'Landmark' Pacific poetry anthology Katūīvei launched

The Pacific community’s love affair with poetry was on proud display last week with a large turnout to launch Pacific anthology Katūīvei, in Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland.

The event at the Kim Meredith Gallery was wall-to-wall poets with many of the 89 writers published in the Massey University Press collection, in attendance. Edited by David Eggleton, Vaughan Rapatahana and Mere Taito, Katūīvei showcases a multitude of voices from across the communities, generations and the motu.

It features established voices such as Maualaivao Albert Wendt, Selina Tusitala Marsh and David Eggleton and includes the powerful newer voices from Tusiata Avia, Courtney Sina Meredith and Karlo Mila, while also introducing emerging voices.

Vaughan Rapatahana at the launch at Kim Meredith Gallery. Photo/ Supplied

Eggleton spoke about the important responsibility to curate the collection.

“I believe this contemporary selection will establish a new landmark in the writing of this country, inspired as it is by Maualaivao Albert Wendt's much-respected and ground-breaking anthologies of Pasifika writing in previous decades.”

Eggleton said the anthology’s title Katūīvei means the voice of the orator, of the seer or sayer, who is reciting or chanting or talking through poems about what it means to be a Pacific person now and located in this part of the South Pacific.

“We wanted to create a Moana Pasifika mosaic that would celebrate what has been happening in recent times, over the past ten years or so, in an inclusive way, reaching out. And also we wanted to showcase a multitude of voices both newer and well-established to the wider communities of Aotearoa.”

The Katūīvei launch event at the Kim Meredith Gallery. Photo/ Supplied

Editors Eggleton, Rapatahana and Taito, based in different parts of the motu, each brought their individual knowledge of poetry communities to what Eggleton says were, “sometimes heated discussions of the big picture. The three of us drew on our own different perspectives and then combined them.”

He said what counted was the ability to craft powerful poems of witness that spoke directly to the contemporary Pasifika experience from all angles and points of view representing various Pacific communities.

It was a challenge to make the anthology as inclusive as possible, given the expansive diversity across a pan pacific community and a criterion of being locally based and locally published.

“Beyond that, we needed to have poems that were of literary merit: strong poems in their own right that had something fresh to say and said it well. We had to make the call on that a few times, in order to include only poems of a high standard, that is: conveying passion and meaning and resonance.”

Courtney Sina Meredith was one of the poets who performed on the evening. Photo/ Supplied

Poets who performed on the night included Eggleton, Courtney Sina Meredith, Daren Kamali, Gina Cole, Serie Barford and Emalani Case.

While the anthology traverses the breadth of Pacific communities in Aotearoa, it is Kamali (the Pacific Heritage Advisor at Auckland Libraries) who walks the talk of inclusivity as founder of the Street Poets and Artists Collective Enterprise (SPACE).

Kamali set up SPACE several years go after noticing how the homeless and rough sleepers were drawn to the library, to give voice to a community often ignored and unnoticed.

There was immense pride from Kamali with the inclusion of poet and SPACE member Lana Te Rore in the anthology; she also read at the launch.

The 21st century anthology Katūīvei is testament of navigating life in Aotearoa New Zealand by Pacific poets and acknowledges the diaspora in their work.

The voice of Te Rore adds to this rich tapestry woven into the collection, illustrating the trade-offs of life in Aotearoa, far from the safe havens of our countries of origin.