Response to Wild Dogs (Presentation)

Avia was born and raised in Christchurch, but is of Samoan and Palagi descent. She published her first collection of poetry, Wild Dogs Under My Skirt, in 2004 and her second, Bloodclot, in 2009. She is also a performance poet and the author of two children’s books. Avia spent ten years travelling the world and teaching in Samoa, Australia, Europe, the Middle East and Africa before returning home to New Zealand. She’s won a variety of awards, more recently being the Janet Frame Literary Trust Award this year worth $5000.

Avia’s work, among other things, is mostly about Pacific themes. It also explores the defining lines between custom and contemporary ideas, and many of her poems have a personal touch to them.

We can safely assume that Wild Dogs is set in Samoa, due her talking about how being tattooed by a tufuga or a tufuga ta tatua (master of tattoo). From looking at her other work, it’s clear that the poet has a strong sense of cultural identity. For example, Alofa also appears to be set in Samoa, as well as the string of poems centred on a girl called Nafanua. These feature ones such as: Nafanua is Surprised at Her Birth, Nafanua Talks About Her Body and Nafanua Relates an Incident From Her Childhood.  She also uses a variety of Samoan words constantly in her writing, such as palagi (foreigner) and alofa (love).

 Wild Dogs Under My Skirt seems to be a kind of denial of typical femininity. The author says she wants to “frighten” her lovers, rather than attract them. This is also a reference to Samoan culture, where it is common for women to get a malu, a traditional tattoo covering both legs. It could be a comparison between that and Western culture, where a woman with her legs tattooed is considered unattractive and unusual. Avia could be showing her preference for Samoa’s view on femininity over New Zealand’s.

Mostly however, I think this poem is about repelling men. In Nafanua’s Sister Talks About The Family, she writes about how she (or the character in the poem), was abused by her father verbally and physically, how her uncle possibly raped her mother, and she expresses a lot of hatred towards them. In another poem, Nafanua Goes To Bed With Her Cousin, she talks about sleeping with her cousin and suggests it is forced. Whether these are based on personal incidents or not, a certain degree of wariness towards men is evident in Wild Dogs.

In this poem, she may even be talking about wanting a pe’a, the tattooing males get on their legs. This is a much larger and more defined tattoo, and goes from their hips to their shins. It is also extremely painful, as is a malu. In this case, Avia is not just saying she wants to scare men, but become one in terms of equality and power, thus removing her femininity entirely.

The exact origin of tattooing is unknown, although the Samoans credit the Fijians, and the Fijians credit the Samoans. As said before, it is an extremely painful process and can take up to a couple of weeks. In Samoa, the tatau is a sign of both woman and manhood. Women get a malu before they marry and for men, getting a pe’a shows you are ready to protect and take care of your family. Men without a pe’a are often referred to as telefua or telenoa, which means “naked”. As well as that, men who cannot continue with the pe’a due to the pain are branded cowards, and this shame will extend to his sons. Women are not allowed to have a pe’a, as stated in the Samoan myth of how the tatau came to be.

Wild Dogs’ tone is overall a rough and aggressive one, which matches the author’s desire to appear so as well, which is apparent in the poem. She uses imagery such as wild dogs, the mangy kind that bite strangers, black octopus, that catch rats and eat them and centipedes, the black ones that sting and swell for weeks. These are all things that are either scary or grotesque, that repel us physically and make us wary, which is how the author wants to be. She doesn’t say she wants to be beautiful like the stars or the moon or anything, like most women want to be. I think she expresses the idea that beauty is over prioritised. And that probably, it’s more prioritised here than in Samoa. She says that after it’s done, she wants “the tufuga to sit back and know they’re not his, they never were.” Which I think is her way of saying that instead of conforming to this traditional idea or demand of beauty, she’s retaining her independency and individuality. And that her body is her own, and no one else’s.