Kia ora!

I open with the poem "Stories"[1]

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my stories are water 

surging from fingertips and brow

i slurp at sweat in the pleat of my elbow 

right where the crease is shallow but the puna runs deep

 

my stories are old and new and pain and aroha

and with them i soar like Oceania’s cupid

shooting whale bone darts at open hearts

wondering if the double-barrelled shotgun 

approach of the empire 

works both ways

the strategy is wild but the puna runs deep

 

my stories are water and the puna runs deep

my stories are water and that is who i am

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Laying out the whakapapa of the home, waters and body that I inhabit is about sharing what it’s like to live in my body. I am water. I am stories. I am whale bone darts. I am an open heart and the interiority of my life matters. The interiority of Indigenous lives matter. As Māori writers, our bodies have been infused into our toi, since forever. The physical DNA of our tīpuna were, and still are, woven into our stories and art: mucus and tears still seep into cloaks, thigh hair and skin are still infused into kete, and blood and sweat are still grooved into carvings. Sharing the stories of ourselves and our communities – what our sacred sites and rites are, what LandBack means and why our bodies are the universe – recentres our world. Only I get to say what it’s like to live in my body, and I write, create and share my stories so that the mokopuna of my mokopuna will know me.

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My critical and creative writings can be found in international and national journals, anthologies, magazines, and limited edition, self-published zines, which are my tiny acts of mana motuhake publishing. My artwork includes paintings and textile art - primarily focused on telling the stories of my body and my tīpuna. As an editor I have produced a limited edition e-zine as a fundraiser for my Te Aitanga-a-Māhaki iwi, co-edited an international anthology of Indigenous visual poetry [2], and I am currently working with others on a book about Takipū/Takepu Marae that will bring together our marae and Te Whānau-a-Taupara kōrero and commemorate the moving of our pā to less flood-prone whenua.

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There are many threads that can be traced across my work: whakapapa, blood, archives, weaving and stitching, and the collapsing of time. This list is not exhaustive, nor could it ever be, but I continue to think about the positioning of my physical body in relation to these threads and to the bodies of tīpuna who surround me.​

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[1] Salsano, Marama. (2024). stories. Yellow Medicine Review: Fall 2024, p. 174. Southwest Minnesota State University.

[2] Felsing, Lara., Salsano, Marama., & Papachristodoulou, Astra. (Eds.). (2024). To feel the earth as one’s skin: An anthology of Indigenous visual poetry. Poem Atlas.