Queen Bee

What an honour to host poet, author, Professor and NZ Poet Laureate 2017-19, Selina Tusitala Marsh ONZM. Selina will speak with Peter Malcouronne about her interesting and diverse career in the oldest church in Hawke's Bay. 

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Selina is an Auckland-based Pacific poet and scholar of Samoan, Tuvaluan, English, Scottish and French descent. 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 both creative writing and Māori and Pacific literary studies.  

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Selina was honoured with the title of Commonwealth Poet 2016, and commissioned to write and perform a poem before the Queen at the Commonwealth Day Observance in Westminster Abbey. 

In August 2017 she was awarded the New Zealand Poet Laureate for 2017–2019. Cathie Koa Dunsford wrote in the Australian Women’s Book Review, ‘She peppers her poetic narrative with the rhythms and staccato of urban hip hop beats, in tune with slick contemporary themes and voices, showing her and their disregard for the romanticisation of the past and for the politics of the present.’In 2015, Marsh attended the Australia and New Zealand Literary Festival in London, during which she won the light-hearted Literary Death Match for poets.

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In August 2020 her book Mophead was the supreme winner at the New Zealand Book Awards for Children and Young Adults, and also won the Margaret Mahy Book of the Year and Elsie Locke Award for Non-fiction.  In October 2020 Mophead won three awards at the Publishers Association of New Zealand Book Design Awards – the Gerard Reid Award for Best Book, Best children's book and the PANZ People’s Choice Award – recognising the design skills of Vida Kelly. Her 2020 book, Mophead Tu, was shortlisted for the Elsie Locke Award for Nonfiction at the 2021 New Zealand Book Awards for Children and Young Adults. Marsh is currently writing a book about first-wave (1974-2008) Pacific women poets.
 

Since his feature-writing career began with a story in The Listener on a nudist camp open day, Peter Malcouronne has won numerous national and international journalism awards. In the decades since, he has paddled through Parnell sewers, attended dog shows, profiled boxers, wood choppers and seditionists – before morphing into an ‘honest propagandist’, most recently for high profile apartment developer, Ockham Residential. He has also written two books – a sentimental and non-best-selling ode to rugby, and a rather more successful opus on Aotea Great Barrier Island. The father of two enjoys AC/DC, ABBA, West Auckland culture – he attended Avondale College with Selina – and YouTube clips of Shane Bond’s yorkers.

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A incredible poet in the oldest church in Hawke's Bay.  We can't wait for this one!  The venue is small so buy your tickets today!

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Thank you to Paper Plus Waipukurau for your sponsorship of this event.