Pacific Poets #2 Konai Helu Thaman

Dr Konai Helu Thaman

Poetry is one section of the PSSC English Exam which students can prepare for easily as long as they memorise at least four poems. Tongan academic Dr Konai Helu Thaman is one poet who has several collections of poems to choose from. An old favourite of mine is You, the Choice of my Parents which was first published in 1974. "Island Fire" is a short poem of only 16 lines from this collection. It is a great one to memorise for the exams because it's so short and it can be compared with other poems around such themes as Western education or the generation gap. Konai Helu Thaman's style is rich in imagery as in the lines "...the slow turning of/ Foreign text book pages" and her use of metaphor is also strong considering she has very few lines to work with in this compact piece.
Other excellent poems from this collection include "You, the Choice of my Parents" and "Reality".

Tev by Brendan Murray

Tev by Brendan Murray (Freemantle Arts Centre Press, 2002)

Tev is half Tongan, half Australian and is almost fifteen. 'My parents call me Tev, usually, and Tevita when they're annoyed with me. There's been a lot of 'Tevita' lately.'
   His parents believe he's been deceitful and so Tev has been sent home to Tonga, his mother's land, to straighten him out.
   The book starts with his plane journey and meeting his uncle Maka and cousins at the airport. His stay with the family is difficult as he has to grapple with the culture and language. He finds love too and  safe refuge for his companions during a cyclone.
   I enjoyed the depiction of the funeral (I won't say who dies) and other cultural events in this book. Murray shows island life as it is: the squabbles, the joys and the unity.
   The whole way through the book there are Tongan words and phrases with English translations following in brackets. I found this technique distracting. Many meanings could be understood from the context of the sentences and the glossary at the back served to help when meaning was lost. I also found Tevita's voice inconsistent. In the dialogue he sounded like a teenager, but a lot of his internal thoughts were those of an adult.
Overall the book is good light entertainment, but I didn't think Tev was a fully developed character. There was a lot of room for improvement.