198 contemporary poetry
LINGUISTIC CROSS-FERTILISATION: TUSIATA AVIA
Tusiata Avia’s poetry shows how the poetic text can become a
space for linguistic cross-fertilisation and the exploration of idi-
omatic, or idiolectical, texture. Of Samoan decent, Avia was
raised in Christchurch, New Zealand. As a performance poet,
her poetry engages with oral storytelling, often focusing on the
intervention of folklore from her Samoan heritage and modern
New Zealand. The opening poem of her volume Wild Dogs Under
My Skirt ( 2004 ) offers a rendition of the Samoan alphabet – ‘O
le pi tautau’ – through a series of poetic narratives, as well as a
glossary of words at the back of the volume.^77 The stories in this
work seek to translate between two idioms and two cultures. We
are told that ‘A is for Afakasi’ [half-caste], and represented as a
‘child / left at the crossroads’ about whom the poem asks: ‘Who
will save her from the snakes? / Who will save her from the dark-
ness?’ (p. 9 ). This position of being in-between two cultures,
identities or at a ‘crossroads’ is enforced by the doubling posi-
tions enacted in ‘O le pi tautau’. ‘T’ for example stands for ‘teine
lelei / good girl’ and also ‘T is for teine leaga / bad girl’ (p. 12 ).
Through this alphabetised poem Avia also enforces a sense of
pedagogy and the imposition of what might be considered ‘correct’
pedagogy. It comes as no surprise that ‘V’ stands for virgin, and
the speaker communicates confusion regarding religious doctrinal
thought:
Mary was a virgin
and God was her husband
but Joseph was her husband
and Jesus was her baby. (p. 12 )The positioning of women is crucial in Avia’s volume, as are
the narratives inherited by the young female child that dominates
the volume. In ‘O le pi tautau’, ‘S’ we are told is for ‘Slut’ which
is then translated into Samoan: ‘I know what it means / it means
pa’umuku / like my mother’ (p. 12 ). Avia uses Samoan as a method
for framing the contesting representations of both women and
female sexuality. Her prose poem ‘Alofa’, translated as ‘love’, uses