A Well Written Body by Karlo Mila

Abstract

the civil society it communicates with,Maltese poetry joins theglobal trend of becoming a voice for the planetary conscience, which ever more urgently needs to be fostered across the four continental masses and the seven seas of our ailing Earth. Antoine Cassar Luxembourg KarloMila. AWell Written Body. Deli cia Sampero, ill. Wellington, New Zea land.Huia. 2008. 79 pages, ill. NZ$34. isbn978-1-86969-321-3 Karlo Mila's most recent book of poetry immediately strikes one as a work of art, "a well-written body"; her poems and thepowerful paint ings of Delicia Sampero coexist on thepages, thepoems reacting to the images and the images to thepoems. This book is the product of what Karlo Mila, inher poetically crafted acknowledgments, calls "creative conversations ... an extraordinary dialogue." A Well Written Body is divided into five sections. The first,"Where are you from?",deals with the chal lenges ofMila's mixed heritage of Tongan, Samoan, and Pakeha (New Zealanders of European descent). In the poem titled "There are no words for us" she writes: "There is no language // genome, germ lines, genomics / that captures / the rupture and joy / of gene-pool crossings //a channel as wide / as humankind." Mila ispart of thedisparate cul tures of her heritage, but she is also an outsider experiencing difficul ties inunderstanding vital elements of these cultures: she is trapped between modern ways and ancient traditions. She writes in the poem "Fonu": "fleeing tallglass cities / in search of fonua / only to findyour self / foreign." Fonua is the elusive Tongan word for "land" but also theword fora land's connection to its people and, in a deeper sense, the link itoffers individuals to one another. Also, in the subsequent sections of the book, differentworlds and languages intersect.Mila at times weaves into the poetry a Tongan, Maori, or Samoan word or phrase, creating an effect that can be read forsound alone or also for meaning (the expressions are explained in a glossary at theback). The poems range fromdeeply personal to political and polemic. The section "How I came to love the king" is her response to the death in 2006 of Taufa'ahau Tupou IV of Tonga. There isher angry reaction to mainstream New Zealand's patron izingmedia coverage of the king's reign and the obituaries centering on themonetary scandals of 2001 involving JesseBogdonoff,who was both the official court jester to the king and theofficial financial advis er to the Tongan government. A Well Written Body is part of Huia's publishing mission to pre sent indigenous literary perspectives within aPacific framework,attracting new voices with itsannual Pikihuia Award for Maori Writers. Huia has published English andMaori works by Patricia Grace, the2008winner of theNeustadt International Prize for Literature, and has reached out to nativewriters fromotherparts of the world, such as Kateri Akiwenzie Damm (of theNawash FirstNation ofCanada), Serie Barford (ofAlgon quin and Samoan background), and the Samoan writer Albert Wendt. In 2004 Huia also published Karlo Mila's firstbook of poetry, Dream Fish Floating,which won one of the prestigious Montana New Zealand = Book Awards and established her as = a new and original poetic voice. = Shon Arieh-Lerer = Brooklyn, New York = ValzhynaMort Valzhyna Mort. Factory of Tears. Eliza beth OehlkersWright, FranzWright, and the author, trs. Port Townsend, Washington. Copper Canyon. 2008. viii + 116 pages. $15. isbn 978-1-55659 274-4 In a recently published anthology, New European Poets (2008), twen ty-seven-year-old Valzhyna Mort fromBelarus set herself apart from many other young poets. Recipi ent of the 2005 Crystal of Vilenica Award in Slovenia and of the 2008 Burda Poetry Prize inGermany, she ismost characterized by an obsti nate resistance and rebellion against thedevaluation of life, which forces her to multiply intelligentquestions, impressive thoughts, and alluring metaphors, while her rhythm sur prisingly arises as a powerful tool for themost dramatic moments of her verses. May-June 2009 i71 H ...