Flora Aurima Devatine (b. 1942) is a well-established Tahitian poet who writes in both French and reo Tahiti. She was awarded the Prix Heredia of the Académie française in 2017. Read More Her transgeneric text, ‘The Lagoon of Languages’, which mingles poetry and critical theory, celebrates linguistic creativity, collapsing the debate over language choice into a celebration of the writer’s ability to find pleasure in molding words to his or her expressive needs. Strong rhythms mark much of her work, in an echo of the drumbeats and flourishes of traditional cultural and rhetorical forms.