S223.
Oceanic Metaphors: Tidalectics from Te Moana-nui-a-Kiwa to the Kalapani
Saturday, March 11, 2023
3:20 pm to 4:35 pm
Waters mingle when award-winning poets with indigenous roots in Aotearoa New Zealand and Hawai’i join in conversation with poets who write through histories of slavery and indenture in Caribbean waters. Following the late Kamau Brathwaite’s tidalectics, these poets turn to the sea in their poetry to re-member the past, re-interpret cultural stories, and herald queer and liberatory futures. This trans-oceanic conversation asks how poetry can challenge ongoing colonial and imperial violence.
Participants
Rajiv Mohabir is the author of three collections of poetry including Cutlish (Four Way Books, Finalist for the NBCC), a memoir, Antiman (Finalist for the PEN Open Book Award), and a collection of translations I Even Regret Night (Kaya Press, Winner of the HMLTA from the Academy of American Poets).
No'u Revilla, of Hawaiʻi, is the author of Ask the Brindled (Milkweed 2022), which won the 2021 National Poetry Series. She is an assistant professor of creative writing at the University of Hawaiʻi-Mānoa. Her work appears in Poetry, Beloit, ANMLY, and Lit Hub. She lives in the ahupuaʻa of Waikīkī.
Essa Ranapiri (ia/they/them |Ngaati Raukawa, Ngaati Pukeko, Te Arawa, Clan Gunn) is a queer Maaori poet and scholar living on the land of Ngaati Wairere. Mx. Ranapiri is a PhD candidate at the University of Otago doing research in the areas of creative writing and literary studies.
Desiree C. Bailey is the author of What Noise against the Cane, which won the 2020 Yale Series of Younger Poets Prize, and she was a finalist for the National Book Award for Poetry and other awards. She is from Trinidad & Tobago, and Queens, New York. Desiree is the Writer in Residence at Clemson University.
