Foreword-Draft 1

Foreword

This is the third issue of Seeds & Esssse. Seeds & Esssse is a journal dedicated to promoting student work of Hawaiʻi in order to display the resilience and brilliance of Hawaiʻi’s public school students. This issue comes from the students of Roosevelt High School. Roosevelt High School serves students from Papakōlea, Makiki, Mānoa, Nuʻuanu, Pauoa, and Punchbowl.

The title of this collection comes from a line of Lona Hudson’s poem about Papakōlea. In the last line he writes, “We come together like birds in a nest.” In his original version of the poem, he wrote, “we stick together like birds in a nest.” I did not ask him why he chose to change the word “stick” to “come,” but I liked his choice to change the word. “Come together” implies “we” leave the nest and return. It is a choice to come together. Hudson’s writing is infused with powerful images and conflict.

It is the same conflict that is reflected in the election of our new president. In light of the recent election of Barack Obama and his call for us to look within to create a better community, he proclaimed, “Starting today, we must pick ourselves up, dust ourselves off, and begin again the work of remaking America.” Perhaps because we live in Hawaiʻi, there was a nagging feeling even amidst the celebration of electing a Democratic president who was born and raised in Hawaiʻi, some believe Hawaiʻi is not a part of America—Kanaka Maoli activists who fight for sovereignty and locals who feel Hawaii is separate from the continental US. For many reasons, we still have many issues with Statehood. How fitting this issue is being published as the anniversary of our fiftieth year as a state.

This book of poems and prose poetry is a coming together of various voices. It does as President Obama asks of us—to do our best even amongst the burdens that we carry. We find common ground in our poetry. We support one another in our struggles. It is only together that we will be able to overcome colonization and the influences that threaten the future of our children. Whether it is Kanaka Maoli sovereignty, gay rights, demilitarization, traffic, genetically modified crops, tourism, or education—it would do us well to listen to the voices of the underrepresented. If we listen, we can hear them. They are in this book. Here, we share our thoughts, our sadness, our losses, our joys, our hopes. Here, we come together.

Journal 3-Beginnings

I am working on the third Seeds & Esssse journal with two of my English classes at Roosevelt High School. The students wrote poems: dialect, memory, newspaper, and so forth and there were several stand out poets especially from the younger students. The goal is to have a book launch by June 2.

Journal 1 and 2

I first came up with the idea to start a journal when Susan M. Schultz asked a group of her graduate students to create poetry chapbooks. She challenged us to make something happen and produce something interesting. At the time I was working at McKinley High School in Honolulu and asked some of my math students to contribute writing to a chapbook, which I would create and then distribute to them. The response was overwhelming that I had to create two separate chapbooks.



The first book was difficult to format on MSWord, but somehow I did it! The second book proved to be more challenging. I asked my artist friend, Tigie Fofanadura to send me some of his drawings so I might use it as the cover art. However, his work was very detailed and I could not get the color quality I needed out of my lowly inkjet printer to feel I was doing his art work justice.



I was also struggling with the title. I finally settled on a title of a student's poem: How Do You Say Hi. This poem was about an absent father. I noticed a lot of the poems the students were writing were about their fathers or about father figures or the lack thereof. So I dedicated the second book to fathers. Here is that dedication.

for fathers who fall
for fathers who fail
for fathers who kind
for fathers who hit
for fathers who write
for fathers who bring
for fathers who miss
for fathers who lost
for fathers who lock up
for fathers who spoke up
for fathers who down
for fathers who yell
for fathers who wish
for fathers who scold
for fathers who try
for fathers who fight
for fathers who cry
for fathers who know
for fathers who lie
for fathers who tro'
for fathers who run
for fathers who broke
for fathers who stay no mo'

In the end I settled on a black and white cover with foliage crawling over the title.