Fale Aitu | Spirit House

Ask the god to open the house of your chest wide enough that your enemy may enter ask aitu: lie down with me my heart is open as a window ask aitu: walk with me my heart is younger than the sun —House Tusiata Avia is an essential voice in New Zealand and Pasifika literature. In her fearless new collection, she weaves together the voices of the living and dead, the past and the present in poems that are confessional and confrontational, gentle and funny. Speaking from Samoa, Christchurch, Gaza and New York, she combines stories from myth and the everyday, never shying away from pain or wonder.