The Marshallese Arts Project was inspired by the poetry of writer, performer, and activist Kathy Jetñil-Kijiner. Performance poetry is her favourite genre because, she says, it ‘brings humanity’ and conveys stories in ways that bald facts and statistics cannot. She began experimenting with genre when living in California, as a way to awaken Americans to the history of nuclear testing and other aspects of US imperialism in the Marshall Islands.
The performance poetry of Kathy and other contemporary indigenous Pacific poets draws inspiration from Black American and Caribbean performers of slam, spoken word, and dub poetry.
It’s tiring, because you gotta be in that emotion every single time. The emotion you wrote with. Which means you have to bring that emotion up very single time, and every time I perform it, I feel a little something drained out of me.
Kathy Jetñil-Kijiner on performing her poetry
The poetry workshops Kathy ran for MAP introduced Marshallese students to spoken word poetry as a means of telling their stories, expressing themselves, and emphasising what is important to them. Writing and performing poems based on personal experience can be a demanding process — but it can also be a healing process, and a powerful way of harnessing stories and emotions for community building and activism.