After sharing some of his own work, the visiting poet asked the class to compose lists of words important to them. They offered terms like:

brah

manapua

dakine

raja dat

Each word was received like a precious thing, a poem all on its own. The poet wanted to know the etymology, pronunciation and usage. Words delight him, and those particular words particularly delighted him. The students beamed.

“I encourage you to use your language triumphantly!” George Elliott Clarke told the class. “The more we can access our own language and experience, the more original and special and strong the writing becomes. Never shy away from using your own language.”

Clarke, a professor at the University of Toronto, is Canada’s Parliamentary National Poet Laureate. He is the author of 10 books of poetry as well as plays and novels. Much of his work is rooted in where he is from — a small, historically black community in Halifax, Nova Scotia. His honors include the Dartmouth Book Award for fiction, the Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Achievement Award and — get this — two of his poems are being used in stage projections as part of the band U2’s worldwide concert tour. Poetry doesn’t get much bigger.

The class at the University of Hawaii at West Oahu is Eng 317, Pidgin Creative Writing Workshop, a writing-intensive course taught by Tiare Picard. The class has been offered at UHWO for many years but had been dormant for a bit until Picard brought it back last semester. The class has proved popular. Currently there are 18 students.

Monday’s class visit by Clarke was like a literary version of the Hokule‘a’s worldwide voyage, with far-flung cultures meeting at the shore and embracing each other’s uniqueness and connections.

“You give your own writing a great deal of strength the more you use and are comfortable with your native tongue,” Clarke said.

Clarke asked the students to compose a poem using the pidgin words they had listed as important to them. He gave them 10 minutes to write and then asked for volunteers. Isaac Antolin, a 21-year-old business management major, shared these lines:

Bumbai my bro gone learn

Not everything gotta be settled by trowing hands

All cuz he like be one hammah

No matta if a bunch of scrubs lookin fo scrap

Clarke rejoiced in the words and images.

It is a powerful thing to have a writer who is accomplished and worldly and practically weighed down with awards come into a classroom and speak words of encouragement to young writers. Visiting writers often talk only about themselves, and they make the hardships of writing sound so hard. Clarke told the students, with all sincerity, that poetry lies in their own cache of words and experiences, and that they should not be lulled or bullied into writing anybody else’s prepackaged, mainstream idea of poetry.

“If anyone is offended by your words, let them be offended,” he said. “If originality gives offense, those people will soon perish.”

Reach Lee Cataluna at 529-4315 or lcataluna@staradvertiser.com.