Poet Karlo Mila’s new book A Well Written Body is a collection of intimate poems about such things as identity, the Pacific, and love. She tells DOMINIKA WHITE why she wrote it.
Initially, Karlo Mila thought sharing her intimate poems were a little strange to share with the world, thinking these would be left in the “undie draw”.
“Whenever I write, I don’t write with the intention of anyone reading it,” she explains to SPASIFIKmag.com, referring to her personal poems.
The Tongan poet’s new book A Well Written Body is a collection of intimate poems about such things as identity, the Pacific, and love. It was written under the watchful eye of New Zealand contemporary poet Glen Colquhoun, her mentor.
However, now that they have been published, she is grateful that her art is abstract and interpretive.
“Because it’s poetry you can make it personal,” she explains. “I wouldn’t do it if it wasn’t languished in metaphors, in similes.” She now writes with this intention so anybody can read them, describing her writing as prose for those that don’t like poetry – this includes her husband.
“My husband quite famously said, he hated [poetry] until I started writing it about him,” she says.
One of her poems How I came to Love the King explores her prejudices from living in a western society; her ‘blue eye’ seeing a ‘fat king’ on her journey to King Taufa'ahou Tupou’s funeral.
However, this disappeared when she became immersed in the reality of Tonga, as opposed to hearing its portrayal on westernised television.
“When he died I ended up writing the press release. It was a real eye opener and I learned a lot of assumptions about the royal family. I became a little more proud - and angry at the media,” she recalls.
Other poems include one about Luamanuvao Winnie Laban, in which Mila describes the strengths of the country’s first Pacific female MP, and poems about her two pregnancies and the experiences she had while carrying her sons.
Throughout the book are illustrations by German painter Delicia Sampero. Sampero painted the cover of her first book Dream Fish Flying back in 2005. Her pictures in this new book were influenced by Mila’s poetry, and in a kind of artistic dialogue, Mila responded with poetry affected by Sampero’s paintings.
The striking portraits of Mila looking beyond the frame bring a deeper intimacy to her poetry as she searches for identity as a New Zealand born Pacific Islander in the section ‘Where are you from?’.
She hopes that a wide range of readers will be able to use this book to delve into the perspective of a Pacific female living in New Zealand, and will be promoting the A Well Written Body at the New Zealand Writers Festival in May.
Mila shares Tongan, Samoan and New Zealand European heritage. Her Tongan heritage is traced to her father’s village of Kolofo’ou, in Tonga.
She was born in Rotorua, raised in Palmerston North, and lives in Auckland with her husband, David, and two children, Karlos and Nikolas.
• A Well Written Body is published by Huia Books
