Innovative new Pacific short stories and poems

Tale of the Taniwha
Courtney Sina Meredith
Beatnik Publishing RRP $30

Courtney Sina Meredith has become one of the most interesting, and vibrant Pacific Island poets of recent years creating seductive and challenging poems and performances which have seen her appearing around the world. Last year she represented New Zealand at the Mexico City Poetry Festival and later this year she will be New Zealand’s representative for the Fall Residency at the International Writing Program at Iowa University followed by the post of Teaching Artist in Residence at the Island Institute in Sitka Alaska.

Her latest publication Tale of the Taniwha follows on from her book of poems Brown Girls in Bright Red Lipstick, which was launched at the Frankfurt Book Fair in 2012. This new book extends some of the personal and social themes  she dealt with in her first book but this new collection takes a wider scope, gets more personal and is ingenious in its experimentation.

The book is promoted as a collection of short stories but the nearly 20 pieces of writing are a mixture of play scripts, poems, songs and short narratives but even those have a poetic quality to them.

The experimental nature of the book sees her playing with typography and printing techniques. There is an adventurous placement of word and blocks of words on the page which would have meant working closely with her designer Kyle Ranudo and type designer Dieter Hofrichter.

But it is the way which she experiments with time, location and voices that make the book full of surprises and interest as well as the different formats she writes in.

“Aotahi” which sprawls over many pages is a clever work using three different densities of white type on purple pages similar to the way that the composer John Cage created some of his works. The words fade and reappear like waves of consciousness, slowly revealing the full text.

Some like “Ibu & Tufuga” have something of a children’s story to them where the simplicity of the tale and the language disguise an uneasiness.

As in her previous set of poems the locations are global – The Tate Gallery in London, the streets of Berlin, K Rd and Otara. They all becomes sites for reminiscing and remembering with flows on consciousness mixed with pieces of information and description.

She explores the everyday life of a global young woman, presented through the eyes of a number of different women as they examine notions of art, sexual relationships, family linkages and the place of Pacifica.

Tune into NBR Radio’s Sunday Business with Andrew Patterson on Sunday morning, for analysis and feature-length interviews.

Click the hamburger symbol top right of our homepage to access the Rich List 2016 and other sections.