Dream Fish Floating

By Karlo Mila

Professor Konai Helu Thaman (Acting Deputy Vice Chancellor, and UNESCO Chair in teacher education &; culture - The University of the South Pacific) says this about the collection: This is a refreshing and welcome addition to the growing list of women's writing in Oceania. Karlo draws wisdom and compassion from her ancestral cultures but is not constrained by them. Honest and unafraid, she has spread her net wide in order to capture the many concerns that many people are grappling with as they face the realities of a globalised and impersonal world. Written with passion, persistence and sensitivity, her poems are insightful, challenging and sometimes provocative. This book should inspire others, especially women, to share their experiences with the rest of the world.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Huia Publishers
• Release date: Aug 26, 2013
• ISBN: 9781869694661

Karlo Mila

Dr Karlo Mila is a New Zealand-born poet of Tongan and Pakeha descent with ancestral connections to Samoa. She is currently Programme Director of Mana Moana, Leadership New Zealand. This leadership programme is based on her postdoctoral research on harnessing indigenous language and ancestral knowledge from the Pacific to use in contemporary leadership contexts. Karlo received an MNZM in 2019 for services to the Pacific community and as a poet, received a Creative New Zealand Contemporary Pacific Artist Award in 2016, and was selected for a Creative New Zealand Fulbright Pacific Writer’s Residency in Hawaii in 2015.Goddess Muscle is Karlo's third book of poetry. Her first, Dream Fish Floating, won NZSA Jessie Mackay Best First Book of Poetry Award at the Montana New Zealand Book Awards in 2006. In 2008, Karlo collaborated with German-born artist Delicia Sampero to produce A Well Written Body. Karlo's poetry has been published in in many anthologies, in a variety of journals and online.

Book preview

Dream Fish Floating

Karlo Mila

Dedicated to my nana

Alice Suisana Hunt-O’Keefe

Contents

TUAKANA

For Sia Figiel

For Albert Wendt (On his Birthday)

For John Pule

For Alice Walker

PASIFIKA REVISITED

Visiting Tonga: A Sestina Variation

Virgin Loi

On Joining Pacifica

For Carmel

Beyond Blackbirder Legacies

From Pink Katie to Blue Carrie

For Ida

Sacred Pulu

Octopus Auckland: Eight Suburbs

Eating Dark Chocolate and Watching Paul Holmes’ Apology

Savai‘i Rental

Savai‘i Sorceress

For Tui Atua Tupua Tamasese Efi

WERO

Manuhiri

21st Key

On One Tree Hill Falling

Annette Sykes Visits: Ahi Kaa

Legendary

Poroporoaki

Highbury

For Papa Sean

Papa Sean

YES, THIS IS A LOVE POEM

Missed

Friday Night

Leaving Prince Charming Behind

PJ

One Night Standing

Hook Line and Sinker

on seeing someone who … (didn’t see me)

The H. Series

For Ava (The One and Only Blind Man)

The Grass is Greener

Death of a DJ

3 am (after Shakers)

Plastic

Venus Fly-trap

After Lunch Reflections

An Independent Observation

Tane Mahuta

Today: Embracing Newness

Dry Land

Five Day Farewell after Fighting

Ode to the God of Wisdom

Pikipiki hama kae vaevae manava

He Piko he Taniwha, he Piko he Taniwha

Rarotonga Pretend Honeymooning

This is Love

WORKING THROUGH LIFE

The Poet as Unionist

Chivalry is not Dead

Ex-Trade Union Organiser Angst

Now that I am No Longer One of Us

Beaven Lecture Theatre: Otago 2 July 2002

Confessions of a Pacific Health Bureaucrat

CHANTING BACK TO THE BONES

Hafe Kasi to Afa Kasi

For Alice Hunt

For Makelesi Taulepa: Fefine mei Ofu

Wednesday Afternoon

Maka

For my Mother

Our Mother is in Love

For my Aunts (Fahu and Beyond)

Whenua Tapu

For Aunty Olive (98th Birthday)

Notes

Glossary

Acknowledgements

Tuakana

For Sia Figiel

you talk of oral sex and racist oppression

and that offensive woman Jenny Shipley

in one beautiful sentence

and I am a flower that is opening to your words

no rose or lily of the valley but that white flower

I don’t know the name of that smells of Tonga

with an egg yolk centre and grows on trees

tall as hurricane houses with ants crawling inside them

and I’ve come across Haunani Kay ‘What do you mean we

white man’ Trask

who sings to Native Daughters everywhere

and Konai’s poems so sensitive I felt I bruised the pages with

my big hands

and Momoe, fiery and heartbroken a recovering romantic

a needle in my heart piercing and mending both

and now you

I am the seed of the migrant dream

(ruia-mai-i-Rangiatea?)

the daughter who is supposed to fill the promise

hope heavy on my shoulders

I stand on the broken back of physical labour

knowing the new dawn has been raided

and milk and honey is linked to obesity and diabetes

and our hearts are drowning in buckets of povi masima

vomit on my fingers

I listen to Ani de Franco and feel accused of whining with

white women

while my Polynesian men wine with white women

and I wonder in this blue eyed world where I will find

shoes that fit my wide feet

that aren’t jandals

and I just look at you and I listen and I read your words

and I know that you know and I am open to you like

the flower

I don’t know the name of

For Albert Wendt (On his Birthday)

you dare to fish

beyond the coral reefs

of our understanding

your net pulls in poems

flicking salty tales

you find nuanua

in the eye of hurricanes

celebrate thunder

we prefer not to hear

and relish

the quicksilver laughter

of lightning

you shake the tree

of the frangipani

and as the flowers fall from grace

you string them into sentences

ants and all

your narrative is a needle

that pierces the thickest skin

the ink of your pen

blending with our blood

tattooing stories of altered genealogies

between the lines

of our naked bodies

For John Pule

the poet told us

there was a beach

but a hurricane came

and swallowed it up

there was also a nation of people

but a New Zealand sponsored

hurricane

just as hungry

swept away people like