Afghan New Zealander, Wida Tausif, was born in Afghanistan in 1992. Her family fled to Pakistan and lived in Peshawar for 9 years. Life there was uncertain, and they registered with the United Nations High Commission to find a safer place to live. Encountering many hurdles along the way, they were eventually granted residency to New Zealand, which Wida felt was ‘the furthest part of the world’… she has since moved to Melbourne.
Wida has a very real talent for writing about her homeland and her many emotional experiences. She puts into words the often traumatic and difficult transition from Afghanistan to Peshawar, Peshawar to New Zealand and eventually to Australia.
Wida’s main goals in life are to ‘bring light in my people’s heart and keeping our Afghan culture alive’ by writing and becoming an official representative of her beautiful country.
Wida does this through her beautifully deep crafted poetry.
Bernadette Hall, a well-known NZ poet, said of Wida’s poem, "My Sweet Afghanistan" ‘…reminds me of some of the work of South American liberationist poets, like Neruda and Vallejo’. This same poem was nominated in Canterbury during National Poetry Day (competition) 2010.
