As part of an outstanding opening night, poet Selina Tusitalka Marsh delivered an electric live poetry reading at Going West 2017.

That year we were forced to relocate Going West to the former Waitakere Council chambers in Henderson, after lightning caused a fire at our longstanding home in the Titirangi War Memorial Hall. 

Then the newly minted Poet Laureate, Selina delivered her own lightning on stage, with a joyous and powerful performance. Honoured with the title of Commonwealth Poet in 2016, she was commissioned to write and perform a poem before the Queen at the Commonwealth Day Observance in Westminster Abbey. She performed that poem for us at Going West - along with other recent work and her witty observations on the British aristocracy and well known New Zealand diplomats. 

She also shared her new adventures as poet laureate and her work championing literature and language in schools.

-

Selina Tusitala Marsh is an award winning Pasifika Poet-Scholar. As Associate Professor in the English Department at the University of Auckland, she teaches New Zealand and Pacific Literature, convenes its largest course in Creative Writing, and supervises poets in its Masters of Creative Writing Programme.  She delivered the prestigious annual NZ Book Council lecture 2016, was made Honorary Literary Fellow in the NZ Society of Authors’ annual Waitangi Day Honours 2017, and lives in hope that one day, maybe one day, her sons will write her a poem.