Pacific Poets # 4 Dan Taulapapa McMullin

Dan Taulapapa McMullin

Dan Taulapapa McMullin lives in California but his heritage is Samoan. Dan was born in American Samoa and identifies himself as part of the Fa'a Fafine culture. He is a poet, artist and film maker. He has recently published a selection of poems in a book entitled Coconut Milk. The poems are critical of the relationship Pacific cultures have with Western cultures. The poem 'Tiki Manifesto' is a good example of how Taulapapa views the tourist industry. Many of his poems also give voice to the experience of being Fa'a Fafine and how prejudice haunted much of his formative years.

Coconut Milk
(University of Arizona Press, 2013)

   Taulapapa has an honest, raw and uncompromising style.The poems are written in blank verse and many follow a narrative style. Some of them are funny; some are confronting. Snippets of Samoan language and idiom permeate his work.

Pacific Poets #3 Jully Makini

Jully Makini
(pidp.eastwestcenter.org)

Jully Makini is a poet from the Solomon Islands, also known by her maiden name Jully Sipolo. Her first collection Civilized Girl was published in 1981 and her second, Praying Parents in 1986. Her more recent collection Flotsam and Jetsam was published in 2007.
   The poem 'Civilized Girl' is a terrific one for PSSC students to memorise and use in the English exam. The six stanzas are short, compact and punchy. The images are clear and the narrator's confusion and loss of identity is obvious. I particularly like the tactile image of the girl's straightened hair ...Now soft as coconut husk/ held by a dozen clips...
   'Civilized Girl is an ideal poem to compare with Konai Helu Thaman's 'Island Fire.'

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".

Pacific Poets # 1 "Father and Son" by Ruperake Petaia

Blue Rain is a fine collection of poems by the Western Samoan author and poet Ruperake Petaia. One of my favourite poems is "Father and Son" which clearly depicts the negative impact a Western education can have on islander relationships by widening the generation gap and introducing cultural change. The stanza with the lines 'suddenly he speaks / and you don't want to hear him / he dresses / and you don't want to see him' conveys rich emotion and conflict with so few words.
   "Father and Son" is a great one for PSSC students to memorise for the exams because it is only five stanzas long.
   If you haven't checked out Petaia's work, give it a try. Now in his sixties, he is still writing well. Last year his short story "The Challenge" was Highly Commended in the 2011 Commonwealth Short Story Competition.