![]() ![]() * or pick your local equivalent: Langley, British Columbia Launceston, Tasmania Burbank, California Nancy in France Siegen in Germany, Bolzano in Italy, etc. Westernization is detrimental (harmful) to the people, their culture and their environment. The poem reflects or concern about the changes that have come about due to modernization. ![]() Which is a stylistic choice I personally find a bit irritating, but hey-ho. Thaman is highly individualistic and sensitive poet who writes frankly and patiently. ![]() It’s all lower-case, btw, even place names and ‘i’. It’s OK, I’ve read far worse poetry, but I couldn’t get very excited about it. I would love to be able to say that this was one of those unexpected treats that make the whole exercise worthwhile… but it’s not. Tonga has a population of just 104,000, so picking a book from Tonga is like picking a book from Colchester - if Colchester* was a fairly poor country in the middle of nowhere with little literary tradition and English as a second language. I’ve read some underwhelming books from the Pacific for this exercise - which is no surprise, really. But I didn’t have a book for Tonga, so that’s fine. This was going to be my book for Kiribati for the Read The World challenge, but it turns out I misread the listing: the illustrator is from Kiribati, the poet is from Tonga. ![]()
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