Book Launch: Black Sugarcane by Nafanua Purcell Kersel

Join us for the celebration to launch the landmark debut collection, Black Sugarcane by Nafanua Purcell Kersel, published by Te Herenga Waka Press. The book will be launched by Amber Esau.

At the heart of Black Sugarcane is a sequence of erasure poems arising from the seminal essay ‘In Search of Tagaloa’ by Tui Atua Tamasese Ta‘isi Efi. From the worlds contained in the text, these poems rise as if inevitable. Another sequence responds to the devastating tsunami that stuck between the Samoan islands of Upolu and Tutuila in September 2009. Within the line, within the word and even the letter, these poems speak to creation and translation, destruction and regeneration.

All welcome!