an appealing voice, a strong right hook and an affecting, rhythmic heart - it amply reaffirms the poetic talents of Selina Marsh, 'the shadow-boxing woman / Sparring myself as I go / Shadowing myself as I go'.

Author Bio

Selina Tusitala Marsh is of Samoan, Tuvaluan, English, and French descent. She was the first Pacific Islander to graduate with a PhD in English from the University of Auckland and is now a lecturer in the English Department, specialising in Pasifika literature. Her first collection, the bestselling Fast Talking PI, won the NZSA Jessie Mackay Award for Best First Book of Poetry. She represented Tuvalu at the 2012 London Olympics Poetry Parnassus, her work has been translated into Ukrainian and Spanish and has appeared in numerous forms in schools, museums, parks, billboards, print and online literary journals.