When Tusiata Avia was named as one of three winners of this year’s Prime Minister’s Awards for Literary Achievement, she thought the divisive talk was over.

On December 21, Avia, who is an acclaimed poet, writer and performer as well as a 2020 Arts Foundation laureate, received the poetry award and a cash prize of $60,000.

However, soon after the announcement by Creative New Zealand, which administers the awards, ACT released a statement condemning the decision.

In the statement, ACT list MP Todd Stephenson​, the political party’s arts, culture and heritage spokesperson, described Avia’s poetry as “race baiting”.

He said her poems were “racist rants” and the decision to give her the prize was “sick”.

He also said Creative NZ might soon lose some of its funding. “With a new Government looking to make spending cuts at low-value departments, Creative NZ is tempting fate.”

This week, Avia said the statement worried her. The last time the party had released a similar statement about her writing, she received a death threat from a white supremacist.

There was a power imbalance, she said, especially now that ACT was part of the new coalition government. “They [ACT] have money; they have power; they have a huge platform. I am just a person and I have poetry.”

Avia, who lives in Christchurch, believed the party was “weaponising words” to appeal to its voter base and using freedom of speech to curb artists’ freedom.

Her own aim as a writer was not to stir hatred, she said. “I’m not whipping people up with my poems.

“I’m doing what poets have done for centuries – I’m expressing a personal truth.”

Earlier this year, one of her poems became part of a national controversy after Stuff published a feature about Avia that included a video of her reading it aloud.

Titled “250th anniversary of James Cook’s arrival in New Zealand”, it is a “political protest poem about colonisation, about the actions of Captain Cook and the devastation that he brought to the Pacific”, Avia said.

But it was circulated as though it were hate speech, which led to complaints that the publication had “incited racial hatred”. Other critics, including ACT leader David Seymour, weighed in with a focus on the public funding of art.

Avia said the most cynical move at the time was having ACT compare her poem to the motives of the Christchurch mosque terrorist.

She said she was writing from her own point of view, in a personal way, and the Prime Minister’s Award was a recognition that her words and her poems carried meaning for a broader audience and were of national importance.

It was an honour to be the first Pasifika woman to receive the poetry award, she said.

“It’s a recognition of my 23-year career.”

Avia said that in telling her stories, she represented the disenfranchised and the people who have been badly affected by colonisation.

She said part of her latest book, Big Fat Brown Bitch, was a response to the attacks she received from ACT and to the white supremacist who sent her a death threat.

The book, which came out in November, used irony to subvert the meaning of a language that has been used against women of colour, she said.

The other two recipients of the Prime Minister’s Awards for Literary Achievement were Lee Murray​, for fiction, and academic Linda Tuhiwai Smith​ (Ngāti Awa, Ngāti Porou), for non-fiction.

It was the first time since the trio of awards was established in 2003 that each had gone to a woman.

“Each of these women is fearless in different ways, through experiment with genre, theory, and form,” Arts Council chairperson Caren Rangi said.

“They have been recognised because they have each forged distinctive styles in their respective areas of practice.”