15 December 2022

An engaging and generous collection of poems about Sāmoan family and community has won the International Institute of Modern Letters (IIML) 2022 Biggs Family Prize in Poetry.

Author Nafanua Purcell Kersel (Faleālupo, Malaelā, Mosula, Tuaefu) is a poet of the Sāmoan diaspora with a degree in social anthropology. She wrote the winning manuscript, Black Sugarcane, as part of her 2022 Master of Arts (MA) in Creative Writing at the IIML, at Te Herenga Waka—Victoria University of Wellington. She lives in Hawke’s Bay with her husband and three children.

Nafanua says, “I feel delighted and honoured to accept this year’s Biggs Family Prize in Poetry and look forward to the time, attention, and creativity it will enable. My family and I gratefully acknowledge the Biggs family for their generosity and support, fa’afetai tele lava.”

Supported by Wellingtonians Peter and Mary Biggs through the Victoria University Foundation, the $5,000 Biggs Family Prize is awarded annually to an outstanding poet in the MA in Creative Writing programme.Award-winning poet and short fiction writer Airini Beautrais, one of the examiners for the collection, describes Black Sugarcane as “an emotionally charged experience, both playful and powerful―a fresh and original voice is showcased here.”

“Nafanua has an amazingly broad formal and thematic range, and her work uses Oceanic models of understanding,” says senior lecturer Chris Price, co-convenor of the MA programme. “Whether addressing food, family, and relationships, meditating on language itself, or being staunch about questions of racism, power, and identity, the poems in Black Sugarcane are tender, vibrant, and inventive.” 

Previous Biggs Family Prize in Poetry recipients include authors Louise Wallace, Nina Mingya Powles, Sam Duckor-Jones, and Joanna Cho.

For more information contact International Institute of Modern Letters senior lecturer Chris Price