Black Sugarcane has been on my radar for several months now thanks to its award-winning status courtesy of the Ockhams 2026 Mary and Peter Biggs Award for Poetry. but outside of that, I have wanted to read this poetry collection for a long while. I am slowly finding my preferences with poetic prose, creative non-fiction, and poetry, and I am relishing in the plethora of incredible authors in Aotearoa New Zealand. Nafanua Purcell Kersel is the newest name on that list.

Black Sugarcane is a landmark debut collection by Nafanua Purcell Kersel. Restless in form and address, these engaging and generous poems ricochet from light to dark, quiet to loud, calm to violence. We meet a loved twin sister as she dives towards the Sacred Centre, a grandmother who knows everything by heart, a shrugging office clerk, and Nafanua herself, an enigmatic shapeshifter. At the heart of Black Sugarcane is a sequence of erasure poems arising from the seminal essay ‘In Search of Tagaloa’ by Tui Atua Tamasese Ta‘isi Efi. From the worlds contained in the text, these poems rise as if inevitable. Another sequence responds to the devastating tsunami that stuck between the Samoan islands of Upolu and Tutuila in September 2009. Within the line, within the word and even the letter, these poems speak to creation and translation, destruction and regeneration.

I love a good gritty voice when it comes to poetry, and Nafanua Purcell Kersel is not afraid of using whatever words she needs to get her poems to sing, chant, shout, call, cry, and weep. From the stark word choice and abstract placement on the page to the simplicity of sentences and play on words, everything falls into place to make an experience I wish I could witness for the first time again and again. Her voice has this tone that is so familiar, encompassing that Kiwi feel and showing how Samoan culture blends so seamlessly into what I see as Kiwi culture. This feels so much like a New Zealand piece of work, even when parts are centred in Samoa, and that just goes to show how diverse and rich our communities are here in Aotearoa New Zealand.

I highly recommend picking up Black Sugarcane when you can as it is a phenomenal collection of poems and creative works. Nafanua Purcell Kersel is a name I will be keeping my eyes peeled for from now on, and my fingers are already eager to find the next of her works in hand to dive into. Black Sugarcane is a collection that will not disappoint, and so many readers around the world will appreciate the experiences and words within.