Holly Washbourn

“The Zoom call started. It felt like Selina Tusitala Marsh was there in our English classroom with us, she has such a presence…

Around ten of us were in the room talking, laughing and writing with her. Some of us were Scholarship English students and others were those who just wanted to hear from Selina. In class, we had studied ‘Unity,’ the poem Selina wrote and presented in front of the Queen, a poem that looks at conservation and conversation and the ways humanity is connected around the world. She delivered that poem to us over the screen. She held up her tokotoko, gifted to her when she was Poet Laureate so we could see its beautiful, intricate designs. She read us a short piece about that day that she’d performed ‘Unity’ for the Queen and how a man in the front row had refused to shake her hand – listening, I think we all felt the insult of his rudeness. 

Then it was our turn to write. Selina read us a poem of hers that takes a nursery rhyme and twists it into something deeper and new. She talked about the familiarity of nursery rhymes and the subversive surprise they can deliver when you use them in a poem to create another meaning. My poem was based on I’m a Little Teapot — I can’t remember what I wrote exactly but I wanted to give a feminist perspective. One of my classmates wrote about socioeconomic disparity using Incy Wincy Spider and another wrote a poem about Pasifika identity. I enjoy writing and something Selina said that resonated for me was not to get too frustrated if your writing isn’t happening — that sometimes it doesn’t. She talked about ‘holding the flame and not burning out,’ as a metaphor for this.  ‘Carry a notebook,’ she said for those times you have something spontaneous, an idea perhaps, that you want to note down and come back to later. She was so supportive. For NCEA we’ve studied a lot of New Zealand authors. In Scholarship English this year we also studied Witi Ihimaera’s work. There’s something different about reading books set in a place you know or live in. You get a jolt of recognition when a place you’ve been is there, described in print.”

Holly Washbourn is a student at Avonside Girls’ High School.