Day 29: Do what no one has to tell you to do
From Selina Tusitala Marsh, poet, scholar, and graphic memoirist
“Wot knot you got?” “That’s a wot-job knot!” (Drawing by Selina Tusitala Marsh)
Are you doing your dream job? Some of us are. Some of us aren’t. But what if you could find a way to infuse the one thing that “no one EVER has to tell you to do” into the job you’re doing now?
Let me tell you my story. I was the first Pacific Islander (Samoan and Tuvaluan bloodlines) to be selected as Poet Laureate of Aotearoa New Zealand. My academic research focuses on marginalized Pacific literary voices, so I wanted to offer a positive, vibrant counter to negative stereotypes about Pacific Islanders in the media. But I couldn’t be the kind of traditional Poet Laureate that everyone expected me to be.
Instead, I took the one thing that no one EVER has to tell me to do – doodling, scrawling, playing with line and picture-making – and created a children’s book character called Mophead, who gets teased as a child for her kinky hair but later grows up to be the Poet Laureate.
When the children at the schools I visited asked Mophead for advice on their knottiest problems, I turned their questions around and encouraged them to be “led by line” to their own solutions. Now drawn lines infuse my academic work as well as my children’s books; I interweave spoken, written, drawn, blood, and land lines to create decolonial spaces in which to read Pacific Literature. Doodling, in other words, has become part of my job!
Today’s prompt is inspired by my latest Mophead book, Wot Knot You Got? Mophead’s Guide to Life:
Do Mini-Mophead’s graphic exercise (have fun - you don’t have to be an artist!) and draw yourself in your dream job. Then freewrite in response to the following question: “How can I infuse my scholarly writing with the one thing that no one EVER has to tell me to do?”
Wot Knot You Got? Mophead’s Guide to Life will be published on December 1 by Auckland University Press. You can find all of my Mophead books here: www.mophead.co.nz.
Selina Tusitala Marsh, poet, scholar, and graphic memoirist
Absolutely love how this prompt makes me feel like a children’s book character 😍. Thanks, Selina!
Thank you, Mophead and Mini-Mophead, for this beautiful prompt. I realized that writing in and with color (the topic of my Day 26 prompt) is "the thing that no one EVER has to tell me to do" -- and now it's my day job as well, playing with color (literally and metaphorically) in the WriteSPACE and on Substack.