My sixth post, “Haunani-Kay Trask, ‘Night is a Sharkskin Drum’ (University of Hawaii Press, 2002)” is up at the Poetry Foundation blog. Here’s an excerpt:
So from the get go, we know that she is an activist, a scholar, and a poet. Trask begins Night is a Sharkskin Drum with the section, “Born in Fire,” containing chants honoring the goddess Pele, in these two, three beat lines that sprawl across the pages. This form, her lines, really affect the canoe rowing in the open ocean regularity of the drum, and the breath of incantation:
Kino lau on the wind,
in the yellowing ti,
sounds of Akua
awaking in the dawn:
Nā-maka-o-ka-ha'i,
eyes flecked with fire,
summoning her family
from across the seas.
Sharks in the shallows,
upheaval in the heavens.
This vessel upon open ocean movement reminds me of another Pacific Islander authored poetry collection, Craig Santos Perez’s From Unincorporated Territory.
