My father has been chipping himself down since he arrived here, he is half man and half vessel, readying for the journey to Hawaiki.

Prime Minister’s Award for Literary Achievement and Ockham NZ Book Award-winner Tusiata Avia’s new collection Giving Birth to My Father follows her father as he travels through his last days and into the arms of his tupu’aga.

The poems of Nafanua Purcell Kersel’s Ockham NZ Book Awards shortlisted debut collection Black Sugarcane span light and dark, quiet and loud, calm and violence, and include a moving sequence on the devastating 2009 tsunami that struck between the Samoan islands of Upolu and Tutuila.

These phenomenal poets join Susana Lei’ataua to discuss capturing unimaginable grief – whether individual or collective – and the immense identity shifts grief brings.