Published in Overland Issue 219 Winter 2015 · Uncategorized Cumming Selina Tusitala Marsh bloodgirl lived in a sleepy how town (with up all few bird words down) bloodgirl cleaned her skin with their bones carbon dirt diamond stone sleepy how town frowned and locked her far bloodgirl congealed, slipped through the bar painted her why on all whose doors carbon fire glass ore afakasi drew his many hows down (with flying whys and who shoulds around) afakasi marked her words, crossed her naughts crystal ruby sardonyx quartz questions inked (both big and small) bloodgirl and afakasi faced the wall scribed their hows, etched their mights alum galena bismuthinite Selina Tusitala Marsh Selina Tusitala Marsh is a poet and scholar. She was the first person of Pacific descent to graduate with a PhD in English from the University of Auckland, where she now lectures in Māori and Pacific literary studies. She established Pasifika Poetry, an online hub that celebrates the poetry of tagata o te moana nui, the peoples of the Pacific. More by Selina Tusitala Marsh › Overland is a not-for-profit magazine with a proud history of supporting writers, and publishing ideas and voices often excluded from other places. If you like this piece, or support Overland’s work in general, please subscribe or donate. Related articles & Essays 20 December 202420 December 2024 · Reviews Slippery totalities: appendices on oil and politics in Australia and beyond Scott Robinson Kurmelovs writes at this level of confusion and contradiction for an audience whose unspoken but vaguely progressive politics he takes for granted and yet whose assumed knowledge resembles that of an outraged teenager. There should be a young adult genre of political journalism to accommodate books like this. 19 December 202419 December 2024 · Reviews Reading JH Prynne aloud: Poems 2016-2024 John Kinsella Poems 2016-2024 is a massive, vibrant and immersive collation of JH Prynne’s small press publication across this period. Some would call it a late life creative flourish, a glorious coda, but I don’t see it this way. Rather, this is an accumulation of concerns across a lifetime that have both relied on earlier form work and newly "discovered" expressions of genre that require recasting, resaying, and varying.
