Dan Taulapapa McMullin's illustrated poetry chapbook "A Drag Queen Named Pipi" was recently published by Tinfish Press of Honolulu. He lives in California and Samoa, and is working on a film "Shark in the Woods" with producer Merata Mita, and he is painting, as well as completing a collection of short stories. Recent anthologies include the Polynesian poetry collection "Whetu Moana" and the indigenous erotica collection "Without Reservation". His short film "Sinalela", awarded 2002 Best Short Honolulu Gay & Lesbian Film Festival, can be seen online here. More of his work can be seen here. 1. What is the first poem you ever loved? Why? As a child in American Samoa, for the children's holiday White Sunday, in our village Malaeloa, we memorized Bible verses, in Samoan of course, for church service recital all dressed in white, for which we received pencils and bars of soap. I remember loving Psalms, and memorizing some of the Psalms while lying on a home woven mat watching my mother, grandmother and great-grandmother ironing with flat irons heated on glowing coals, and making jokes, telling stories. My love of the Psalms recitals had as much to do with the love of these women as it had to do with the beauty of the verses. 2. What is something/someone non-“literary” you read which may surprise your peers/colleagues? Why do you read it/them? Surprise being the operative word, I suppose, but it's hard to surprise people. I do occasionally read technical books and articles, I'm not just a pretty face! Currently I'm reading about pigments and canvas, recently I was reading something on digital photographic techniques. 3. How important is philosophy to your writing? Why? Ah, philosophy, it is so ethereal and so personal. I enjoy reading philosophers Wittgenstein and Levi-Strauss, if only because they're so imaginative. I find philosophy in traditional Polynesian chanting, this is the philosophy that is like a shining light in the darkness, for me. Not in the sound so much, or even in the poetry, but mainly in the narrative, the story lines, that connects me with so many, with Maui, and Tagaloa, and Sina, and all my ancestors. 4. Who are some of your favorite non-Anglo-American writers? Why? Most writing is non-Anglo-American. Non, non, anon. I'm hard put to find an Anglo-American writer among my favorites. Recently I read the novel "A Fine Balance" by Indian-Canadian writer Rohinton Mistry given to me by a friend to read, which I loved. And I really enjoyed recently the Polynesian and Native American poetry in the anthologies "Without Reservation" and "Whetu Moana", which I'm in as well! 5. Do you read a lot of poetry? If so, how important is it to your writing? Yes, all the while searching for the narrative and the figurative, as I do in painting. Wherever I see a poem without a story, or an abstract painting, I feel like I'm hearing part of a story from someone passing by, seeing the blown up detail of a photograph. The hidden story is more interesting to me because it is like life, fragile, so easily unwound, the hidden image, the unseen body of which I only see an abstract detail, fugitive as a cloud, I wish to pursue, where the writer gives me the body of a story, and the painter gives me the narrative of a scene. 6. What is something which your peers/colleagues may assume you’ve read but haven’t? Why haven’t you? One of my nephews gave me the novel "The Da Vinci Code" for Christmas, but the first page sounds like a treatment for a film, so immediately I thought, I'd better wait for the movie to come out, and probably won't get to the second page let alone the last page, but will probably see the movie. I always read a few pages of so many contemporary books in stores etc. and have the same feeling. 7. How would you explain what a poem is to my seven year old? Breathing, something told by breathing, like dancing, singing, rhyming, drumming, 8. Do you believe in a Role for the Poet? If so, how does it differ from the Role of the Citizen? We are given roles by society, I think the trick is to play it not as we are told to but by how one's heart tells one to play it most truly. 9. Word associations (the first word which comes to mind; be honest): Lemon**grass Chiseled**abs I**you Of**true Form**new 10. What is the relationship between the text and the body in your writing? Text is a negotiation between bodies, isn't it? I feel it is. Like love letters. Often of course just that, love letters.