Manuali’i, Rex Letoa Paget, Saufo’i Press, 2024

DARLING I KNOW YOU SUFFER AND I’M HERE FOR YOU.

we laugh like we used to.
before the kids.
before the house.

back when debts were settled with
two coloured cats eye marbles
and my only pokémon card
i bought with my lunch money
off my rich palagi mate.

when ceilings were creaking floorboards
humming girl power anthems and
ain’t that just the way that life goes
down
down

down
down.
like mike splitting free throw lines.
i wanted to be the paekākāriki express.

chipping and chasing wild watercress
shotgunned under rooftops of punga eels
who sheltered clay soil paths dad spent a summer digging.

he carved our names into tree roots staircased to a creek
where we’d wash our legs scraped with blackberry.

we ran through maize he grew
chasing mystic moon views rising
at the edge of his green thumb.

he planted his seeds with
bootstraps
calloused hands and
we don’t need no education.

survived in
motor oil
whiskey breath
rothman cigarettes.

half his mates didn’t survive
asbestos or asphalt.

a few sit round his lounge now
broken boned road workers
fingers twisted in carpal tunnel
gifting bags of greenery.

cancer scares
cancer skin
four hundred dollars
a week in pension. 

gettin up
getting high
gettin down
gettin no-no-nowhere.

i sit across a table in remuera where
white collars popped discuss
what to do with their third property.

i stare at perfect crooked teeth dipped
in italian red wine
gnawing chipped paint off their beach house
in a town

they can’t even pronounce.

reclined in a railroad home
dads bones rattle and radiate
we throw our hands up to celebrate
him eating the first solid thing in weeks.

Time spins on a record player
our wishes crackle into dust.
can we pause for a moment?
can we go back to the start?

i missed my favourite part.

i visit dry creeks wishing for the same thing.
sandalwood burns through hallways and yeah

ain’t that just the way that life goes
down.
down.
down.
down.

Rex Letoa Paget

There is so much to love about this collection, I want it to remain an open field of possibilities for you. It is self portrait and it is family gatherings, it is prayer and testimony, it is grief and it is love. How it is imbued in love. The presence of grandmothers signals the importance of familiar anchors, of nourishment and nurturing, of roots and self growth. There is music on the line, music on the turntable, music recalled. In the opening section, ‘Manuali’i’, the eclectic movement of words and lines on the page offers sweet shifts in visual and aural rhythms, as though there is no one way to pin sky-gazing or family relationships or writing poems to a singular form. The lower case letter at the start of sentences enriches the music.

The second section, ‘Icarus’, initially conjures the Greek myth, and I find myself sidestepping into notions of life as labyrinth, the risk of burning up, of plunging down and of drowning. More than anything I am revelling in Rex’s language, because, in both subject matter and lyricism, this is poetry of becoming. Verbs favour the present tense, writing exists in the moment of living, writing is a vital form of connecting. But the verbs do more than this, these tools of action, whether physical emotional or cerebral, stall delight and surprise me within the wider wordcape of a poetic language that is succulent and sense rich.

At times there is a profound ache, contagious, human, humane, and we are in the ‘Elysian plains’, there with the poet’s grief as he remembers his father. This is writing as inhalation as much as outward breath, not explaining everything, tracing threads to the Gods or ancestors, to the places we become, the connections that matter. And yes, I keep returning to the idea of poems as sustaining breath.

To travel slowly with this sublime collection is to enter poetry as restorative terrain, to encounter notions and parameters of goodness, fragility, recognition, to link the present to both past and future, to question, to suggest, to travel, to connect. Oh! and Manuali’i has the coolest illustrations.

The Readings

‘La Douleur Exquise’

‘Shine on You Crazy Diamond’

‘Darling I’m Here for You’

Rex Letoa Paget (Samoan/Danish) is a fa‘afatama crafter of words born in Aotearoa, now living on the unceded lands of the Wurundjeri people. His poetry and storytelling are his compass through space and time. His works are giftings from his ancestors and have been published in Tupuranga, Te Tangi A Te Ruru, AUNTIES, Overcom, No Other Place to Stand: An Anthology of Climate Change Poetry from Aotearoa New Zealand, Rapture: An Anthology of Performance Poetry from Aotearoa New Zealand, Spoiled Fruit: Queer Poetry from Aotearoa, and Australian Poetry Anthology Vol 10. His offerings are lessons, learnings, and acknowledgments for the timelines and traditions of yesterday, today and tomorrow.

Saufo’i Press page