Mauritian culture is too often known in the West for the dodo: an extinct, flightless bird who inhabited the island and died out during European colonisation. It is time to move forward and ensure our robust yet marginalised culture houses and projects all the diverse individual voices within it.

HAUNT (THE KOOLIE) is poetry; a neo-Coolie meditation, exorcism of racial bigotry and satire of fear-mongering, from a decolonial Mauritian-Australian perspective.

Suburban mainstream yachts grow, giant

weeds in driveways, outlaw

gutter trophies, never seem to

Like! Find water?

But: I am Black enough to hold

the Whiteness in me

on me and @-me, account without counting

a graceless film-fade into seething light

hide colour, enlighten or die

settling, whiny-rewind VHS scores

(At Aussie, we'll save you!)