One way of doing this would be (Ihave fixed your XML BTW):

use XML::DOM;
my $xml =<<EX;
<type name="bla">
    <display>BLA BLA</display>
    <data>
      <item>FIRST</item>
      <item>SECOND</item>
    </data>
    <config>
      <field id="test" name="test1">
        <display>MY TEST</display>
      </field>
    </config>
  </type>
EX
                                                                      
+          
my $parser = new XML::DOM::Parser;
my $doc = $parser->parse($xml);
                                                                      
+          
my $nodes = $doc->getElementsByTagName ("config");
                                                                      
+          
foreach my $node (@{$nodes})
{
   print $node->toString();
}
[download]

Of course this is not using XML::Smart - but I had issues installing it and gave up.

/J\