Hawke’s Bay poet Nafanua Purcell Kersel shortlisted for Ockham book awards prize

Writer, performer and poet Nafanua Purcell Kersel is in the running to win the Mary and Peter Biggs Award for Poetry for her debut poetry collection Black Sugarcane at the Ockham New Zealand Book Awards 2026. 3 March 2026 NZME supplied

A Hawke’s Bay woman is up for a prestigious national poetry award for her debut collection of poems.

Nafanua Purcell Kersel is a finalist for the Mary and Peter Biggs Award for Poetry at the Ockham New Zealand Book Awards 2026 for her first published collection of poetry, Black Sugarcane.

Kersel said as far as first collections go, hers was a substantial book.

“That’s because it’s full of stories that have been in my heart for a long time,” she said.

The collection tells family stories of growing up in Wellington as a Samoan in the ’80s and ’90s.

“I didn’t have to reach very far to find something to write about. It was all sitting just under the surface,” she said.

Kersel began writing poetry as a late teen.

She said soon after she started, her baby brother died, and writing became a way to work through her emotions.

The first poem in Black Sugarcane is a poem dedicated to her brother as an acknowledgment to the moment her poetry started to develop.

Kersel continued making poetry for her family and herself, but it wasn’t until the Covid lockdowns in 2020 that she really put herself out there.

Soon after, she won the 2020 Hawke’s Bay Poetry Slam.

“That was really my first time having my poetry said out loud in public,” she said.

“It’s been a long journey because there is 25 years between starting to want to write poetry and then wanting to write a book and actually doing it. A lot of life.”

Currently living in Maraekākaho, Kersel and her family made Hawke’s Bay their home about 20 years ago.

She said poetry from Te Matau-a-Māui “carries all the abundance that we grow”, and it is special to live here and create here.

Kersel said because of her book, her poetry had been read widely by people of Pacific Island descent in places as far away as Utah, in the US.

“It’s wonderful to have something that I created mean so much and connect with people in so many different ways.”

Kersel is up for the award against established poets Anna Jackson for Terrier, Worrier: A Poem in Five Parts and Erik Kennedy for Sick Power Trip; and fellow debut poet Sophie van Waardenberg for No Good.

The Ockhams take place on May 13 in Auckland.

Jack Riddell is a multimedia journalist with Hawke’s Bay Today and has worked in radio and media in the UK, Germany, and New Zealand.