‘One can’t know without doing and one can do without being. In the Pacific, I find that many Pacific academics in literature and the English departments are also practicing writers, and vice versa, because they support one another. Creativity underpins many Pacific cultures especially because we lean towards the oral. Our histories are captured in metaphors that we recite and memorize through proverbs, genealogical chantsoral histories. It’s all around us. We know the world through metaphor.’
Selina Tusitala Marsh is a poet and academic and New Zealand’s Poet Laureate 2017–2019.
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