Since when did we look to the ACT Party for poetry criticism?
ACT is condemning Creative NZ’s decision to award $60,000 to so-called poet Tusiata Avia.
“Creative NZ has decided it wasn’t enough to just fund a stage show based on Tusiata Avia’s work – they’ve now handed her a $60,000 personal award for her racist rants,” says ACT Arts, Culture and Heritage spokesman Todd Stephenson.
“The council members who approved this sick, sick decision do a serious disservice to the awards’ other winners who will presumably now have to share a stage with a notorious racist. They need to review their process to ensure that taxpayer money is no longer used to support race-baiting.
“In her recent book, The Savage Coloniser, Avia makes the case for violent, vigilante justice to be dealt out against individuals based on their whiteness. The book is about murdering James Cook, his descendants, and white people like him.
“Tusiata Avia’s so-called poems are hateful diatribes, and while ACT recognises there may be a therapeutic value in allowing her to publish her nastiest thoughts, we don’t think taxpayers should be made complicit in sowing racial division.
“With a new Government looking to make spending cuts at low-value departments, Creative NZ is tempting fate.
“Don’t take it from me, read her poetry yourself. It’s my sincere hope that the media will print this excerpt from The Savage Coloniser in full so that taxpayers can see exactly what kind of racist vitriol they’re funding.”
What the fuck is this nonsense over a poem?
Why is my sanity being tested sweet Lord?
Why?
Ok.
So a taxpayer funded poem that expresses the cultural anxiety and anger of being Polynesian in a white settler nation uses violent imagery and the performance art Right have taken snowflake trigger level offence and have complained to the Human Rights Commission and Media Council?
Oh Fuck right off!
Who is Act Party arts, culture and heritage spokesperson Todd Stephenson?
Why he’s a Cracker with an attitude folks, and he’s here to judge poetry???
Since when the fuck did we look to the ACT Party for poetry criticism?
How about this one…
On the third day of Christmas, my libertarian vampire gave to me…
no fair pay, bosses right to sack and a handjob for the bourgeoise
Gimme $60 000!
Look, the only two issues with publicly funded art is:
1: Is it any good?
2: We need fuck loads more money in publicly funded art!
Those are the only two parameters, and on the first parameter Tusiata Avia fails miserably.
Excerpt from the poem:
These days
we’re driving round
in SUVs
looking for ya
or white men like you
who might be thieves
or rapists
or kidnappers
or murderers
yeah, or any of your descendants
or any of your incarnations
cos, you know
ay, bitch?
We’re gonna F… YOU UP.
It’s a tired boring teenage rant poem missing unicorns crying rainbow tears level banality, but she has every fucking right to express herself with such tired anger and Creative NZ have every right to back her freedom of expression!
Yes, artists are exempt from the strict letter of the hate speech laws, the same way we give comedians that leeway, the same way we give many important voices of a liberal progressive democracy that discretion! This is the very nuance we demand and yet here we have the performance art Right manufacturing outrage the exact same way the woke do!
It’s a tired poem that uses violent imagery, as a defender of Free Speech I absolutely stand by her right to be a mediocre poet!
Attempting to twist her poem and its taxpayer funded roots into hate speech is a reminder to the Left that we should always defend free speech because the fucking right always attempt to use hate speech laws as a means of strangling off voices they don’t like!
ACT are free speech hypocrites who want to now police poetry do they?
Cracker don’t wanna Poly.
How far right has this country gone in barely a month?
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Since when does anyone look to the ACT party for anything?
There was a young lady with ACT
Who belonged to a treacherous pact
Worthy of derision
They excelled in division
It is they who should be sacked.
3 years ago Act were insisting that the government could not tell people what to do, that opinion changed quickly once they got behind the desk.
Which proves it’s all about being superior and that delicious feeling of POWER.
People voted for Labour and National. Not this unrepresentative rabble. However, even Luxon warned people what might happen if they didn’t deliver a clear mandate. That’s the only positive thing I can say about the man.
I hope there are a lot of people feeling very uneasy about the mess they delivered for our country.
They were so cross about being kept alive by Labour they stamped their little footsies and had a tanty.
They were also told the tax-cuts were a mirage, but they couldn’t see past them.
It’s clear that some voters aren’t smart.
As you point out, the poem fails the funding test by being mediocre, so it shouldn’t get any funding.