Laurel Nakanishi nomono fear brah. Her poetry stay personal, playful, political, and powerful. With one strong sense of place, Sista Laurel’s poetry ponders what stay our responsibility to Hawai‘i, to dis place we call home in terms of those who came before as well as those who going come aftah:
“How I rested my pregnant belly / in the sea. My baby swimming. // ‘Olekūkolu. The stillness below. / Salt Water cracking in my ears. // ‘Olepau. The jet fuel trickles / through our aquifer.”
While she raises environmental kine questions das universal, her work stay extremely Local, li’dat. What I love da most stay how da specificity of her images spark dat immediate recognition of da place wea we stay:
“Pale-tide laps at Ala Moana beach; yellow hau leaves cover the sand, littered too, with the bones of grilled kalbi.”
Das like if you know you know, you know da kine. Simply stated, Laurel Nakanishi, she geff ’em! Her pieces about da land reveal its histories, mysteries and da contradictories of what we tink we dunno we know.
—Lee Tonouchi
Winner of 2021-2022 Tony Quagliano Poetry Award
Excerpt from interview with our 2021-2022 Tony Quagliano Poetry Award winner, Lee Tonouchi and Laurel:
Waimea Valley IV
We enter the valley silently, without shaking the branches.
We enter without startling. Alae ‘ula watches us
from the estuary remembering the pitch nights
when the fire lived only in her. We followed
the pig trails listening for the rustle grunt
of Kamapua‘a. In the quiet, our thoughts
are small gods. They fly above the earth.
—Poem from Laurel Nakanishi’s collection Ashore
To read this fun and insightful interview, visit here.
Explore Laurel’s lesson plan for a poetry workshop on Red Hill here.
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Laurel Nakanishi was born and raised in Kapālama, O‘ahu, with ancestral roots that connect her to Japan and the European continent. She is a writer, educator, and author of the book of poetry, Ashore. Laurel has served communities in Hawaiʻi, Nicaragua, Montana, and Florida as a teaching artist, bringing poetry to public/charter schools and community spaces. She holds degrees from the University of Montana and Florida International University, and has been fortunate to receive fellowships from the Fulbright Foundation and Japan-US Friendship Commission. Laurel is grateful for family dinners, toddler jokes, mangoes, misty forests, the ocean, and the many amazing young people she meets in Hawai‘i public and charter schools.
Lee Tonouchi is a passionate language advocate in Hawaiʻi, where he is known as “Da Pidgin Guerilla” due to his support for the use of Pidgin, the creole language of Hawaiʻi.
We invite you to learn more about Lee’s work, here.