Black Marks on the White Page
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KELLY ANA MOREY (Ngāti Kurī, Te Rarawa, Te Aupōuri) is an award-winning writer of both fiction and non-fiction. Morey writes: ‘The stories I have told for cash, my friends … ‘Poor Man’s Orange’ is an old story; it was highly commended in the Open Category of the now sadly defunct BNZ Katherine Mansfield Short Story Awards in 2012 and has been published … somewhere … maybe even twice. The orchard, the juicing shed and the eclipse are true, the rest just grew up around it.’
PAULA MORRIS (Ngāti Wai, Ngāti Whātua) is the author of the story collection Forbidden Cities (2008); the essay ‘On Coming Home’ (2015); and seven novels, including Rangatira (Penguin, 2011), fiction winner at both the 2012 New Zealand Post Book Awards and Ngā Kupu Ora Māori Book Awards. She teaches creative writing at the University of Auckland, and is the founder of the Academy of New Zealand Literature (www.anzliterature.com).
ANYA NGAWHARE lives in the Bay of Plenty, where she spends most of her time chasing after her three-year-old niece and her growing collection of costly, oddball animals. When she was nineteen, her strong-willed parents forced her to pursue her dream of becoming an author. She completed her NZIBS Creative Writing Diploma one day before finding out she had been selected for the 2012 Te Papa Tupu Programme, and in 2015 she received a highly commended award in the novel extract category of the Pikihuia Awards. She has been published in Huia Short Stories 11 and Stories on the Four Winds, both from Huia Publishers.
JAMES ORMSBY is a recognised national artist, with over 20 years of Visual Art practice in New Zealand and overseas, including 20 solo shows and over 80 group exhibitions. He has received two major Creative NZ Grants for practice-based research at the University of Oxford, and resulting exhibitions in London, Melbourne and Auckland. Drawing is his passion; he describes it as his first language in an era when artists are increasingly experimenting with new technology. He carries out a huge amount of historical research and questions the significance of the visual symbols his ancestors chose to depict. Ormsby lives and works from his family home in the Bay of Plenty.
CERISSE PALALAGI is of Niuean (Tuapa) and Māori (Ngati Pikiao) descent. Born in 1977, Cerisse lives in Brisbane, Australia. She works predominantly in the mediums of printmaking, painting and photography. Palalagi’s interests are diverse, often contemplating the interconnected mix of Poly-slang, youth culture and identity. Palalagi’s work is characterised by an impressive mastery of a wide array of print-and mark-making processes, such as silkscreen print, painting, drawing and photography. Her art merges hiapo practices with contemporary printing and portraiture. The works respond to Palalagi’s experience of current social trends and developments in Pacific cultures and community. ‘The patterns I use are a reflection of my identity. I like the juxtaposition of cultural symbols and people in my portraits. They are usually of people in my family, including myself. This is my way of celebrating my culture and ancestry, showing people that our culture, arts and language are not dead.’
FIONA PARDINGTON is of Scottish (Clan Cameron of Erracht) and Māori (Kāi Tahu, Kāti Māmoe, Ngāti Kahungunu) descent. Her work is held in major public collections in Aotearoa New Zealand and abroad, including Musée du Quai Branly, Paris and the National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa. Pardington has exhibited widely throughout Australasia and beyond, including the 17th Biennale of Sydney (2010) and the Ukraine Biennale (2012), and is looking forward to launching her latest project, Nabokov’s Blues: The Charmed Circle 2017, at the inaugural Honolulu Biennial curated by Fumio Nanjo, March (2017). She has been awarded a Doctor of Fine Arts by the University of Auckland and has received many fellowships, residencies, awards and grants including the Moet & Chandon Fellowship, France (1991-92), the Frances Hodgkins Fellow (1996 and 1997), the Ngai Tahu residency at Otago Polytechnic (2006) and both a Quai Branly Laureate award; La Residence de Photoquai and the Arts Foundation Laureate Award (2011). She is represented by Starkwhite, Auckland.
MICHAEL PULELOA, PhD, was born on Majuro in the Marshall Islands and raised on Moloka‘i and O‘ahu in Hawai‘i. He is currently an English teacher at Kamehameha Schools in Kapālama. His most recent publications appear in Huihui: Rhetorics and Aesthetics of the Pacific and Hawai‘i Review 79. His story ‘The Laynetters’ is in the ‘Guahan and Hawai‘i: Literature and Social Movements’ issue of XCP: Cross Cultural Poetics. His story ‘Flight:1880’ is in the early stages of becoming an animated short film.
RAYLENE RAMSAY is a world-renowned specialist of French Pacific literature. Ramsay and Walker-Morrison, who have both lived and worked in New Caledonia, have produced a multi-media literary history of the country (Nights of Story-telling: A Cultural History of Kanaky-New Caledonia/La nuit des contes, University of Hawaii Press, 2011) and translated Gorodé’s poetry (Sharing as Custom Provides, Pandanus, 2005) and novel (The Wreck, Little Island, 2011).
ROSANNA RAYMOND aka Sistar S’pacific, is an innovator of the contemporary Pasifika art scene as a long-standing member of the art collective the Pacific Sisters, and founding member of the SaVAge K’lub. Raymond has achieved international renown for her performances, installations, body adornment, and spoken word. A published writer and poet, her works are held by museums and private collectors throughout the UK, USA, Canada, Australia and New Zealand. A dynamic artist, her work is consistent in its celebration of Mana Moana and the engagements it invokes and evokes; whether between museum collections and contemporary Pacific art or museums and urban spaces.
LISA REIHANA (Ngāpuhi and Ngātihine Ngāitū) has contributed powerfully to the development of time-based art in Aotearoa New Zealand. Spanning film, video, photography, installation, performance, design, costume and sculptural form, Reihana’s art making is driven by a strong sense of community, which informs her collaborative working method. Through technically advanced and poetically nuanced works, her practice offers an astute disruption of the colonial impulse. Reihana’s commissions include a new single-channel video Tai Whetuki — House of Death for Auckland Arts Festival 2015, a major public art project for the Victoria Park Tunnel, 2010; Rangimarie Last Dance for Q Theatre, 2011; Mai i te aroha, ko te aroha — the ceremonial female entrance to Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa’s marae, 2008. Reihana’s work has featured in many significant international exhibitions including, most recently, Suspended Histories, Museum van Loon, Amsterdam (2013); ImagineNATIVE Film + Media Arts Festival, Toronto (2014). In 2017 she is New Zealand’s artist at the prestigious Venice Biennale with Emissaries, her panoramic video expanded from in Pursuit of Venus and in Pursuit of Venus [infected] and augmented with a series of new photographic works. Curated by Rhana Devenport, Emissaries is a moving image interpretation of the neo-classical French scenic wallpaper Les Sauvages de la Mer Pacifique. Witi Ihimaera was invited to create a fictional work for the accompanying book to the exhibition, and ‘Whakapapa of a Wallpaper’ is the first draft of his story. It is reprinted here with the kind permission of the artist, Rhana Devenport and the Auckland City Art Gallery. Reihana was made an Arts Laureate by the New Zealand Arts Foundation in 2014.
VICTOR RODGER is a writer of Samoan and Scottish descent. His first play, Sons, debuted to critical acclaim in 1995. His most successful play, Black Faggot, has toured throughout New Zealand and Australia and had a successful season at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival in 2014. He is currently developing Black Faggot for film. A former writer for Shortland Street, this year he co-wrote the TV series This is Piki with Briar Grace Smith. ‘Like Shinderella’ was written while he was the Robert Burns Fellow 2016 at the University of Otago.
MARY ROKONADRAVU is a Fijian writer of mixed heritage. English is her third language. She won the 2015 Commonwealth Short Story Prize for the Pacific Region for her story ‘Famished Eels’, which is part of this anthology. Mary works in the areas of culture, heritage and arts in Fiji and the Pacific.
PATI SOLOMONA TYRELL is an interdisciplinary visual artist with a strong focus on performance. Utilising lens-based media, he creates visual outcomes that are centred around id
eas of urban Pacific queer identity. He has shown work at Fresh Gallery Otara, PAH Homestead and most recently at the Pingyao International Photography Festival in China. Tyrell is a co-founder of the arts collective FAFSWAG. Currently he is a third year student enrolled in the Bachelor of Creative Arts at Manukau Institute of Technology, Otara. Pati is originally from Kirikiriroa, Waikato but is now based in Maungarei, Tāmaki Makaurau.
DEBORAH WALKER-MORRISON is Associate Professor of French at the University of Auckland, Aotearoa New Zealand. Of mixed European and Māori descent, her iwi affiliations are to the Raakai Paaka and Pahauwera hapu of Ngāti Kahungunu. Her interests include the translation of French-Pacific literature and sub-titling of Māori cinema. Walker-Morrison has produced and directed (with husband Neil Morrison) a documentary, narrated by Witi Ihimaera: Déwé Gorodé, Writing The Country/Écrire le pays, 2015.
MAUALAIVAO ALBERT WENDT is regarded internationally as one of Samoa’s, New Zealand’s, and the Pacific’s most influential novelists and poets. His novels include Leaves of the Banyan Tree, Ola, The Mango’s Kiss, The Adventures of Vela and Breaking Connections. His books of poetry include Inside Us the Dead, Shaman of Visions, The Book of the Black Star, and From Manoa to a Ponsonby Garden. He lives with his partner Reina Whaitiri in Ponsonby, Auckland, and continues to write and paint full-time.
ALEXIS WRIGHT is an activist and writer from the Waanyi nation of the Gulf of Carpentaria. Her debut novel, Plains of Promise (UQP Black Australian Writers), was published in 1997 and was nominated for several major literary awards, including the Commonwealth Prize. Her second novel, Carpentaria (Giramondo Publishing, 2006), won the Australian Literature Society Gold Medal, the Miles Franklin Literary Award in 2007, the 2007 Fiction Book Award in the Queensland Premier’s Literary Awards, and the Victorian Premier’s Prize for Fiction. Her latest novel, Praiseworthy, will be published in 2017.
CREDITS
‘After the Tsunami’, Serie Barford, first published in Writing the Pacific: an anthology, the Pacific Writing Forum, 2007, edited by Jen Webb and Kavita Nandan
‘Black Ice’, Gina Cole, first published in Black Ice Matter, Huia Publishers, 2016
Extract from Freelove, Sia Figiel, first published by Loihi Press, 2016
‘Tribe My Nation’, Déwé Gorodé, first published in The Wreck, Little Island Press, 2011, translated by Deborah Walker-Morrison and Raylene Ramsay
‘The Vanua is Fo’ohake’, Jione Havea, first published in Writing the Pacific: an anthology, the Pacific Writing Forum, 2007, edited by Jen Webb and Kavita Nandan
‘my father dream new zealand’, Witi Ihimaera, first published in an earlier version as ‘when the door opens’, New Zealand Listener, 17 December 2015
‘White Elephant’, Kelly Joseph, first published in takahē 74, Summer 2011
‘Rush’ and ‘Facebook Redux’, Nic Low, first published in Arms Race, Text Publishing, 2014
‘Black Milk’, Tina Makereti, first published in Granta, 2016
‘Pouliuli: A Story of Darkness in 13 Lines’, Selina Tusitala Marsh, poems are formed from Pouliuli, Albert Wendt, University of Hawaii Press, 1977
‘The Coconut King’, Courtney Sina Meredith, first published in Tail of the Taniwha, Beatnik Publishing, 2017
Versions of ‘Great Long Story’, Paula Morris, have appeared in Ora Nui, Anton Blank Ltd, 2012 and Gutter, Freight Press, 2011
‘King of Bones and Hazy Homes’ (extract from ‘Average Kids and Bigots’), Anya Ngawhare, first published in Huia Short Stories 11: Contemporary Māori Fiction, Huia Publishers, 2015
Uncanny Tui/Kakahu, Fiona Pardington, from the collection of the Whanganui Museum, courtesy of the artist and Starkwhite
‘Like Shinderella’, Victor Rodger, first published as ‘Skip to the End’ in Landfall 231, Autumn 2016
‘Sepia’, Mary Rokonadravu, first published in Writing the Pacific: an anthology, the Pacific Writing Forum, 2007, edited by Jen Webb and Kavita Nandan
‘Famished Eels’, Mary Rokonadravu, first published in Granta, 2015
‘Whale Bone City’, Alexis Wright, first published in Carpentaria, Giramondo Publishing, 2006
‘Nafanua Unleashes’, Albert Wendt, first published in The Adventures of Vela, Huia Publishers, 2009
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
The editors wish to thank all the incredible writers and artists who contributed to this anthology. You are the new Oceania.
Many thanks also to Harriet Allan, Abby Aitcheson and the team at Penguin Random House New Zealand for enthusiastic support and meticulous publishing. Thank you to the International Institute of Modern Letters for providing office space for an editorial meeting — it is key that creative writing schools in Aotearoa continue to seek new ways to support Māori and Pasifika writing. Gratitude to the Commonwealth Foundation for the Commonwealth Short Story Prize, which continues to give our writers the opportunity to write on a world stage. Ngā mihi nui to all our colleagues and friends who have offered support and advice. The Auckland City Art Gallery and Trustees gave permission for ‘Whakapapa of a Wallpaper’ and the Lisa Reihana image that goes with the story, coincident with Reihana’s appearance at the Venice Biennale, 2017.
Our thanks also to Rhana Devenport, Rose Dunn, Anita Heiss, Christine Jeffery, Cath Koa, Brandy Nālani McDougall, Craig Santos Perez, Deborah Walker-Morrison and all who submitted work.
WITI WISHES TO THANK: Jane Smiler, Jessica Ihimaera-Pritchard, Olivia Ihimaera-Dawkins and the mokopuna for always keeping me real. A special mihi to Tina Makereti — you done good.
TINA WISHES TO THANK: Witi Ihimaera, for issuing the invitation; Lawrence Patchett, for always listening, and Kōtuku Underwood and Aquila Underwood — the future.
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First published by Penguin Random House New Zealand, 2017
This collection © Penguin Random House New Zealand, 2017
© in individual stories remains with the authors and where relevant their original publishers
© in individual artworks remains with the artist
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ISBN: 978-0-14377-030-5
The assistance of Creative New Zealand towards the production of this book is gratefully acknowledged by the editors and publisher. Our grateful thanks also to the Tautai Trust and the Tautai Fetu Ta‘i patrons for support to the Pasifika visual artists whose work appears in the anthology.
THE BEGINNING
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THE VANUA IS FO‘OHAKE
fn1 For the sake of ones who do not understand the lingo, ‘talanoa’ is a word used in several (but not all) of the native Pasifika languages; it refers to the (three in one) triad of story, telling and conversation.
In the world of talanoa, story dies without telling and conversation; telling becomes an attempt to control
when one does not respect the story or give room for conversation; and conversation is empty without story and telling. In talanoa cultures, there is no separation between story, telling and conversation. They interweave in talanoa.