While researching my post on Dreams of a Rainbow I read a fair amount of poetry from around Polynesia (both to try to situate Kauraka’s poetry more firmly in the Polynesian tradition and figure out whether it was objectively mediocre or whether I was just missing something). This is a bit of a long one, so links after the jump.
Australia and Oceania
The Frigate Bird: Fear and loathing on Penrhyn Island
The Frigate Bird, Alistair Campbell, 1989
- Cook Islands, #7
- £0.01 from amazon.co.uk
- Read: October 2015 (and again in May 2016)
- Rating: 4/5
- Recommended for: Ukulele players with dark pasts
Dreams of a Rainbow: Maybe I’m missing something
Dreams of a Rainbow, Kauraka Kauraka, 1987
- Cook Islands, #6
- £6.50 from amazon.co.uk
- Read: September 2015
- Rating: 3/5
- Recommended for: Bear Vasquez
An Island to Oneself (because one is an insufferable jerk)
An Island to Oneself, Tom Neale, 1966
- Cook Islands, #4
- Digital edition, free from privateislandsonline.com
- Read September 2015
- Rating: 2.5/5
- Recommended for: People who don’t like people
Doctor to the Islands
Doctor to the Islands, Tom and Lydia Davis, 1954
- Cook Islands, #2
- Borrowed from San Francisco Library
- Read: September, 2015
- Rating: 2.5/5
- Recommended for: Tropical epidemiologists
The Island of Desire: Slow-paced adventure and frustrated aspirations
The Island of Desire (The Story of a South Sea Trader), Robert Dean Frisbie, 1944
- Cook Islands, #1
- ebook, free from Project Gutenberg Australia
- Read: August 2015
- Rating: 3/5
- Recommended for: people who fantasize about expatriating, not because they want to be a part of a different culture, but just to get away from their own, and have romantic and fairly unrealistic ideas about what that would actually be like
Vārua Tupu
Vārua Tupu: New Writings from French Polynesia, Frank Stewart, Kareva Mateata-Allain, and Alexander Dale Mawyer, eds., 2006
- French Polynesia, #4
- Paperback, £5.68 from alibris.com
- Read August 2015
- Rating: 3/5
- Recommended for: casual coffee-table browsing
Frangipani: Mothers, daughters, and quiet revolutions
Frangipani, Célestine Hitiura Vaite, 2004
- French Polynesia, #3
- Paperback, borrowed from Brent Library, London
- Read: July 2015
- Rating: 3.5/5
- Recommended for: feminists on beach vacations
L’Île des rêves écrasés: Of love and atomic bombs
L’Île des rêves écrasés (The Island of Shattered Dreams), Chantal Spitz, 1991
- French Polynesia, #2
- Epub, French edition, €11.50 from fnac.com
- Read: August 2015
- Rating: 3/5
- Recommended for: those who have fallen in love across enemy lines
Les Immémoriaux
Les Immémoriaux (A Lapse of Memory), Victor Segalen, 1907
- French Polynesia, #1
- Kindle, french edition, free from amazon.com
- Read July 2015
- Rating: 3/5
- Opening Line: Cette nuit là — comme tant d’autres nuits si nombreuses qu’on n’y pouvait songer sans une confusion — Térii le Récitant marchait, à pas mesurés, tout au long des parvis inviolables.
- Recommended for: scholars and cynics (and cynical scholars)
Around the World in 2000 Books 