Description:

The Poetry and Poetics Colloquium is thrilled to announce that Chamoru poet Craig Santos Perez will be joining us for talk entitled “Radical Pacific Islander Poetry from the 1960s and Beyond.”  Lunch will be served.

Perez’s presentation will introduce attendees to the history, politics and cultures of Pacific Islander poetry that emerged in the 1960s and 1970s, a fervent period of decolonization, sovereignty, and cultural revitalization movements. We will dive into the Pacific archives to explore the radical poets, educators, and publication projects (including zines, anthologies, and posters) from Melanesia and Polynesia. Furthermore, we will explore the legacy of this first wave of contemporary Pacific literature by highlighting decolonial poetic projects that emerged in Hawaiʻi and Guam in the 1980s and 1990s. Lastly, we will consider how new media has shaped 21st century decolonial Pacific poetry and poetics in response to climate change, militarization, colonialism, and tourism.

Craig Santos Perez is a native Chamoru from the Pacific Island of Guåhan (Guam). He is the co-founder of Ala Press, co-star of the poetry album Undercurrent (2011), and author of three collections of poetry, most recently, from unincorporated territory [guma’] (2014). He is an Associate Professor and the Director of the Creative Writing Program in the English Department at the University of Hawai’i, Mānoa, where he teach Pacific Islander Literature and Creative Writing. He is an affiliate faculty with the Center for Pacific Islands Studies and the Indigenous Politics Program (Political Science).