Longlisted for Ockham New Zealand Book Awards 2024 - the Mary and Peter Biggs Award for Poetry

Praise for Tusiata Avia ‘Savage is as savage does. And we’re all implicated. Avia breaks the colonial lens wide open. We peer through its poetic shards and see a savage world – outside, inside. With characteristic savage and stylish wit, Avia holds the word-blade to our necks and presses with a relentless grace. At the end, you’ll feel your pulse anew.’ —Selina Tusitala Marsh ‘A welcome autopsy of colonisers in past and present times, penned with a scalpel’s precision, the inspection of parts, minced down to the floor. Sit in your blood-splattered apron and feel as the verdict is read.' —Ali Cobby Eckermann ‘Tusiata Avia’s poetry . . . is a full-body plunge in winter seas. It’s breathtaking, skin tingling and teeth rattling. I feel alive. . . . Exhilaration, pain, vulnerability, joy, cheeky confidence and acknowledgement. But what I don’t feel is lonely.’ —Nafanua Kersel, The Hook

Tusiata Avia’s previous poetry collections are Wild Dogs Under My Skirt (2004; also staged as a theatre show), Bloodclot (2009), the Ockham-shortlisted Fale Aitu | Spirit House (2016), and the Ockham-award-winning The Savage Coloniser Book (2020). Tusiata has held the Fulbright Pacific Writer’s Fellowship at the University of Hawai‘i in 2005 and the Ursula Bethell Writer in Residence at University of Canterbury in 2010. She was the 2013 recipient of the Janet Frame Literary Trust Award, and in 2020 was appointed a Member of the New Zealand Order of Merit for services to poetry and the arts.