Poetic justice

The first thing you notice about poet Selina Tusitala Marsh is her hair. It’s a glorious mane of dark curls punctuated by a bold plume of white and, like Selina herself, stands out for its exuberance and quirkiness.

She describes it as her crowning glory, but it wasn’t always that way. From the age of 10 she was teased for having big hair, and nicknamed Mophead by a “frenemy” at school.

“The nickname caught on in the schoolyard and I hated it,” says Selina, who was New Zealand’s Poet Laureate from 2017 to 2019. “I wanted hair like Laura Ingalls from Little House on the Prairie, or Pippi Longstocking. I was tall, skinny and brown, with all this hair like a mop and I stuck out.”

Now, Selina has had the last laugh. , a “graphic mini-memoir” she wrote, about going to London to read a poem for the Queen, which is equally captivating and insightful.