Author, teacher and poet, Serie Barford’s final collection of poems, Standing On My Shadow, negotiates her devastating journey with cancer. Grey Power editor, Helen Perry found it both humbling and compelling.
Have you ever seen a movie, liked it a lot, gone back a second time and there observed a whole lot missed in the first viewing?
That was me with Dr Zhivago a million years ago. Loved the movie. Saw it again. Then again. Second time around I was immovable when the movie ended. The theatre vacated; I just sat and cried. There was so much more to absorb than on that first viewing.
That’s how it is with Serie Barford’s new book of poems encapsulating her walk with cancer. It is raw, it is powerful; it is moving. More than anything it is courageous – on so many levels.
Serie’s earlier book, Sleeping with Stones revealed she had already faced a side of life which was the counter balance of joy and happiness. Dedicated to her late partner who fell from a waterfall, it divulged that Serie, had already experienced her fair share of grief and loss. Therefore, this latest and her final collection of poems is brave, beyond words.
It begins with her visit to the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone in Ukraine. Appropriate, perhaps, as nuclear medicine and surgery in Aotearoa had already revealed ‘biological bombs’ within her body.
Deciding to accept therapy when she returned home, Serie’s subsequent passage through treatment corridors, past memories and personal emotions as she stands in the ‘shadow of fear and death’ are recorded with perceptivity.
Each poem reaches into the soul, her spirituality evident throughout. This last paper journey covers a raft of thoughts, reflections, emotions.
Serie talks about the tricky business of living. While it is so explicitly her journey, it also reveals that a ‘tricky’ path is likely to confront others who make their own way along a hospital’s ‘green line’, – the green line of which she says: “snakes along the floor.
Guides oncology patients to Radiology: communal jigsaw puzzles, hospital gowns, waiting and treatment rooms.”
It is a harrowing journey but just when despair seems inevitable, Serie writes the following beautiful poem.
And, indeed, balance is restored. There can be no ‘happy’ ending to Serie’s story but in her past and her present, her holistic outlook on life and her fortitude, readers are privileged to catch a glimpse of a remarkable woman.
Note: The book includes a glossary of foreign words which will be helpful to readers.
Coconut Earrings
I’m told the treatment is local, painless. Briefed on
possible side effects. Sign the radiotherapy consent
form. Cursive letters document my ongoing presence.
Survival.
A Sāmoan mama enters reception. Sits beside me.
Whispers, Love your coconut earrings. The stars. Moon.
I smile. Reply in Sāmoan. Proffer the earrings.
She flings her head back. Hoots. Claps her hands.
Hugs, kisses, blesses me.
Oi, fa‘apea o oe o se pālagi!
I tell her my mother is German-Sāmoan. That I
was an obedient child until my mouth grew. Took
over my face. That I had big hair before chemo.
We laugh. Full metal-jacket laughter. Fire twin volleys
from breast cancer wreckage. Plug purging mouths
with trembling hands. Barricade ricocheting mirth.
The coconut earrings are pendulums; they swing in
harmonic motion, mark Tā-Vā coordinates, heal spaces.
My agaga nestles between my fatu and māmā.
Balance is restored.
A brief biography of Serie
Serie Barford is a poet and short story writer with a strong background and interest in performance poetry. Of mixed Samoan-Palagi descent, much of her writing questions her position, as she sees it, of living on the margins. She says, ‘I’m interested in exploring the stories within us and how we sustain relationships both within and between visible and invisible worlds.’
Her work is influenced by the natural world and she reacts against the idea that, in her words, “so many Pacific Nation diasporic offspring are growing up in urban settings that easily diminish and forget the elemental connections and atua that sustained our ancestors for thousands of years.”
Serie has a Bachelor of Arts in English and History from Auckland University and trained as a secondary school teacher. As well as working as a teacher, she has worked in community education, run community writing workshops and performed at festivals. Her poetry has been recorded for Aotearoa-New Zealand Sound Archives 2004 and filmed by Ian Mune for Artsville, a TVNZ documentary series. A number of her stories for children and adults have aired on Radio NZ.
Among her many achievements she was awarded the Seres in Landfall Residency in 2011. Now her book, Standing on my Shadow, has been long listed for the 2026 Ockham NZ Book Awards, with the shortlist being announced March 4, just after our magazine went to print.
Standing on my Shadow
Author: Serie Barford
Published by: Anahera Press
RRP: $30 Available at most independent book stores
