Course Map
-
- Access-the-Course-Map for Students New to Coursera online and SloPo Courses
- Course Overview with Sample Poems and Sample Discussion Thread
- The Library
- Week One and Two Materials: Ethnopoetics & Shaking the Pumpkin
- Jerome Rothenberg Assemblage of Materials: From Ethnopoetics to his own poetry and his work on A Big Jewish Book — texts, audio, video.
- The Q&A with Jerome Rothenberg
- Week Three Materials: Contemporary American Indian Poetry
- Week Four Materials: Pacific Islander Poetry
- Week Four Materials: Contemporary Caribbean Anglophone Poetry
- Week Five Materials: Contemporary African-American Poetry
- Week Six Materials: Contemporary Latinx-American Poetry and Performance
- Week Seven Materials: Contemporary Asian-American Poetry
- Week Eight Materials: The Ghazal, Contemporary Middle-Eastern and South-Asian Poetry
- RETURN TO COURSERA COURSE SITE PAGE
Contents to be scrolled through below: 1) Zoom Discussion Recordings, 2) “New Pacific Islander Poetry” (an introductory essay by Craig Santos Perez), features on poets 3) Brandy Nālani McDougall, 4) Lisa Linn Kinae, 5) Craig Santos Perez, 6) Dan Taulapapa McMullin, 7) a poem by Joe Balaz, 8) a photo essay on the Pacific Ocean, and 9) a link to an album of collaborative song-poems between Hawai’ian and Jamaican poets and musicians.
ZOOM live group discussion recordings
3-21-2020 11am Craig Santos Perez “A Whole Foods in Hawai‘i” by Craig Santos Perez https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/142859/a-whole-foods-in-hawaiiand “He Mele Aloha no ka Niu” by Brandy Nālani McDougall https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/89747/he-mele-aloha-no-ka-niu on March 21, 2020 from 11am on. Duration 3:32:16.
March 22 2020 Talk with Craig Santos Perez
Craig Santos Perez joined ModPo SloPo’s class on Indigenous, Immigrant, and Multilingual American Poetry to discuss his poem/video “Oceania” and other matters. There were a number of technical snafus, as seen as well in the above video, but we did our best as ZOOM amateurs all! Duration 2:29:21.
Click here to go to the special Poetry magazine published folio (at the page you arrive at, scroll down to reach the “New Pacific Islander Poetry section).
Click here (or on any of the images of pages above) to go to the online resource that “features a robust series of links to authors [over 50!] and essays.”
Brandy Nālani McDougall

Bio: Born and raised on Maui, Brandy Nālani McDougall earned a BA from Whittier College and an MFA from the University of Oregon and is a PhD candidate at the University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa. She also studied at the University of Auckland. McDougall is the author of the poetry collection The Salt-Wind / Ka Makani Pa‘akai (2008) (highly recommended – JZ) and the scholarly monograph Finding Meaning: Kaona and Contemporary Hawaiian Literature (2016). Her writing appears in Effigies: An Anthology of New Indigenous Writing (2009), edited by Allison Adelle Hedge Coke. In a review of McDougall’s work, Craig Santos Perez says, “She wrestles with historical and contemporary colonialism in her homeland through the themes of language, education, and exoticism. … McDougall seamlessly weaves together Hawaiian language and English to create a complex, bilingual texture.” McDougall teaches at the University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa.
by Brandy Nālani McDougall
I’m so tired of pretending
each gesture is meaningless,
that the clattering of niu leaves
and the guttural call of birds
overhead say nothing.
There are reasons why
the lichen and moss kākau
the niu’s bark, why
this tree has worn
an ahu of ua and lā
since birth. Scars were carved
into its trunk to record
the mo‘olelo of its being
by the passage of insects
becoming one to move
the earth, speck by speck.
Try to tell them to let go
of the niu rings marking
each passing year, to abandon
their only home and move on.
I can’t pretend there is
no memory held
in the dried coconut hat,
the star ornament, the midribs
bent and dangling away
from their roots, no thought
behind the kāwelewele
that continues to hold us
steady. There was a time
before they were bent
under their need to make
an honest living, when
each frond was bound
by its life to another
like a long, erect fin
skimming the surface
of a sea of grass and sand.
Eventually, it knew it would rise
higher, its flower would emerge
gold, then darken in the sun,
that its fruit would fall, only
to ripen before its brown fronds
bent naturally under the weight
of such memory, back toward
the trunk to drop to the sand,
back to its beginnings, again.
Let this be enough to feed us,
to remember: ka wailewa
i loko, that our own bodies
are buoyant when they bend
and fall, and that the ocean
shall carry us and weave us
back into the sand’s fabric,
that the mo‘opuna taste our sweet.
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Please watch:
Ola (i) Na Moolelo: Living Moolelo: Brandy Nālani McDougall speaks at TEDxManoa https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K69_kuqBiX8 (16:56)
ka — Definite singular article replaced by ke before words beginning with a, e, o, and k, and before some words beginning with the glottal stop and p (ka ʻaka, the laugh, ke ʻala, the fragrance; ka pā, the yard, ke pā, the dish).
wailewa — Coconut water. Lit., hanging water. See riddle.
i — To, towards, at, in, on, by, because of, for, due to, by means of.
loko —
1. loc.n. In, inside, within; interior, mainland, inside; internal organs, as tripe, entrails (Gram. 8.6). I loko, into, inside, on or to the mainland. I ka moe ʻana o loko o ka hale (FS 259), while those in the house slept. Ua lawe nui au no loko aʻe o kēia mau kānāwai, I have taken much from within these laws. Kō loko, those inside. Mea o loko, things inside, contents. ʻO ka inaina i loko o kekahi hana hewa, malice in respect to the commission of any offense. Make na loko, death caused by own relatives, or failure to observe one’s taboo gods; lit., inside death. hoʻo.lako To insinuate, suggest, implant a thought, either good or bad. (PPN loto.)
2. n. Character, disposition, heart, feelings. Cf. loko hāiki, loko ʻino, loko liʻu, lokomaikaʻi. (PPN loto.)
3. n. Pond, lake, pool.
Lisa Linn Kanae

Bio from poetry.com: “Lisa Linn Kanae was born and raised in Kapahulu, Oahu, and is of Hawaiian, Chinese, Japanese, and Filipino descent. She left a job as an executive secretary to pursue literature, earning both a BA and an MA from the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa. She is the author of the chapbook Sista Tongue (2003), a hybrid work that collages poetry and prose, English and Pidgin and weaves together personal narrative and the social history of Pidgin. Kristin Kaelinani Gonzales designed the book’s innovative font and graphic style. Sista Tongue has been required reading for courses at the University of Texas, Lewis & Clark College, Willamette College, and others. Kanae is also the author of the short story collection Islands Linked by Ocean (2009). In 2010, Kanae received the Cades Emerging Writer Award for Literature. She teaches at Kapiʻolani Community College and is the editorial assistant for ‘Ōiwi: A Native Hawaiian Journal.”
JZ: SistaTongue is a carefully printed book, in a square format. The cover is purple and rough, like construction paper. Below, I scanned pages from the book, and slightly darkened them to make them distinct as pages. I also took a page from a few pages earlier and put it last. Finally, several pages were sideways, 90 degrees turned, and I turned them so the text would read horizontally for ease. (It’s easier to turn a small square book that a computer to read the turned text!) I’m excited to hear from all of you about your responses to the text itself as well as the formatting and the inclusion of archival materials — in my opinion, this is documentary poetics at its best. The pages in the book are not numbered, but I’ve produced about 60% or so of the contents here below for you. And I’m curious to learn what you think of this as a “poem” — is this a poem? a lyric essay? an exhibition? all of the above?.
More about Lisa Linn Kanae:
http://the.honoluluadvertiser.com/article/2001/Dec/10/il/il01a.html
A review of SistaTongue: review_of_Sista_Tongue_by_Lisa_Linn_Kanae by Juliana Spahr










































Craig Santos Perez

Bio: Craig Santos Perez is a native Chamoru (Chamorro) from the Pacific Island of Guåhan/Guam. He is the co-founder of Ala Press, co-star of the poetry album (Hawai’i Dub Machine, 2011), and author of three collections of poetry: (Tinfish Press, 2008), (Omnidawn, 2010), and (Omnidawn, 2014). He has been a finalist for the LA Times 2010 Book Prize for Poetry and the winner of the 2011 PEN Center USA Literary Award for Poetry. He is director of the Creative Writing program and an assistant professor of English at the University of Hawai’i, Manoa, where he teaches Pacific literature and creative writing. He maintains his own blog, and has blogged for Harriet.
At the very end, I have placed a short review that appeared in the magazine Poetry of one of Santos Perez’s books.
AUDIO OPTION:
July/August 2016: “Fear of Flying (in Broken Gilbertese)”
July 1, 2016 The editors discuss poems by Daniela Danz, translated by Monika Cassel; plus, an interview with Craig Santos Perez on Pacific Islander poetry, and poems by Teresia Teaiwa and Brandy Nālani McDougall. https://www.poetryfoundation.
Here’s a pdf of some of the material below: CraigSantosPerezMaterials
Guam
“Praise Song For Oceania,” poem by Craig Santos Perez, film by Justyn Ah Chon
Praise song for Oceania
(on June 8, 2016, World Oceans Day)
Ocean, we // had been your griot. (Brenda Hillman)
praise
your capacity
for birth / your fluid
currents and trenchant
darkness / praise your contracting
waves & dilating
horizons / praise our briny
beginning, the source
of every breath / praise
your endless bio-
diversity / praise
your capacity
for renewal / your rise
into clouds and descent
into rain / praise your underground
aquifers / your rivers & lakes,
ice sheets & glaciers / praise
your watersheds &
hydrologic cycles / praise
your capacity
to endure / the violence
of those who claim dominion
over you / who map you
empty ocean to pillage / who divide you
into latitudes & longitudes /
who scar your middle
passages / who exploit
your economy* / praise
your capacity
to survive / our trawling
boats / breaching /
your open body /
& taking from your
collapsing depths / praise
your capacity
to dilute / our sewage
& radioactive waste /
our pollutants & plastics /
our heavy metals
& greenhouse gases / praise
your capacity
to bury / soldiers & terrorists,
slaves & refugees / to bury
our last breath
of despair / to bury
the ashes of our
loved ones / praise
your capacity
to remember / praise
your library of drowned
stories / praise your museum
of lost treasures / praise
our migrant routes
& submarine roots / praise
your capacity
to penetrate /
praise your rising tides
& relentless storms & towering
tsunamis & feverish
floods / praise
your capacity
to smother /
schools of fish & wash them
ashore to save them
from our cruelty /
to show us what we’re
no longer allowed to take
/ to starve us like your corals
are being starved & bleached /
like your liquid lungs
choked of oxygen / praise
your capacity
to forgive / please
forgive our territorial hands
& acidic breath / please
forgive our nuclear arms
& naval bodies / please
forgive our concrete dams
& cabling veins / please
forgive our deafening sonar
& lustful tourisms / please
forgive our invasive drilling
& deep sea mining / please
forgive our extractions
& trespasses / praise
your capacity
for mercy / please
let our grandfathers and fathers
catch just one more fish / please
make it stop raining soon / please
make it rain soon / please
spare our fragile farms & fruit trees / please
spare our low-lying islands & atolls / please
spare our coastal villages & cities / please
let us cross safely to a land
without war / praise
your capacity
for hope /
praise your rainbow
warrior & peace
boat / your hokuleʻa
& sea shepherd / praise
your arctic sunrise & flotillas
of hope / praise your nuclear free
& independent pacific movement /
praise your marine stewardship
councils & sustainable
fisheries / praise your radical
seafarers & native navigators /
praise your sacred water walkers /
praise your activist kayaks
& canoes / praise your ocean
conservancies & surfrider foundations /
praise your aquanauts & hyrdolabs /
praise your coastal cleanups
& Google Oceans /
praise your whale hunting
& shark finning bans /
praise your sanctuaries
& no take zones / praise
your pharmacopeia of new
antibiotics / praise your wave
and tidal energy / praise your
#oceanoptimism & Ocean
Elders /praise
your capacity
for echo
location / our names for you /
that translate
into creation stories
& song maps
tasi & kai & tai & moana nui & vasa &
tahi & lik & wai tui & daob & wonsolwara /
praise
your capacity
for communion /
praise our common heritage /
praise our pathway
& promise to each other / praise
our endless saga / praise our most powerful
metaphor / praise this vision
of belonging / praise your horizon
of care / praise our blue planet,
one world ocean / praise our trans-oceanic
past, present & future flowing
through our blood /.1
Notes
1 Phrases are quoted from or inspired by various scholars and poets, including Epeli Hauʻofa, Derek Walcott, Elizabeth DeLoughrey, Rob Wilson, Peter Neill, Sylvia Earle, Édouard Glissant, and Albert Wendt. The words chanted are the words for ocean in various Pacific languages. The epigraph is from Brenda Hillman’s poem, “The Pacific Ocean,” from her book Practical Water (Wesleyan University Press, 2009), 26. The gross marine product of the ocean is 2.5 trillion dollars.
From “understory”
BY CRAIG SANTOS PEREZ
For my wife, Nālani, and our daughter, Kaikainali‘i, on her first birthday
nālani clips
kaikainali‘i’s tiny
fingernails while
she sleeps —
“the rape
of oceania
began with
guam” — soldiers
invade okinawa,
hawai‘i, the
philippines, and
south korea —
#yesallwomen
how do
[we] stop
kaikainali‘i’s body
from becoming
target practice —
bullets fragment
and ricochet —
nālani brushes
kaikainali‘i’s hair
when she
wakes, sings
the names
of body
parts in
hawaiian language —
who will
remember the
names of
girls disappeared
from reservations
and maquiladoras
from villages
and schools
#mmiw #mmaw
#bringbackourgirls
nālani gathers
the clippings
because even
[our] nails
are ten
percent water —
outside, mānoa
rain falls
as large
as eggs —
inside, nālani
lies on
her side
to breast-
feed kaikainali‘i
in bed —
they fall
asleep facing
each other,
still latched —
i nestle
with them
and, for
a moment,
kaikainali‘i smiles —
what does
she dream
about? her
deep breath
rises and
falls like
king tides —
her fragile
rib cage
appears and
disappears like
a coral
island crowning —
my daughter,
i know
our stories
are heavier
than stones,
but you
must carry
them with
you no
matter how
far from
home the
storms take
your canoe
because you
will always
find shelter
in our
stories, you
will always
belong in
our stories,
you will
always be
sacred in
our ocean
of stories —
hanom hanom
ginen tidelands [latte stone park] [hagåtña, guåhan]
BY CRAIG SANTOS PEREZ
[for my dad]
The fallen Latte is the sign. It is from within the row of Latte that
we feel our strength. It is the severed capstone that gives us Their
message, “Ti monhayon I che’cho.” We will not rest until the
Latte is whole.
—Cecilia C. T. Perez from “Signs of Being: A Chamoru
Spiritual Journey” (1997)
~
i haligi
a pillar
i tasa
a capstone
i tataotao
a body
~
his hands—
husk coconut—
cooks and
feeds [us]—
stories—this
raised house—
at quarry
outline forms
to sing
forward—carve
limestone to
sing past—
~
citizen : drafted
vietnam war—
the rifle
he kept—
his uniform
his fatigue
~
soak coconut
fibers—dry
under sun—
“make rope”
braided hair—
“like this”
~
hålla haligi—
pull sky—
hålla tasa
“pull, son”
with [our]
entire breath
~
[our] bones:
acho’ latte
removed from—
to museum
of trespass—
to here—
ginen the micronesian kingfisher [i sihek]
BY CRAIG SANTOS PEREZ
~
[our] nightmare : no
birdsong—
the jungle was riven emptied
of [i sihek] bright blue green turquoise red gold
feathers—everywhere : brown
tree snakes avian
silence—
the snakes entered
without words when [we] saw them it was too late—
they were at [our] doors sliding along
the passages of [i sihek]
empire—then
the zookeepers came—
called it species survival plan—captured [i sihek] and transferred
the last
twenty-nine micronesian kingfishers
to zoos for captive breeding [1988]—they repeated [i sihek]
and repeated :
“if it weren’t for us
your birds [i sihek]
would be gone
forever”
what does not change /
last wild seen—
A Whole Foods in Hawai‘i BY CRAIG SANTOS PEREZ
I dreamed of you tonight, Wayne Kaumualii Westlake, as I walked down on the sidewalk under plumeria trees with a vog headache looking at the Māhealani moon.
In my need fo’ grindz, and hungry fo’ modernity, I stumbled into the gentrified lights of Whole Foods, dreaming of your manifestos!
What pineapples and what papayas! Busloads of tourists shopping at night! Bulk aisle full of hippies! Millennials in the kale! Settlers in the Kona coffee! And you, Richard Hamasaki, what were you doing kissing the ripe mangos?
I saw you, Wayne Kaumualii Westlake, broomless, ghostly janitor, sampling the poke in the seafood section and eyeing the smoked fish.
I heard you ask questions of each: Who butchered the mahimahi? What price opah belly? Are you my ‘aumakua?
I wandered in and out of the canned goods aisle following you, and followed in my imagination by Sir Spamalot.
In our bourgeois fancy we strolled through the cooked foods section tasting hand-churned cheese, possessing every imported delicacy, and whispering to the cashier, “Go fuck yourself.”
Where are we going, Wayne Kaumualii Westlake? The doors of perception close in an hour. Which way does your pakalōlō point tonight?
(I touch your book and dream of our huaka‘i in Whole Foods and feel dādā.)
Will we sail all night through Honolulu streets? The coconut trees no have nuts, tarps up for the homeless, we’ll both be lonely.
Will we cruise witnessing the ruined empire of America, past pink mopeds in driveways, home to our overpriced apartments?
Ah, dear uncle, Buddhahead, ghostly poetry teacher, what Hawai‘i did you have when TheBus quit turning its wheels and you arrived in Waikīkī and stood watching the canoes disappear on the murky waters of the Ala Wai?
About Wayne Kaumualii Westlake
https://nohohewa.com/2013/06/22/richard-hamasaki-his-friend-poet-wayne-kaumualii-westlake/
https://jacket2.org/category/commentary-tags/wayne-kaumualii-westlake
from Westlake:_Poems_by_Wayne_Kaumualii_Westlake_—-_(Introduction)
several poems from Westlake:_Poems_by_Wayne_Kaumualii_Westlake_—-_(Pg_30–39)
(First Trimester) BY CRAIG SANTOS PEREZ
[we] are watching a documentary about home
birth when [you] first feel [neni] kick // embryo
of hope // they say plastic is the perfect creation
because it never dies // litters the beaches
of o‘ahu, this “gathering place” // the doctor
recommends a c-section // in the sea, plastic multiplies
into smaller pieces, leaches estrogenic and toxic
chemicals // if [we] cut open the bellies of whales
and large fish, what fragments will [we] find, derived
from oil, absorbed into tissue // because plastic
never dissolves, every product ever made still exists,
somewhere, today // i wish my daughter was made
of plastic so that she will survive [our] wasteful
hands // so that she, too, will have a great future
review July/August 2016
from “unincorporated territory [guma’],” by Craig Santos Perez.
Omnidawn Publishing. $17.95.
Over the course of centuries, colonialism, militarism, capitalism, and methods of Western academia have tried to make maps of the Pacific that erase and belittle Pacific Islander connections to land and ocean. But Pacific peoples move, create, change, and love in ways that work outside and against systems bent on mapping minds and bodies along lines of Western ways of knowing and being.
Craig Santos Perez dedicates his third installment of the unincorporated territory series to creating an indigenous and diasporic mapping of home, land, ocean, and people. In his newest book, from “unincorporated territory [guma’],” Perez draws on his background as a Chamorro raised both on Guåhan and in the Chamorro diaspora to work out lines of connection across time, place, and memory. He draws from personal memories, family narratives, archival records, and Chamorro legends to viscerally engage his readers with urgent issues of militarization and displacement. Perez also creates multiple layers of mapping that connect beyond the immediate moment to bring in stories that portray Chamorros looking to reinforce and recreate homes of self, people, land, and ocean.
[guma’] encapsulates a particular urgency due to the historical, political, and cultural contexts within which the book is published. Perez’s island home of Guåhan is the longest continuously occupied place in the Pacific, having been first invaded by the Spanish in the 1500s. The processes of colonialism radically restructured islander relationships to movement through militarization, missionization, and the sociopolitical restructuring of people’s relationship to land. Perez’s work is so important because he re-articulates past, present, and future Chamorro movement by poetically situating maps, signs, repetition, variation, and pattern throughout [guma’]. It is the articulation of home that is foregrounded in the mappings of each poem. This is mirrored in Perez’s words toward the end of one of the poems titled “ginen (sub)aerial roots,” where the italicized voice states “map aerial and sub-aerial roots … from multiple points of migration and return … because every poem is a navigational chant.”
Perez’s work is all the more poignant because it speaks on emotional, psychological, and physical levels against the US government’s military buildup on Guåhan. (Dis)connections of memory, war, militarization, death, and continued occupation are a central part of [guma’]. Indeed, the multiple ideas of home are foregrounded in Perez’s use of archival records of past and present military service and lists of indigenous Mariana Islanders killed in US military operations. Perez’s poetry and activism thus flow together within immediate political contexts that threaten to further erase Chamorro ways of remembering and connecting through their own homeland.
What is so unique about [guma’] is that it is also a space of holding memory. Perez uses the spaces of his poems — indeed the spaces between them as well — to work through Chamorro signs and symbols that speak to specific perspectives on indigenousness, sovereignty, and diaspora. In the context of everyday resistance to US encroachment on sacred Chamorro lands, native peoples giving their lives in military operations, and the threat of rising sea levels, Perez’s work makes spaces that do not discriminate between memories, but take all aspects of memory, despair, humor, sexuality, disconnection, loss, grief, fear, and vulnerability into the pages of his work.
[guma’] is mapped along the lines of seven series of poems that keep their basic titles (with some variations) over the course of four sections. The order of these poems works in a radiating and repetitive pattern, like a net being cast in all directions by a fisherman — or in this case, a navigator. It is not necessarily the pattern of repetition that is most important, though this does point to the significance of sacred numbers and patterns in indigenous cultures. The patterns suggest the changing landmarks of memory as the poems move in nonlinear narratives through time and space.
Working across the major themes of navigating home, memory, translation, decolonization, and activism, Perez moves between different voices through italicized, non-italicized, bracketed, and non-bracketed words to create commentary on vacillations between what is protective in the idea of home, and what is in fact a cage. While the main image of the book is the latte, which are the limestone pillars that “formed the foundations of homes, schools, canoe shelters, food sheds, and communal spaces,” it is the articulation of home within and beyond these foundations that creates the multidimensional layers of the book. The latte pillars are like the brackets that Perez uses around the inclusive pronouns “we” and “our,” connoting a safety within Chamorro community and indigenous self.
When Perez writes in his last poem that “guaha means/to exist,” Perez is using the base of his language to work through all other layers of expressing existence and identity in the idea of home — Guåhan. Perez’s poetry, which is the basis of his cultural, political, and historical commentary, is extremely important to all Pacific Islanders as we work to decolonize Oceania.
— Lee Kava
Read more reviews of Pacific Islander Poetry collections by clicking on this sentence.
Dan Taulapapa McMullin

Dan Taulapapa McMullin is an artist from American Samoa whose first collection of poems, (University of Arizona Press, 2013), was one of the American Library Association’s Top 10 LGBT Books of the year. Below is one of his poem-paintings. Below that, three poems, then another poem-image.

The Doors of the Sea
BY DAN TAULAPAPA MCMULLIN
There was a ship
went into the sea
over the body of my brother
I am just a boy
he was not much older than me
the goddess is good and cruel
wants her share of life, like us
sparkling dust of birds far away whom we follow, the stars
the blood red dust of life
as my brother’s face
disappeared beneath us
beneath the ship which carried us and the goddess
to where we do not know
leaving the war of my grandfather
the smell of smoke following us
our keel, my brother, knocking down the doors of the sea
the tall, and the wild waves coming, crashing
under the keel of my brother’s name
far from the sound of places we were leaving
the roads we followed
marching past my uncle’s crooked mountain forts
while his men called out at us
with our long hair
on our shoulders
first by my brother’s name
who was this girl with him, leave her with us
she is my brother, he said
not glancing at me
our songs we sang in the warm rain for the goddess
blessed be her name
her cloak the wild wood pigeons turning
her crown the lone plover’s crying
where now are you brother?
The Sky
BY DAN TAULAPAPA MCMULLIN
The sky is bright with stars
After a hot day
The coolness of my body
Leaving finger by toe in the heat of the spa
Looking through the garden lights
At tall houses around me
I thought, No, just happy
The night is bright with stars,
She told me
She no longer missed her parents
But you loved them, I said
I did, said she, more than myself
And now I’m free
That was my friend Pipi
Such a whore, I said to myself
Like me, such a whore like me
As I hear the roosters of Samoa
In the laughing of coyotes
Another poem-image by Dan Taulapapa McMullin:


Joe Balaz
Joe Balaz was born and raised in Hawaii and is of Hawaiian, Slovakian, and Irish heritage. He writes in both American English and Pidgin (Hawaiian Creole English) and often composes concrete poetry with elements of visual art. His album of pidgin poetry, Electric Laulau (1998), is considered a foundational text in Kanaka Maoli (native Hawaiian) literature. Of the importance of oral traditions to his work, Balaz has said, “Spoken word and amplified poetry or music poetry are dynamic avenues that enhance the communal aspect of literature in general. It’s like a chant that reaches out to you. With the oral traditions of Pacific Island cultures, one can feel a kind of continuum with these modern art forms that harken back to an older vibe.”
Oceania Photo Montage




















The Peoples Charter for a Nuclear Free and Independent Pacific:
Preamble
- We, the people of the Pacific, want to make our position clear. The Pacific is home to millions of people with distinct cultures, religions and ways of life, and we refuse to be abused or ignored any longer.
- We, the people of the Pacific, have been victimized too long by foreign powers. The Western imperialistic and colonial powers invaded our defenseless region, they took over our lands and subjugated our people to their whims. This form of alien political and military domination unfortunately persists as an evil cancer in some of our native territories such as Tahiti-Polynesia, Kanaky, Australia and Aotearoa. Our environment continues to be despoiled by foreign powers developing nuclear weapons for a strategy of warfare that has no winners, no liberators and imperils the survival of all humankind.
- We, the people of the Pacific, will assert and wrest control over the destiny of our nations and our environment from foreign powers, including transnational corporations.
- We note in particular the recent racist roots of the worlds nuclear powers and we call for an immediate end to the oppression, exploitation and subordination of the indigenous people of the Pacific.
- Our environment is further threatened by the continuing deployment of nuclear arsenals in the so-called strategic areas throughout the Pacific. Only one nuclear submarine has to be lost in the sea, or one nuclear warhead dumped in our ocean from a stricken bomber, and the threat to the fish, and our livelihood is endangered for centuries. The erection of superports, military bases, and nuclear testing stations may bring employment, but the price is destruction of our customs, our way of life, the pollution of our crystal clear waters and bringing the ever present threat of disaster by radioactive poisoning into the everyday life of the people.
- We, the people of the Pacific, reaffirm our intention to extract only those elements of Western civilization that will be of permanent benefit to us. We wish to control our destinies and protect our environment in our own ways. Our uses of our natural resources in the past was more than adequate to ensure the balance between nature and humankind. No form of administration should ever seek to destroy that balance for the sake of brief commercial gain.
For more information contact:VVAW AI-Honolulu, Scotty c/o Action Group PO Box 521 Honolulu, HI, 96809 (808) 576-2955orThe Hawai’i Coalition Against Nuclear Testing 766 N King St. Honolulu, HI 96817 (808) 845-9501, fax (808) 843-0711. |
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Course Map
-
- Access-the-Course-Map for Students New to Coursera online and SloPo Courses
- Course Overview with Sample Poems and Sample Discussion Thread
- The Library
- Week One and Two Materials: Ethnopoetics & Shaking the Pumpkin
- Jerome Rothenberg Assemblage of Materials: From Ethnopoetics to his own poetry and his work on A Big Jewish Book — texts, audio, video.
- The Q&A with Jerome Rothenberg
- Week Three Materials: Contemporary American Indian
- Week Four Materials: Pacific Islander Poetry
- Week Four Materials: Contemporary Caribbean Anglophone Poetry
- Week Five Materials: Contemporary African-American Poetry
- Week Six Materials: Contemporary Latinx-American Poetry and Performance
- Week Seven Materials: Contemporary Asian-American Poetry
- Week Eight Materials: The Ghazal, Contemporary Middle-Eastern and South-Asian Poetry
- RETURN TO COURSERA COURSE SITE PAGE
https://jacket2.org/commentary/technicians-sacred-expanded-fiftieth-anniversary-pre-face-final-note
Hawai’ian to English / English to Hawai’ian dictionary — https://wehewehe.org/
https://jacket2.org/commentary/first-anthologyassemblage-poetry-and-poetics-americas-origins-present
https://jacket2.org/commentary/technicians-sacred-revised-expanded-announcement-appeal
https://jacket2.org/commentary/first-anthologyassemblage-poetry-and-poetics-americas-origins-present
http://jacketmagazine.com/14/spahr-r-am-p.html
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/articles/152905/native-lit-is-dead
‘Das how was’: Da pidgin elegy
Poetry by Lee Tonouchi & Meg Withers
SUSAN M. SCHULTZ
Course Map
-
- Access-the-Course-Map for Students New to Coursera online and SloPo Courses
- Course Overview with Sample Poems and Sample Discussion Thread
- The Library
- Week One and Two Materials: Ethnopoetics & Shaking the Pumpkin
- Jerome Rothenberg Assemblage of Materials: From Ethnopoetics to his own poetry and his work on A Big Jewish Book — texts, audio, video.
- The Q&A with Jerome Rothenberg
- Week Three Materials: Contemporary American Indian Poetry
- Week Four Materials: Pacific Islander Poetry
- Week Four Materials: Contemporary Caribbean Anglophone Poetry
- Week Five Materials: Contemporary African-American Poetry
- Week Six Materials: Contemporary Latinx-American Poetry and Performance
- Week Seven Materials: Contemporary Asian-American Poetry
- Week Eight Materials: The Ghazal, Contemporary Middle-Eastern and South-Asian Poetry
- RETURN TO COURSERA COURSE SITE PAGE