Student of the Month April 2014 Featuring: Serena Ngaio Simmons
University of Hawai‘i at MÄ noa
Copyright © 2014 by the Board of Publications, University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa If you are a student and would like to feature your work in Student of the Month or an instructor for a creative writing course and would like to submit exemplary University of Hawai‘i student work to Hawai‘i Review’s Student of the Month, please send submissions to our Submittable account at bit.ly/submit2HR Contact us at hawaiireview@gmail.com
A Note on the Series:
Our Student of the Month series features on our website stellar student writing and visual art from the University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa, the institution where our roots dig deep. In print for more than 40 years, our journal has been an established voice in the Pacific and beyond for decades, featuring work from emerging writers alongside literary heavyweights. The Student of the Month series is our latest effort to expand Hawai‘i Review’s reach in local and farreaching literary communities. For the sixth installment of the Student of the Month series, we are thrilled to feature the following UHM poet: Serena Ngaio Simmons, whose poetry we at Hawai‘i Review have had the great honor of being the first to publish (see “The Process” in our Issue 79: Call & Response). We are thrilled to share another of Serena’s beautiful poems with you today. We were inspired to feature Serena’s work for our Student of the Month Feature when, this April, Hawai‘i Review Design Editor Donovan Kūhiō Colleps, Poetry Editor No‘u Revilla, and Editor in Chief Anjoli Roy had the pleasure of attending the 2014 Center for Pacific Island Studies (CPIS) Student Conference, titled “Expressing Oceania: Pacific Islands Scholarship on the Page, on the State, and Beyond.” Serena was one of many talented poets who had been asked to share her poetry at the conclusion of this important conference, and we are so glad she did. Her piece, titled “Tui Bird,” left us with our hearts in our throats, because she was writing her truth so beautifully, and because it is a piece of our truth too. Perhaps it’s also a piece of yours. As Serena has said, “Tui Bird” is a part of the journey of self-discovery she has been on since late 2012, since she has set out to learn more about her Maori culture and what it means to be mixed in Oceania: This poem is an explanation of the feeling of excitement I get every single day, knowing of the strong connection I have to the Pacific as someone born here and as an indigenous person. There is so much more I can’t wait to learn about. We hope you enjoy this beautiful poem as much as we do. Read and share it thoughtfully. —The Editors
Serena Ngaio Simmons is a writer of Maori and European descent born and raised on O‘ahu. Serena has attended and competed in the Brave New Voices international spoken word competition for youth in 2011 and 2012. Serena is currently pursuing her BA in English at the University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa. Serena is an active member in the spoken word “scene” on O‘ahu, attending monthly slams and performing. Poetry and shows keep her going through the semester.
Tui Bird How fortunate I am to know such a gutsy tui throat full of salt and knowledge, she is one part Great Plains, all parts ocean and she tells everyone. Of all the kinds of love I have buried in me she is the loudest. Sometimes her mother is embarrassed, afraid the other birds will start talking light up their beaks with gossip about that tui who gets too excited about her ocean, her heritage, mother is proud of her daughter but wishes she would talk about more than home. The other birds know who they are so does my tui I suppose our song goes on longer than theirs in the morning, most of them don’t understand, growing up with wholesome growing up with language growing up with culture, forgive me, not all of us are that fortunate. Some of us must dig straight to the nickel, and swallow every book available, because we don’t have childhood to fall back on. So when you hear my tui sing, red lungs and heart pounding in time with the trades know we are beginners.
www.hawaiireview.org Hawai‘i Review Staff, 2013-2014 Anjoli Roy, Editor in Chief Kelsey Amos, Managing Editor Donovan Kūhiō Colleps, Design Editor No‘ukahau‘oli Revilla, Poetry Editor David Scrivner, Fiction Editor
bit.ly/submit2HR