My routes, my roots

Leads me home to Vunimaqo

‘Vunimaqo and me’

Launching April 10 2021

This powerful new collection by Daren Kamali centres on a mango tree—Vunimaqo— that was a focal point of his youth. Vunimaqo stands by the Tubou Street Barracks, in Samabula North, Suva, Fiji. More than just a tree, Vunimaqo is at the intersection of a community’s life, overseeing and sharing the stories of its people. Vunimaqo and Me is a unique and compelling collection of poems, coupled with images that deepen the words, channelling the many voices and the stories of those who found connection and shelter by the mango tree.

“These are poems of great heart and power, vivid pictures of a lost life, a vital community and its enduring values. Kamali explores the sensory world and of his Fijian youth in work that’s both celebratory and clear-eyed, writing with pace, attitude and buoyant wit.”

– Paula Morris

Daren Kamali is an Auckland based poet, curator, performer and artist. Of Fijian, Uvean, Futunan, Samoan and Scottish, he was born and raised in Suva, at the Tubou Street Barracks, in the shade of the Vunimaqo. This is his third collection of poetry.

“Vunimaqo And Me is a sequence of poems that reveals the circumstances that moulded Daren Kamali’s younger self and shaped his thinking … heir to a jumble of traditions represented in the voices from the streets of Suva that he captures in the daily theatre of life: the gossip, the curses, laughter, jokes and musicality.”

– David Eggleton