The launch of Selina Tusitala Marsh’s third poetry collection Tightrope, longlisted for the Ockham New Zealand Book Awards, coincided with her taking up the mantle of Poet Laureate – “a wonderful opportunity to extend the poetic page and stage to this nation’s multi-coloured, multi-hued voices”, she said. An extraordinary poet, performer and advocate, Marsh’s work combines a warrior fierceness with humour, and explores the delicate and dangerous ways in which we navigate the abyss of forgotten memory. She speaks with Adam Dudding.