Imaikalani Kalahele

Imaikalani Kalahele is a Kanaka Maoli (native Hawaiian) poet, artist, and musician whose work has appeared in anthologies of native Hawaiian literature, such as Mälama: Hawaiian Land and Water (1985), and in the journal ̒Ōiwi: A Native Hawaiian Journal. Kalahele’s book Kalahele (2002) collected his poetry and art in a polyphonic performance that mixed English, Hawaiian Creole, and his indigenous language. Reviewing the book, Steven Winduo described how “Kalahele reflects the issues of culture, Hawaiian identity, land alienation, American exploitation, and cultural decolonization. This collection has poetry and art speaking simultaneously, imagining a society that links the past with the present and the future. The Hawaiian artist and poet mediates between ancestral knowledge and modern influences in a lace of art and poetry that floats on the currents of the Pacific, across the islands and in space.”