Ah … we have returned refreshed from a week in Fiji, swimming, snorkelling, lying in hammocks, drinking, unwisely, many Blue Lagoons but feeling miraculously few ill effects. That tropical breeze blows cobwebs away real fast, especially when combined with a two-year-old sitting on one’s chest at 7am shouting ‘Pool, pool!’

Anyway, upon surfacing today, I was delighted to see an item of tropical, topical note: Tusiata Avia has been awarded the Fulbright-Creative New Zealand Pacific Writers’ Residency at the University of Hawai’I. How sickening, I know, but fantastic for her. She’ll be working on her latest projects: a collection of poetry and a new theatre work.

The girl’s gotta have it. After all, she did a radio drama called You Say Hawai’i, which was broadcast in 2002 and a radio documentary, Which Way to Paradise which was on National Radio in 2003 and 2004 … she’s also toured her one-woman show Wild Dogs under my Skirt in Hawai’I, among other places. This show has since been published as her first collection of poetry, by VUP ($24.95 see glorious cover above). Bill Manhire said on the back, ‘Tusiata is likely to be a major figure in our literature and in our performance culture’.

It’s her performances which have turned her into what she is today by all accounts (I’ve never seen her on stage, alas). She calls herself a ‘poetry ambassador’ and says that

a lot of people don’t have positive connections with poetry and it’s my mission to present it as relevant, accessible and dynamic. As much as my poetry is for the page, it also belongs to the stage. It’s there that people can experience poetry as something living and dynamic, something they can relate to.

Too true. If you can do poetry outrageously on stage it makes all the difference. I mean, look at what Sam Hunt did for the genre. I’ll never forget him in the hall at Westlake Girls High School, doing that sing-song thing he does, about virgins and sex. We didn’t forget that in a hurry, I can tell you.

Moving swiftly on, we found that our guest reviewer Louise Wareham did Bill Manhire’s famed Creative Writing course at Vic University with Tusiata, and remembers her well:

Time flies when you’re becoming famous. When I first knew Tusiata Avia – less than two years ago – we were both dragging up the Terrace steps to Victoria University, unpublished 'Manhire girls'. (I don’t know exactly what that’s supposed to mean either, but someone said it so I pass it on.)

Next, we were in Newtown where Tusiata showed me around the gallery where she lived. Then came the local outbreak show: the first performances of her one woman show Wild Dogs Under My Skirt.

After that, things get blurry. There was the Wild Dogs run at Circa, the documentary with the most excellent Matthew Leonard, and finally, the publishing of Wild Dogs by Fergus Barrowman Victoria University Press.

On stage, Tusiata mesmerizes, undulating (and even ululating) in island garb, proferring up her famous tin of corned beef and knife. A dark underside provides welcome depth to enlightening entertainment. The collection is like an opera libretto: hold it in your hand and you can almost hear the singing …

Louise also most helpfully provided LeafSalon with a recent email she’d received from Tusiata after her travels with the band of merry bards that were skipping about Europe not long ago. I think it makes it fairly plain that this is no ordinary woman. Here it is, full-lenth and uncut (and yes, I did clear it with her):

To those of you who thought I might be somewhere near London, I am safe and sound from Al Qaeda, in Morocco. In fact I hadn’t heard about the bombings until those emails. Sending love and peace to all of you who are in London.

I’ve finally stopped long enough to get my breath and write. I’m in El Jadida, not far from Casablanca. I’m surprised at how liberal Morocco is, the other day on the beach I saw a young Moroccan woman in a bright pink bikini and matching pink hijab. Now, whether that was meant as a fashion statement, a political statement or a saving-my hair-from-harsh-ultra-violet-rays statement, I will never know.

I came prepared for a Muslim country, which is not to say it's all pink bikinis round here. Regardless however of my neck to ankle clothes, the level of predation is pretty intense, the 'wolves' are growling at me at every second step. I’m quickly remembering my old trick of glazed over eyes that meet no-one's of a male persuasion and the determined, verging on angry expression. Mum, please do not worry, I do angry-don’t-come-near-me so well I’m going to need botox to iron it out of my forehead!

My smattering of Egyptian Arabic is not so well understood in these parts, so my current strategy is to say things in English with what I’m hoping is a French accent. Hey, sometimes it works! I met an American woman studying here when I arrived in Rabat, who took me home to her host family. They live in the old medina in the most amazingly lavish house built around an outside courtyard complete with turtles, fish and fountain.

They were pleased to hear I ate meat and immediately fed me. (Yay!) Veena who is Hindu has been having all kinds of fun trying to convince them that, no, she really doesn’t eat meat because of her religion and, yes, one of her gods really does look like an elephant.

At the moment here in El Jadida I’m staying with the Moroccan poet, Nourddine Zouitni and his gorgeous family. His children are beautiful beyond belief. He is involved with Poetry International, the festival I was at in Rotterdam and with that amazing Moroccan hospitality expected me to come and stay with him rather than just 'do coffee' when I asked if I could meet him. So I am ensconced in his house, eating couscous and talking poetry. It’s my (new) mission while I’m in Morocco to do a 'poetry crawl'.

The poetry festivals were fantastic, they quite exceeded my expectations. Antwerp's festival was intimate, a dozen poets from Syria, Mexico, Finland, Netherlands, Belgium and the huge half rugby team from NZ (6 of us in all). Big audiences though. We stayed in a beautiful 16th century, ex-convent hospital and the organisers treated us like gold. Antwerp is filled with beautifully dressed people and everyone wears expensive well-made shoes that I ached to own.

After Antwerp we waved goodbye to half of the NZ posse and went on to Rotterdam for Poetry International 05, which I may never recover from. It absolutely rocked! About 40 poets from all over the world, the festival was a week long, beautifully organised and everyone was just so damn nice it hurt. I found myself hanging out with the slam poets a lot who were there for the Slam poetry World Championships - also part of the festival. So I got to rock and roll it with the slammers and even try my hand at it at an open mike warehouse party event. They were a really great bunch of people, particularly the two women who I will love forever.

Which is not to say the other poets weren’t also fab. The most fab - in my opinion - was a French poet, Laurence Vielle, whose writing reminds me a little of Jo Randerson. She hobbled up on stage with her broken leg and astonished and moved us all with her poetry in a voice like a child-alien-breath acrobat. If anybody responsible for bringing poets to NZ ever reads this, do us all a favour and invite her to NZ immediately!

My performances went well, even the one where my translator started smashing glasses. I appeared in the national newspaper the next day (sorry, but I’m going to be very unkiwi and skite) so it must have been a good omen. By the end of the festival, we all felt like a big family and when I left I went on to Amsterdam to cut my wrists.

And then Moscow for the launch of an anthology of NZ poetry in Russian - but of course. We (now down to Greg O’Brien and Ian Wedde over from Menton) stayed at the NZ embassy mansion. How do you know you’ve arrived at the NZ embassy in Moscow? Cos everyone’s watching Bro Town. True ow.

The night of the launch we were invited to join the Russian poets at a club. This club is one of four and a really cool concept, a semi underground bookshop-cafe-restaurant-performance space. They are also a publishing house and venue for poetry and music. We managed to go to 3 of these clubs. It was a little how I imagine the 60s must have been, poets in black with burning eyes, a lot of booze (vodka of course), talking passionately about poetry (in Russian of course).

In one night we experienced a Siberian thrash metal band, a surreal and wonderful Belgian accordian group with a ‘Devil Paumuku Girl’ thrown in for good measure and lots of kisses on the hand from men with an uncanny resemblance to Rasputin. Oh why can’t I stay in Europe and be an 'artiste' and live in mansions and have three knives and three forks for every meal and be kissed on the hand?!

After our first night out in Moscow we returned to the embassy to find none of us had a key. After hours of knocking and yelling and staring hopefully and then mournfully up at the Art Nouveau windows, we crawled into a random car – that happened to be parked and unlocked – and shivered till 6am came and the ambassador woke up, and looking none too impressed, let us in. Nothing like sleeping in a freezing car with rubbish trucks the size and sound of Baghdad tanks roaring past every five minutes to knock the 'artiste' out of you.

My last day in Moscow was spent with Ian – who is a very cool man – wandering in the pouring rain through a million churches and past a zillion paintings: everything from, scary-angry Jesus glowering down from domed ceilings to Malevichs Black Square.

In between all these places I’ve been in and out of Amsterdam staying in the apartment of yet another poetry angel. I’ve decided someone should send me a pile of money so I can stay in Amsterdam, hang out at canal side cafes and write brilliant stuff. Well, stuff anyway.

And now of course Morocco. I must be getting soft because I’ve been ruminating on how to best minimise the flea bag hotels and squat toilets.

And then of course there are the wolves ...

Well. Thanks a million to Tusiata Avia for that – I'm sure you'll agree it's nice to have a slightly different (but certainly no less enlightening) picture of what our poets get up to on tour. Good luck to you in Hawai'i Tusiata. And keep that wild grass skirt well away from wild dogs.