A year ago, on Culture 101 we played a recording of Tusiata Avia reading a commissioned poem for the 2024 Arts Foundation’s Laureate Awards.
It was entitled ‘I’m writing you a poem about art’. In it, Avia wrote, “I hope writing poetry doesn’t get me into trouble…. again.”
Tusiata had received harassment and death threats in the wake of her poem 'The Savage Coloniser', which dealt with Captain Cook’s association with the legacy of colonialism.
She wrote equally fiercely and fearlessly about how scary that harassment was in her last book, 2024’s Big Fat Brown Bitch. Her Substack to this day is still titled ‘Truth to Power. The ACT party's poet laureate.’
To explain: after Avia was awarded a Senior Pacific Artist Award the Act party tweeted "We're not sure that Creative NZ has picked up that this Government isn't keen on taxpayers' money being spent on hateful and racist vitriol.” A year earlier in late 2023 Avia had won the Prime Minister’s Award for Literary Achievement. Avia found herself centre of the culture wars.
In ‘I’m writing you a poem about art’ Avia wrote about poetry not being about being relaxed and comfortable. And this also goes for her latest book of poems, her sixth Giving Birth to My Father. She calls it her most challenging book. One she writes that has spent, “most of the last eight years hidden away.”
Avia shares her grief over the death of her father Namulau’ulu Mikaio Avia. But also the difficult things she had to face with her wider family in Samoa. It is rich, raw, and as always with her poetry at times funny, shocking and ever moving.
Appointed a Member of the New Zealand Order of Merit in 2020, and recently named the 2026 International Institute of Modern Letters Writer in Residence, Tuisiata Avia joined Culture 101 this week from home in Ōtautahi Christchurch.
