Reflections on London and Writing

This past summer, I was hugely honored to represent the Marshall Islands at the Poetry Parnassus Festival in London, supposedly one of the largest gathering of international poets in history.

Now, as a young up-and-coming poet this was a pretty big deal for me. Mostly because I’ve never traveled to London, I don’t have a book published, and yeah comparatively speaking, my career hasn’t exactly “taken off” just yet.

But honestly, the most valuable part of my trip was meeting the other Pacific Islander poets – Craig Santos Perez representing Guahan, Brandy Nalani McDougall representing Hawaii, Selina Tusitala Marsh representing Tuvalu, Tereseia Teaiwa representing Kiribati, Tusiata Avia representing Samoa, Audrey Brown-Pereira representing Cook Islands, and Karlo Mila representing Tonga.

I knew Craig from California when he contacted me once after hearing me on the radio. He’s always been cool and easy to get in touch with, especially through facebook (lol). In fact, it was reading his awesome facebook posts about all these writers and all these books he was teaching about in his class that made me want to go back to grad school. He’s also an amazing writer and poet who’s already published two books of poetry which you can find here:

http://www.amazon.com/Craig-Santos-Perez/e/B003F538QU and you can find more information about him and his writing at his blog: http://craigsantosperez.wordpress.com/

Brandy, Selina, Teresia, Tusiata, Aubrey, and Karlo, though, I’d never met before. Instead, I’d followed their careers and connected deeply with their work. I knew that if anyone could show me the way to publishing my first book, it was these group of Pacific Islander writers who all had to deal with very similar struggles to my own.

Seriously though.  When I met them, I had to control myself so as to not drool and fawn all over them like some teenage twilight fan meeting Edward Callen or whatever the hell his name is.

Here’s some of the stuff they taught me:

• PI’s are the funnest, coolest crew of writers to hang out with
• Having a baby and writing a book/pursuing academia? Pretty tough. I would have guessed this one (and learned from my mother, who got her phD while raising me, my cousin and my brother in hawaii) but it was still good to receive confirmation from others
• Recording a CD with your book is a good idea if a lot of your pieces are spoken word (thanks Craig!)
• Consider collaborating with a fellow islander artist (got this one from Karlo whose collection had some seriously beautiful artwork)
• PI women love to treat you like their daughter, which I didn’t mind at all (in this case it meant a lot of my collars, clothes, and hair getting absent-mindedly fixed while they’re talking to me about books, readings, etc)
• Traveling to awesome locations and reading poetry to people all over the world is not just some fantasy that I made up in my mind – this can be an ACTUAL career! Like that’s what these poets do all the time – it’s REAL! It’s NOT a unicorn!
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• And last but not least, the most important piece of advice I got (from seriously all the poets) was TO TAKE MY TIME WITH MY FIRST BOOK. Don’t rush it cuz hey – there won’t be another FIRST book you know? I might as well take my time and get it just to the way I like it. Especially seeing as it would literally be the first Marshallese book of poetry in history. Damn. My palms are getting sweaty just thinking about it.

All in all, I have to say that was one of the best trips of my life. Even though everyone thought I was some random kid, or Tusiata’s daughter, and even though I got harassed for like an hour by Immigration, and had to fly over 17 hours on three separate flights by myself and even though I spent like, 3 of those days sick in bed with a serious flu. Yeah, I know. Kinda wack.

But even in my dark hotel room, shivering and sweating beneath blankets as I repeatedly downed a bottle of orange juice and some random pill called paracetamol (apparently the equivalent of Tylenol for Europeans) , I couldn’t help but think to myself :

“I’m in London. As a poet. This is AWESOME!”