Marama Salsano

Marama contemplates multigenre as a Māori and Indigenous creative approach.

Marama Salsano. (Image supplied.)

Commenced 2022

Marama Salsano (Ngāi Tūhoe, Te Aitanga-a-Māhaki, Ngāti Porou, Ngāti Wairere) is a writer, multidisciplinary artist-activist, editor, and fully registered high school English teacher. As a PhD candidate, Marama works within the broad field of Māori and Indigenous Literary Studies and has an MA in creative writing and an MA in Tikanga Māori / Māori Cultural Studies. The weaving of Marama's critical and creative writing has been published in various anthologies such as An Ocean of Wonder: The Fantastic in the Pacific or journals such as Waka Kuaka: The Journal of the Polynesian Society, and her recent poetry has been published in places like The Journal of Global Indigeneity, or as mini scratchcard poems in the UK. Marama's current visual work includes textile art - her banners have been exhibited overseas and nationally and have been carried or worn in various protest marches and events - and her contemporary upoko whakairo (carved head) paintings contemplate her relationships with her ancestors. In 2023 Marama spent four weeks at an Indigenous visual arts residency at the Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity in Canada. Marama's fiction has been longlisted for the Commonwealth short story competition, highly commended in the Sargeson Prize, and on multiple occasions she has been a finalist or winner in the Pikihuia Awards. Her zine 'Wāhine' won the best political zine award at the 2024 Kirikiriroa Hamilton Zine Fest and she has also co-edited a limited edition e-zine of Te Aitanga-a-Māhaki writing called Haumi, as well as an anthology, To Feel The Earth as One's Skin: An anthology of Indigenous visual poetry, published in the UK by Poem Atlas.

In her doctoral project, Marama refuses to draw the line between critical and creative. Instead, she creates space for Māori and Indigenous literary scholars who want to read and write a different type of creative writing thesis, which for Marama is a thesis that better reflects her life as an Indigenous wahine writer-scholar-creative who is from and located within Te Moana-nui-a-Kiwa. Marama's project weaves together critical work with fragments of fiction, poetry, toi Māori and personal reflections.

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