Biography

What effect can poetry have on the composition of an autobiographical narrative? This essay seeks to shed light on the relationship between narrative and formal aspects of poetry through an analysis of a text that is at once poetry, narrative, and autobiography. Tusiata Avia’s Bloodclot straddles mythology and autobiography, merging the legend of the Samoan goddess of war Nafanua with the author’s own life. In considering how poetry is used to convey this double narrative, I argue that in Bloodclot segmentation through verse form is highly conducive to the articulation of narrative, both autobiographical and mythological.