While the year is still young, it’s brought artistic blossoming for poet Kathy Jetnil-Kijiner, 29, who was born in the Marshall Islands and raised in Hawaii, graduating from University Laboratory School in Honolulu and going on to Mills College in California.
Back in Honolulu for a visit last month, Jetnil-Kijiner was giving readings to launch her first book, “Iep Jaltok: Poems From a Marshallese Daughter” (University of Arizona Press, $14.95).
She was also busy weaving baskets with help from the local Marshallese community.
“We’re aiming for 100,” the author said in a phone interview from the Surfjack Hotel & Swim Club in Waikiki, where she was artist in residence for the week. “These are the oldest baskets in our culture — round with a handle, made from green coconut leaves.”
With videos of Jetnil-Kijiner performing her poetry, the hand-woven receptacles will be part of her debut art installation, “Islands Dropped From a Basket,” which will be shown Tuesday through May 7 at the Honolulu Biennial, in The Hub, a new exhibition space at 333 Ward Ave., which formerly housed Sports Authority.
“It’s based on a Marshallese legend, but also it’s about health care issues we’ve faced,” the poet said of her installation. “A lot of us have been coming to Hawaii sick from U.S. nuclear testing, and now are afraid” because of Republican moves to eliminate the Affordable Care Act.
The baskets, she said, will hold photographs, articles and other records of the atomic testing and other disasters faced by her people.
Her poetry also juxtaposes traditional Marshallese values and lifestyles with their struggles as migrants.
In one a series of questions, such as, “Do you know how to fish?” are posed in Marshallese and English, and the response is always, “I don’t know how. Can you teach me?”
Another, set in California, describes “bills tangled in bills for fatherless boys who head households … it’s hard to dream. That shore’s an empty cup.”
A voice for the environment and social justice who’s been heard in the 2014 United Nations Climate Summit and Vogue magazine, Jetnil-Kijiner said that last year her nation of low-lying atolls experienced increased inundations due to sea level rise.
The flooding has destroyed sea walls, homes and crops, and caused salinization of freshwater sources, she said, recalling an island that 10 years ago was “lush with coconut trees. Now it’s completely dried out, a pile of rocks, a vision of what all our islands could look like in future.”
Being the mother of a 3-year-old makes things feel all the more urgent.
“The poem I performed at the U.N. Climate Summit was a letter to my daughter and my promise to fight for her and her islands,” Jetnil-Kijiner said.
For information about tickets and tours of “Islands Dropped From a Basket” and other biennial exhibits, go to honolulubiennial.org/tickets.
