AMTW: Can you please share a bit about the process – the way you wove Black Sugarcane together. What was your relationship with time throughout this journey to publication? Were there distinct pressure points you recall and how did you continue to write during these times?

NPK: My relationship to time is strange at best. Sometimes I feel grossed out by time, sometimes obsessed or possessed by it. I think something in me is always going to rebel against timekeeping and the gregorian calendar but, you know, I also need to eat and sleep and raise my kids. I went into writing Black Sugarcane with a sense of my own mortality because I had been very ill and that was the impetus to write a book. Theoretically I knew that I could write something if I focussed for long enough and the MA year became the time and environmental structure I needed to be able to drop myself into the vā. Also, practically, for my family it was a temporary state that we could work through logistically. The MA year is nine months. I’ve borne three babies so I know that a whole life can be made in that time. Winter was definitely a pressure point, it was a cold, hard, slog and it was the people I connected with, my friends and family that saw me through it. That was the generative vā for the collection. The time I took afterwards, almost two years, was to reset after the MA and to let the manuscript also rest and breathe outside of the MA. The structure served its purpose, and I was spent. With the Mary and Peter Biggs Poetry Prize I won at the end of the MA, I took myself and the manuscript back to Sāmoa to be in the company and prayers of my Grandmothers. I was better, and the work was better for it.

AMTW: When we’ve spoken in the past, you said that you like poetry because “you can make so many choices that feel like they’re just for me and the poem. Not necessarily to feel in control, but because it makes me feel capable, true and realised. There are all these choices and I don’t necessarily need to see the end. I know that part of the process is chaos, but if I’m able to make choices along the way, those choices help me make those choices.” Can you please talk a little bit more about this? Your choices.

NPK: Yeah, that was very clever of me haha. I think I like to sense things out a bit when I’m writing and the choices I make, a word, a shape, a form, a character feels like a moment of infinite possibility where the pick-a-path could lead somewhere that feels right or somewhere that feels a bit off. I think that’s what I meant, when I get the sense that a choice I’ve made for a poem is right, it’s unmistakable, it leads to more and more. I feel capable, the choice led to something close to truth. The moment just before making a choice is absolute chaos and that probably says more about me than anything else! Sure, it doesn’t always feel that deep but I understand that it can be and that’s enough.

AMTW: Can you please share a bit about the experience of writing your book in the context of the CREW 256 and Masters program at Vic Uni? What impact did this experience have on your understanding of what it is to be a writer? Do you believe universities can be generative places for writers?

NPK: The CREW 256 (now CREW 260) Māori and Pasifika Writing paper at Te Herenga Waka Victoria University of Wellington, where we first met! That in itself feels iconic for me but it has so much more going for it. The fact that one doesn’t need to be enrolled in a degree to apply for the paper helped me to access the space, a full fifteen years after last being on campus. Iconic. The space to read, reflect and write work from and of Māori and Pasifika? Iconic. Victor Rodger and now Ruby Solly as convenors? Iconic! This was where I returned to poetry, something I had only done for myself prior. It was the inspiration and encouragement from our cohort and Victor that brought poetry back into my life. It’s one of the best things I ever did for myself as a writer. It was also my first experience of the workshop model and if anything, it set the platform for me to realise the power of people in my creative processes. Without that experience, I’m not sure I would have backed myself enough to keep sharing poetry, and definitely wouldn’t have found the courage to attempt the MA workshop.

I think generally, universities can be generative places for writers, but it’s not easy or accessible for the global majority. There’s so much more happening off-campus and beyond the industry. If we make it to university, and make it through, it’s not by mistake. We’ve been working and writing and creating in our families and communities, only to be ‘emerging’ in an industry sense. It’s prickly for me! I’ve experienced both the MA and a residency at the same university. Both had challenges and freedoms, and somewhere between that, poetry happened. There are good people everywhere and they make all the difference. I don’t know that there is a perfect fit for writers because creativity is so faceted and not always comfortable which is why I take advice like ‘write every day’ with a grain of salt. I feel like part of my process is that I’m always chasing a creative spark and endlessly figuring out how to sustain it within a changing and complex reality.

AMTW: What’s a misconception people have about you and your writing?

NPK: I haven’t come across any misconceptions yet, maybe one subtle one was that it’s polite and not protest? Or that I’m a ‘slam poet’, whatever that means. I am proud to have been a slam champ, I love the spoken word and naturally connect to our oratory traditions by sharing out loud. It’s an important part of my process, to have a poem land in the space between me and others. It’s people that grow me, and my poetry too.

AMTW: I’d love to know who/what is in your current To Be Read pile? What are you currently sinking your reading eyes in to?

NPK:

Current:

• Flashlight by Susan Choi
• Hungus by Amber Esau
• Land by Maggie O’Farrell
• Pepeha Portal by Ariana Tikao

TBR:

• Boy Friends by Michael Pedersen
• Dance-Floor Romance by Chris Tse
• Hoods Landing by Laura Vincent
• Katabasis by RF Kuang
• Lucky Creatures by Joseph Trinidad
• Night, Ma by Elizabeth Knox
• Samoan Made Simple by Jason Tiatia