Karlo Mila, an award-winning New Zealand poet of Tongan and Pakeha descent, has this year published a second book of poetry. Her voice is Tongan and her images and stories come from today, and include several reflections on Tongan politics - her poems offering witty and perceptive, sometimes painful, insight, say Irene Webley and Tapani Mangisi, who wrote the following book review for the Tonga Research Association.

A Well Written Body, by Karlo Mila with paintings by Delicia Sampero, Huia Publishers, Wellington, 2008.

THE first thing to be said about this book is that it is beautiful. It is a pleasure to hold, to read, to share in ways that that all poetry books should be. Sampero's paintings enclose and embrace Mila's poetry, opening each new section in the collection as well as illustrating selected verses. They are sensual and powerful, a visual delight.

Karlo Mila is a New Zealand poet belonging to the generation calling themselves Pasifika, that is firmly grounded in the particularities of their ancestral cultures as well as strongly identifying with the emergent and transcendent Pacific Island community in New Zealand. She is of Tongan and Pakeha descent, she says, with ancestral connections to Samoa.

Delicia Sampero's German ancestry is one of three main cultural influences; the others are her personal family connections to Samoa and her involvement in the MAU Dance company in Auckland.

This is the second collection of Mila's poetry. She is a major talent, with her first book, Dream Fish Floating, winning the Jessie Mackay Award for Best First Book of Poetry in 2006. In A Well Written Body, she speaks of identity and politics, of love and mothering, children and sex. Her images and stories come from today, the recent past (the death of Tu'ipelehake ('Uluvalu), the riots in Tonga, her pregnancy), as well as from the traditions of the Pacific. Her ear is acute - she understands how words and the sounds of words traverse the cultures of New Zealand and Tongan and Samoan settings and her poems offer this back in witty and perceptive, sometimes painful, insight.

We laughed, tears in our eyes, at Five poems on not being a real Tongan. Two verses demonstrate Mila's acute vision and even more acute ear:

PhD2.

The Tongan

anthropologist stares

when I ask

what impact the World Wide Web

has on conceptions of ta and va

when ideas travel across time and space

faster than the speed of light.

He suggests I am suffering

from a New Zealand-born identity crisis.

PhD3.

The Tongan

education specialist

says that she can tell the difference

between

real Tongans

and those who are not.

Real Tongans say

"Donga"

like, Doe a Deer a female deer.

Those who are not real Tongans

say "Tonga"

like, Tea, a drink with jam and bread,

and have

Fa

a

long long way to go.

Mila gives us words and stories with strong, complex resonances: her voice is Tongan, even more strongly Pasifika and woman. Her poems speak on all these levels, for us, about us, about our families, our children, our community. In 'There are no words for us', for example, she reflects the pain and promise of being a child with multiple ancestory:

There is no language

cross-pollinate, hybrid

that cultivates

insight and pain

of embodied

cultural exchange

She understands the obstacles to belonging, to returning home. 'Fonu' reminds us:

this is the twist

you weren't expecting

fleeing tall glass cities

in search of fonua

only to find yourself

foreign

you will turn up to a funeral

wearing the wrong colour

sit in the wrong place at church

eat something on the road

while you are walking

From the Ashes

The poem we kept coming back to is 'Who will douse the lights?' the first in the section, From the Ashes, that includes several reflections on Tongan politics. This is one of several long poems. It is powerful, haunting, accusing.

this is rage

volcanic inferno

burning Tongatapu clean

back to its white coral bones

where are the warriors of Ha'atakalaua now?

three bloodlines tripwired like burning wicks

alight with no mercy

. . .

who will douse the lights?

not the businessmen whose buildings were

the first

to be levelled with rage

not Eseta or Akilisi

not Clive or Feleti

the black polished pebbles in their mouths

lead all the way to pulotu

. . .

for now

men who cannot cry

try

to determine Tonga's future in its ashes

coal in their eyes

embers for teeth

righteousness is their undoing.

This is a collection to treasure: to read aloud, to share with your children. Mila and Sampero are both artists of immense talent. Buy this book, and while you are at it, buy Mila's first collection as well. It will delight you too. The book can be purchased online from Huia Publishers.

Review copyright Irene Webley and Tapani Mangisi.