Tusiata Avia

"When I write a poem it turns into a “hate crime” right then and there. It springs up off the page, and marches out into the street like an army of ten thousand colonial soldiers armed with guns."

"My daughter locks me in the bathroom and says through the door: Mum, stop that “racist violence dressed up as art”, because, Mum, “poor white people disaffected by the effects of globalism” couldn’t say those things."

"When I am under a full moon, I start writing a poem about colonisation, which is exactly the same as “inciting murder”. Writing a poem is the same as a “manifesto” justifying terrorism and massacre."

"Later, my white neighbour will come over to my house and say: Let me explain something to you, Tusiata. “Racism is like a scab on your knee”, and “if you pick it”, what will happen? “Leave it alone and it will heal”, otherwise I fear the “wound will get infected”. And what will happen to me then? Huh? What will happen to me then?"

"In the space of a few generations, my poem has traumatised the people who originally owned this land and their language almost disappears."

"No colonisation. No genocide. No intergenerational trauma. No two centuries of white privilege."

"Sorry guys, the thing is, when I write a poem I become a werewolf."

"When I write a poem “sexual and racial violence” burst out of me like wolf-fur through the rents in my smooth brown skin. I start howling at the moon and “inciting racial violence” all over the place."

"My daughter slumps down outside the bathroom door in tears and whispers: I’m tired of my “acceptable ethnicity”. We brown people have all the privileges now. We can say anything we like and get away with it."

"Now, I’m howling and ripping off my clothes and writing a poem which is “inciting violence” right through the walls of my house."

"The neighbours hear me writing a poem about colonisation and they yell: Stop that “race-baiting”, our kids are trying to sleep."

"My poem steals my neighbour’s land, and everybody’s land. My poem steals 94 percent of all the land in New Zealand. It steals millions upon millions of acres of land."