Emelihter Kihleng, Pohnpeian Poet

Right: Emeli festooned with lei during her reading at the Center for Hawaiian Studies, April 2008. Melanie Ried thinks Emeli is all that and then some.

My Urohs (Kahuaomanoa Press 2008) is the new book of poetry from Emeli Kihleng, a UH alumn. In fact, I remember some of these poems in their nascent stages during Robert Sullivan's workshop back in 2005. Emeli has since gone on to teach in Micronesia as a Micronesian English teacher amongst faculty comprised mostly of foreigners. In her no holds-barred style, Emeli describes this experience in "No Post in Colonialism in COM (College of Micronesia)":

they say:

it's a trait they don't have here
they are not thorough
they can't copy a sentence
they don't eat green stuff (vegetables)
because they say it's pig food
it's pitiful, it's hopeless they say
they can hire some yokel dokel dong to do it
(on teaching developmental English courses)

it's different in the real world, they like to say


Another favorite poem of mine is "Destiny Fulfilled?" about sending a care package to her childhood friend who is stationed in Iraq, a pointed critique of Pacific Islanders recruited into the U.S. military, as this excerpt conveys:

the smiley thug soldiers keep recruiting
on Saipan, Majuro and Palau
brown islanders signing away their freedom
on islands seized by "liberation"
60 years before

I ponder these statistics as
she sends me email forwards
about "friends vs. best friends"
postcards that read
"On Patrol: Operation Iraqi Freedom"

As Albert Wendt writes in the back cover blurb: "[H]er voice is a new fusion of English and Pohnpeian, the result of her upbringing and life in Pohnpei, Guam, Hawai’i, and the USA."
Right on, Emeli - hope I can still visit you on Guam and maybe Micronesia one day.
For more info on My Urohs visit Kahuaomanoa Press at http://kahuaomanoa.googlepages.com