Nafanua Purcell Kersel (Satupa'itea, Faleālupo, Aleipata, Tuaefu) is a writer, poet and performer who was born in Sāmoa and raised in Aotearoa. Her poetry has been widely published. In 2022 she won the Biggs Family Prize in Poetry for Black Sugarcane, which was then published in 2025 by Te Herenga Waka University Press and shortlisted for the 2026 Mary and Peter Biggs Award for Poetry at the Ockham New Zealand Book Awards.
Kersel comments: '"Kō" is the second poem in a cycle of three found poems using the same source text. I enjoy writing found poems and for Black Sugarcane I wanted to draw from a variety of source texts, including texts where gagana Sāmoa or other Pasifika languages were featured with mana and density. I started with Pasifika poetry anthologies and was delighted to find a rich collection of poetic, moana language in the glossary pages of Mauri Ola: Contemporary Polynesian Poems in English, edited by Albert Wendt, Reina Whaitiri, and Robert Sullivan (Auckland University Press, 2010). Moana languages are high-context with many polysemic words and in gagana Sāmoa, the word "kō" can be translated as "planted" or "pregnant", depending on context.'
Links
Nafanua Purcell Kersel's Te Herenga Waka University Press author page
Nafanua Purcell Kersel's Read NZ Te Pou Muramura page
Nafanua Purcell Kersel's Instagram
Photographer credit: Robert Cross