Scholars of the Pacific are mourning the loss of Teresia Teaiwa this week. Teresia was an iconic figure in Pacific Studies: A poet and critic, dedicated teacher, and determined institution builder. Teresia was the director of the Va‘aomanū Pasifika (Pacific Studies Center) at Victoria University in Wellington, the first and only place (afaik) where you can earn a Ph.D. in Pacific Studies.
I only had a chance to meet Teresia a few times, and I can’t speak to her life the way that so many others can, except to say that she was an impressive figure in every sense whether it be reading poetry or rethinking Pacific Studies. She had mana. She was a trenchant critic of colonialism and other things, but in person she was hardly austere or intimidating. She was an approachable person, down to earth, with a sense of humor. I think in her mixture of dignity and a willingness to laugh she was deeply Pacific. So many people counted on so many more years of work and inspiration from her. I can’t say I knew her enough to mourn her the way her family and friends do, but her presence and project impacted everyone who ever met her or read her work. Just being in the same room was enough. She was on a journey, and still is. But we had hoped to spend more time traveling with her then we were allowed.
Teresia was a prolific author, and much of her work is open access. However, google searches for her work produce a maze of citations that is hard to find your way around in. I feel like my way to contribute to her memory is to help provide a guide to her work which can help future readers stop digging through search results and start reading Teresia. What follows is a quick bibliography of work that is available open access. I’ve included both poetry and academic publications. I’ve linked to stable repositories as much as possible so the information on this page will age well. Many of these links will take you to a repository entry and you will then have to click through to the PDF. Others are online journals which lack librarian-friendly meta-data. In all cases I’ve tried to give reasonable citations but I’m sure there are irregularities in the format that I’ve used. There are also probably typos. Also, please note that these are just the open access texts
Sole-Authored Pieces
2014. Porirua market with Susana and Jessie, 2009 and a trip to market with Margaret,
2007. In “Baninnur: A Basket of Food, 2014″. Black Market Press 36.
2012. disarmed (13 poems, including audio). Queensland Art Gallery for the Asia Pacific Triennial.
2007. niudity (I-IV). Pacific Studies 30(3&4):103-105.
2004. Review of The Network Inside Out, by Annelise Riles. The Contemporary Pacific 16 (2): 443-45.
2002. Review of Te Rii ni Banaba. Journal of the Polynesian Society 111(4):402-405.
2001. An Analysis of The Current Political Crisis in Fiji. In Coup: Reflections on the Political Crisis in Fiji, edited by Brij Lal and Michael Peters, p. 31-34. Canberra: Pandanus Press. (N.B. This link is to the 2008 reissue of this book by ANU Epress).
2001. L(o)osing the Edge. Special issue, The Contemporary Pacific 13 (2): 343-57.
2000. Review of Gauguin’s Skirt, by Stephen F. Eisenman. Pacific Studies 23(1&2):103-111.
1994. bikinis and other s/pacific n/oceans. The Contemporary Pacific 6 (1): 87-109.
Co-Authored
This is a wonderful tribute to Teresia and very helpful in navigating her many works, of which there are even more than listed here–so I hope this continues to grow. One edit for you is that the “Indigenous Encounters” occasional papers edited volume was edited and the intro written by Katerina Teaiwa, Teresia’s sister, not Teresia.
Thanks Greg — I’ve corrected that.